Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking and Welcome to Forward Thinking the podcast and
Speaker 1: looks at the future and says scientists have proven that
Speaker 1: the Sasquatch he is real. I am Jonathan Strickland, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and our other host, Lauren Vogelbaum, is
Speaker 1: not with us today. She is not feeling well, but
Speaker 1: she will be back with us next time. I like
Speaker 1: to think that she's hunting monsters right now. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that's what she's doing. Yeah, in fact, that's what we're doing. See,
Speaker 1: we wanted to do a special Halloween themed episode or
Speaker 1: two or four maybe four. Well, while Jonathan was out
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard them, we, Lauren and I decided
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about monsters in the spirit of
Speaker 1: October because we're all sort of horror fans are in here,
Speaker 1: but how could we talk about monsters on this podcast. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out there are a lot of ways we can.
Speaker 1: So we invited on our friend Robert Lamb from Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, are sort of resident monster expert,
Speaker 1: to come talk to us about the future of monster.
Speaker 1: He's very good friends with Dr Anton Jessup, who is
Speaker 1: uh is such good friends it's disturbing. Yeah, truly disturbing.
Speaker 1: He's a ductor. Anton Jessup, if you aren't familiar, is
Speaker 1: a an expert in monster science. Yeah, and so Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb decided to come over and do some episodes, and
Speaker 1: I was very disappointed that I could not be part
Speaker 1: of them, although I must admit I was also having
Speaker 1: an amazing time at the simultaneously while those episodes are
Speaker 1: being recorded. Well, I'm sorry you couldn't be with us too,
Speaker 1: but you can be with us on these upcoming monster podcasts. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: the one we wanted to talk about today was monster hunting,
Speaker 1: because this is another thing that can sort of relate
Speaker 1: to science and technology. Yeah, there is a quest that
Speaker 1: many people have committed themselves too deeply in a heartfelt way,
Speaker 1: to go out into the dark spaces of the world
Speaker 1: and find find the monsters that linger. Yes, for there
Speaker 1: there be dragons. Well, there is sort of a sense
Speaker 1: that technology and its progress throughout the years has eliminated
Speaker 1: a lot of the strange creatures that we used to
Speaker 1: think existed, but some people hold out hope. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I and I can totally understand that. So as
Speaker 1: a kid, when I was in elementary school, I checked
Speaker 1: out every single book in our elementary school library that
Speaker 1: had to do with folklore, ghosts, aliens, and monsters. Those
Speaker 1: were those were like my go toos, so much so
Speaker 1: that I read them more than once. I tell you what,
Speaker 1: when I was a child, I had my brain ruined
Speaker 1: by these documentaries on TV about the Locknest Monster and
Speaker 1: UFOs and stuff. Because I saw them presented in a
Speaker 1: documentary format that was pretty much the same as the
Speaker 1: format of stuff about uh, you know, animals and and
Speaker 1: movie effects and all the other documentaries things like volcanoes
Speaker 1: or whatever. I just assumed, Oh, okay, just totally normal
Speaker 1: to believe in uh Sasquatch and Mothman all that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just part of the world, and it's an especially
Speaker 1: cool part of the world, right, So why wouldn't I
Speaker 1: believe in it? Yeah? And I was. I was very much.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I fully believed in everything, but
Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to believe in them. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about the psychology of believing in monsters and
Speaker 1: hunting for monsters towards the end, but just keep in
Speaker 1: mind that. As a kid, I was one of those people,
Speaker 1: and as I grew up, I was too, I think
Speaker 1: I I as I by the time I hit high
Speaker 1: school and I was already developing a much more skeptical
Speaker 1: view of the world. And I remember loving, uh mockumentaries
Speaker 1: that had to do with monster hunting. There was one
Speaker 1: called Phil and Arthur as a pair of British comedians
Speaker 1: who did a Luckness Monster special where they were investigating
Speaker 1: the Lockness Monster and absolutely parodying everything about Lockness Monster investigations. Um.
Speaker 1: And I remember it came on the public broadcast station
Speaker 1: and we videotaped it. We had videotapes back in those days. Kids,
Speaker 1: and U so, yeah, I have at my parents house
Speaker 1: somewhere there's a videotape that may or may not still
Speaker 1: be in playable condition. Um. That was one of my
Speaker 1: cherished possessions because even as a high school student, even
Speaker 1: at that point where I had kind of decided to
Speaker 1: put away the belief in these things, I still harbored
Speaker 1: this fascination for it. So it didn't believe was not
Speaker 1: a requirement. Well so beyond the realms of just wishing
Speaker 1: for these things to be true and liking the mystery
Speaker 1: and strangeness of the creatures. There are people who are
Speaker 1: really interested in the question of whether some supposedly existing
Speaker 1: strange animal is actually out there. Yeah, and they dedicate
Speaker 1: time to study something. But there's studying something for which
Speaker 1: there is no evidence that actually exists. The evidence is
Speaker 1: very shaky, right, There's nothing like an actual specimen, for example,
Speaker 1: to study. So uh, it's it's a type of pseudoscience
Speaker 1: called crypto zoology. And the reason we call it pseudoscience
Speaker 1: is because they don't have that hard evidence to actually
Speaker 1: look into. Well, I want to hold up for a
Speaker 1: second here and be fair and say I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's necessarily right to call it a pseudoscience. And
Speaker 1: now I'm not going out and saying that I believe
Speaker 1: the Locknest Monster and Bigfoot and all these creatures exist.
Speaker 1: I I very much don't. But I think you could
Speaker 1: use the scientific method to look into questions of whether
Speaker 1: these creatures exist, or you could look for evidence. You
Speaker 1: could make hypotheses about what you'd expect to find if
Speaker 1: they did exist. You could test those and look for
Speaker 1: evidence and either find it or not. I think you
Speaker 1: could take a skeptical perspective to these questions absolutely, and
Speaker 1: I say you should take a skeptical viewpoint to those questions. However,
Speaker 1: you could end up saying the same thing about cold fusion.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make it science unless you find the actual
Speaker 1: evidence to support it. It ends up being pseudo scientific.
Speaker 1: Now if you find the evidence to support it, and
Speaker 1: then you would have to say, all right, this is
Speaker 1: no longer pseudoscience. We can actually make observations, we can
Speaker 1: make predictions, we can test, we can replicate tests. Then
Speaker 1: that's truly the element of science. But if you're talking
Speaker 1: about let's say unicorns, that's if I sit there and
Speaker 1: I claim like I want to discover whether or not
Speaker 1: unicorns are real, well, all I can do is look
Speaker 1: for evidence for it. If I don't find any evidence
Speaker 1: for it, that doesn't necessarily mean that unicorns aren't real, right,
Speaker 1: It means I can't find the evidence. If you look
Speaker 1: really hard and you can't find the evidence, they're probably
Speaker 1: not real. Probably, but you can't say with certainty. So
Speaker 1: this is this is why we put it into the
Speaker 1: realm of pseudoscience until there's actually direct evidence for these things,
Speaker 1: in which case we no longer call it cryptozoology. For
Speaker 1: that particular or incidents. We call it zoology because it
Speaker 1: becomes uh an animal that we can actually or an
Speaker 1: organism we can actually study. Until it reaches that point,
Speaker 1: then it falls into cryptozoology, which because we can't actually
Speaker 1: point to evidence for it, we can't actually study an
Speaker 1: actual example of it. We're just talking about things that
Speaker 1: are based on folklore, on first firsthand or second hand
Speaker 1: accounts of encounters with this stuff, or maybe some unreliable
Speaker 1: media of it of some sort. Then we can't really
Speaker 1: you know, without the direct observation of it, we can't
Speaker 1: really call it a science. M Okay, I think we're
Speaker 1: agreeing on the substance, just maybe disagreeing on how we're
Speaker 1: using words. Sure, Uh well, I think if you ask
Speaker 1: any any like skeptical organization about cryptozoology, they would classify
Speaker 1: it as pseudoscience as opposed to science. But keeping in
Speaker 1: mind that if you were to find an animal that
Speaker 1: often gets lumped in under cryptids, these these hidden animals
Speaker 1: that we have not discovered an actual uh sample of,
Speaker 1: then they would say, all right, well then that that
Speaker 1: clearly falls into it, like we could exactly. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Ceila canth is a great example. Ceila canth is a
Speaker 1: fish that we had long believed to have gone extinct,
Speaker 1: and then of course a fisherman caught one, and then
Speaker 1: the and the and the wasn't the only one. Well
Speaker 1: if Phil and Arthur made that joke, because so there's
Speaker 1: a Ceila cat which people believe would been extinct, then
Speaker 1: a fisherman cult one, and now they are extinct. You know,
Speaker 1: that's not exactly, that's not true. There are more ceila
Speaker 1: can't out in the Okay, Jonathan, Before we talk about
Speaker 1: the technology and the future prospect for looking for monsters,
Speaker 1: we should talk about what are the monsters that are
Speaker 1: on the table. What what do people believe is out
Speaker 1: there that we haven't actually verified yet. Well, cryptids come
Speaker 1: in all shapes and sizes. They some of them are
Speaker 1: are more quote unquote and monstrous than others. Mons stress
Speaker 1: does not necessarily mean spooky, scary, nasty, mean evil. It
Speaker 1: may mean that it's just something that's it's incredibly unusual large, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, something that is well outside the norm. But
Speaker 1: cryptids in general, that could be anything, uh, that is
Speaker 1: believed to exist but there's no proof for it. That
Speaker 1: could be you know, pretty much any kind of living thing.
Speaker 1: I should say, because this doesn't really fall into the
Speaker 1: realm of the spiritual and ghosts and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So um, pretty much anything that was rumored to exist
Speaker 1: could fall into that category. Okay, so how about like
Speaker 1: the Lockness Monster, one of my favorites when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. In it then, because of course you saw
Speaker 1: that picture or the thing coming out of the water,
Speaker 1: the surgeon eld be well, and that was that was
Speaker 1: probably out of all the monsters that I read about
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, that was the one I
Speaker 1: held onto the longest. That was the one I was
Speaker 1: least willing to let go, right Like, Like, if you
Speaker 1: think of my my progression into skepticism, the Lochness monster,
Speaker 1: nessy she was. She was hard for me to say,
Speaker 1: all right, I don't really believe there's a monster in
Speaker 1: Lochness anymore. It took me a very long time. So uh,
Speaker 1: in case somehow you have managed to go through your
Speaker 1: life without knowing about the Lochness Monster. Lochness is in Scotland.
Speaker 1: It's a lake in Scotland, or a loch. It is
Speaker 1: very large lake. It is very deep, it's extremely deepest
Speaker 1: formed by a glacier. Uh thousands and thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of years ago. Uh, it is connected by locks to
Speaker 1: um to Are you going to keep saying that's the
Speaker 1: way it's said. It's got the glottal stuff there. So
Speaker 1: how did it end up with a dinosaur? And well,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the idea, right, that it's a pleasyasaur
Speaker 1: like dinosaur monster. Yeah, they're different. There were always Well,
Speaker 1: first you had to ascertain the fact that there's supposedly
Speaker 1: a monster here there first, right, and the very first
Speaker 1: sighting goes all the way back to St. Columba and
Speaker 1: Irish monk uh in the in sixth century Scotland, who's
Speaker 1: supposedly encountered a sea beast or at least a lake
Speaker 1: beast in the in the waters, and then calmed it
Speaker 1: through Christianity. I'm not making any of this up. This
Speaker 1: is all in in folklore. And then uh it does
Speaker 1: you people knew yeah, essentially um and calmed it. It
Speaker 1: was some sort of sea serpent in uh in the story.
Speaker 1: But you don't really get any more stories about it
Speaker 1: until the nineteen thirties. Actually three there was a monster
Speaker 1: hunter named Marmaduke, which his name is It was Marmaduke. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was his first name. Um So Marma Duke, Marma
Speaker 1: Duke Weatherell. It's the best name ever, isn't it. I
Speaker 1: thought it was going to be like Marmaduke groteil Dip.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Weather Ell is pretty good though, Marmaduke
Speaker 1: weather Ll. All right. So Marma Duke weather Ll had
Speaker 1: been hired by a truly um uh historic and important journal, uh,
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail, to go to to go and and
Speaker 1: look into reports that there was supposedly a monster in
Speaker 1: uh loch Ness. And so he went and discovered some tracks,
Speaker 1: didn't find any actual like, he didn't see the monster himself,
Speaker 1: but found some interesting tracks that were near the loch
Speaker 1: and proclaimed them to be the actual tracks of a
Speaker 1: monster living in Luchness. And then it turned out that
Speaker 1: in fact those tracks had been made by a dried
Speaker 1: out hippopotamus foot, which was at the time and at
Speaker 1: the time and in early twentieth century England, hippo and
Speaker 1: elephant feet were used as umbrella stands. Yeah, yeah, enlightened times. Anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: he was more or less humiliated, uh, And that is
Speaker 1: important for a little bit later in the story. So
Speaker 1: this is the time that we have the infamous surgeon's
Speaker 1: photograph of NeSSI, although uh Dr Robert Kenneth Wilson, who
Speaker 1: was the the person who supposedly took the image, was
Speaker 1: not actually a surgeon. He was a guynecologist, but it
Speaker 1: was always referred to as the surgeon's photograph. He had
Speaker 1: produced this photo that's the iconic image of NeSSI, the
Speaker 1: one where you see a neck extending out from the
Speaker 1: lake with the head and it's you know, it looks
Speaker 1: like a plesiosaur, like our our our imagination of what
Speaker 1: a plesiosaur looked like. And so you see like a
Speaker 1: hump behind the neck and head. Fortunately, there's i think
Speaker 1: nothing in the photograph to give its scale. Well, the
Speaker 1: the full photo makes it look like it's pretty tiny,
Speaker 1: but the image that you always see is a cropped
Speaker 1: image where it's yeah, the croped image has it where
Speaker 1: you can't see any of the shore. You just see water.
Speaker 1: And in that case, you have no no sense of scale. Right,
Speaker 1: this thing could be enormous or it could be tiny.
Speaker 1: You don't know. Uh. In the full picture it looks
Speaker 1: like it's a little smaller. You still don't have it's
Speaker 1: still not close to the shore, so you can't be
Speaker 1: entirely certain exactly how big it is, but it looks
Speaker 1: like it would be smaller than what you would imagine
Speaker 1: it up please please us, or to look like at
Speaker 1: any rate. Uh. This photograph made huge news. I mean
Speaker 1: it was incredibly successful and uh for many many decades
Speaker 1: it was held out to be a true, authentic photograph
Speaker 1: of a monster in the lake, until yeah, a man
Speaker 1: named Christian Spurling claimed that in fact, the image and
Speaker 1: the photograph was of a why submarine that had been
Speaker 1: outfitted with a sea serpent neck and head and placed
Speaker 1: in the lake. The photograph itself was not taken by
Speaker 1: Dr Robert Kenneth Wilson, but rather a certain Marmaduke Weatherell,
Speaker 1: who had been uh been stung his pride stung by
Speaker 1: the treatment he had received from proclaiming the footprints to
Speaker 1: be authentic, and then revealed that it was all a
Speaker 1: hoax and his reputation had suffered as a consequence, and
Speaker 1: he said, we'll give them a monster and so um
Speaker 1: he took the photograph then gave it to Dr Wilson
Speaker 1: as the person to actually proclaim he was the one
Speaker 1: who took the photograph, because obviously weather all came forward,
Speaker 1: everyone would claim that was a hoax in the first place,
Speaker 1: right because he had already been involved in this. You know,
Speaker 1: I want to go ahead and point out one thing
Speaker 1: that's going to be relevant to our eventual point in
Speaker 1: this episode, which is that I think the only reason
Speaker 1: of photograph like this remained a prominent piece of evidence
Speaker 1: for so long is how bad the photograph is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that you could look at this and plausibly interpreted
Speaker 1: as a monster is a fact that is based on
Speaker 1: it being black and white, being often, at least as
Speaker 1: I experienced it always cropped, and so not having any scale,
Speaker 1: and being blurry, grainy, low resolution that old time you photography.
Speaker 1: You don't have any any detail on the monster at all.
Speaker 1: You can't make out any features on the monster. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all those things really aid quite a bit. Now,
Speaker 1: granted there have been a lot of other photographs of
Speaker 1: of Lochness and the monster. You just every single time
Speaker 1: I say it, You're just gonna shake your head, aren't you. Um,
Speaker 1: You're you're If you keep saying it like that, I'm
Speaker 1: eventually gonna believe in the monster at the lake. Working
Speaker 1: me towards that the lake near Inverness, Scotland. UM. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of photographs since then, but many of
Speaker 1: them are none of them are conclusive, right, none of
Speaker 1: them are are uh convincing enough for you to say
Speaker 1: this is conclusive evidence that there is a monster living
Speaker 1: in that lake. And Nessie, you know, isn't the only
Speaker 1: purported lake monsters. Now, there's so many. Basically every lake
Speaker 1: that people go to has a monster. Everybody of water
Speaker 1: that's been around long enough has a monster in it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: there's yeah champ in Lake Champlain, there's og Pogo, and
Speaker 1: then there's all the other pogos that are supposedly lake monsters. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are there's Big Blue. If you watch X files,
Speaker 1: Uh did you remember that episode? Within saw that one?
Speaker 1: It was it was set in Georgia. Actually Big Blue
Speaker 1: was a supposed lake monster living in North Georgia. Um,
Speaker 1: North Georgia Lake. And then it is revealed, well, there's
Speaker 1: a false reveal spoiler alert for anyone who's making their
Speaker 1: way through X files for the first time, there's a
Speaker 1: it's a false reveal that it's actually a giant alligator
Speaker 1: that was living in the lake. Never mind the fact
Speaker 1: that no giant alligator could ever live in a North
Speaker 1: Georgia lake. Those leaks are freezing cold. It would never
Speaker 1: an alligator would never survive. But at the very very
Speaker 1: end of the episode, of course, Big Blue pops up
Speaker 1: out of the lake, unseen by anyone other than the viewer.
Speaker 1: So it's a little wink and a nod of oh,
Speaker 1: there really is a monster. Well, they gotta keep mystery alive. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: even though they never go back to that lake ever again.
Speaker 1: But at then you're right, um, Yeah, there's lots of
Speaker 1: different lakes and rivers that supposedly have monsters in them,
Speaker 1: and this this is all over the world, obviously, not
Speaker 1: just We're focusing a lot on North America in this
Speaker 1: episode because that's where we live, but there are all
Speaker 1: over the world stories of lake and river monsters. Okay,
Speaker 1: before we get to the tech, I think we should
Speaker 1: talk about one other big monster, which also comes in
Speaker 1: many varieties. Like the lake monsters. You've got the large
Speaker 1: hairy humanoid, yes, big foot slash, sasquatch slash, the skunk
Speaker 1: gape slash, the swamp ape slash, the Yet how many
Speaker 1: other names are there for there's yahwe you gotta say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the Australian one. Okay, yeah, so yeah, they're these
Speaker 1: are essentially the the large harry ape like creatures. Generally
Speaker 1: they tend to be described as a missing link between
Speaker 1: the great apes and man um and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different varieties, but they all are basically harry
Speaker 1: arboreal critters that I've seen it often referred to as
Speaker 1: the missing link between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, which means
Speaker 1: people don't even understand the common view on human descent
Speaker 1: that we didn't evolve from Neanderthals, right, and even if
Speaker 1: we did, it seems like Bigfoot would have been a
Speaker 1: step back based upon he's a prete hairy guy. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost suspicious the fact that this widely
Speaker 1: varying concept of monster really seems to coincide with what
Speaker 1: a human would look like in an ape suit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost almost almost suspicious, almost suspicious. Yeah, you would
Speaker 1: if you were, if you were a cynical type, you
Speaker 1: might say that this was all based off of flim flam. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But okay, so tons of people have claimed to actually
Speaker 1: see these, to photograph them, to capture some kind of
Speaker 1: some kind of empirical evidence, and before I before I
Speaker 1: go into kind of the the dawn of the big
Speaker 1: foot age here in North America, I have to ask
Speaker 1: you are you are you familiar with the term skunk ape?
Speaker 1: Were you personally familiar with that term? I'd read about
Speaker 1: it before. That's a Florida thing, Yeah, mostly Florida, North Carolina. Also, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was one of those things where I had heard
Speaker 1: about it as a kid. Now I was born in
Speaker 1: the seventies. Nineteen seventy four was when there was a
Speaker 1: rash of skunk cape sightings in Florida. And for the
Speaker 1: longest time when I was a kid, I mean I
Speaker 1: read about skunk capes right there. That was because I
Speaker 1: kept on checking out all the folklore books in my right.
Speaker 1: So when I talk about skunk capes these days, people
Speaker 1: are look at me like, what the heck are you
Speaker 1: talking about. I've never heard of such a thing. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I watched um Rob Zombies House of
Speaker 1: a Thousand Corpses where there is a television news item
Speaker 1: going on in the background of one of the scenes
Speaker 1: where they're talking about skun cape, where I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, I didn't just imagine that from my childhood
Speaker 1: there's validation. Well, to go to where the bigfoot craze
Speaker 1: started here in North America, you gotta look back at
Speaker 1: the infamous film that was made in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: That's the one everybody's seen with the loping thing looking
Speaker 1: back over its shoulders. Yeah, it's it's twists. It's torso
Speaker 1: to look back because looking back over its shoulders being
Speaker 1: really generous. It turns its whole upper body around in
Speaker 1: order to look back and is loping through woods in
Speaker 1: northern California at a pretty rapid pace. And um, there
Speaker 1: are some people who proclaimed that the movement's made in
Speaker 1: that film are those that a human could never make.
Speaker 1: There are others who say, we don't know what speed
Speaker 1: the film was shooting at, and that's very important because
Speaker 1: based on the film speed, uh, it may be that
Speaker 1: it's just like a human would move. But if the
Speaker 1: film was shot at a different speed, then it makes
Speaker 1: it look like it's something that a human would not
Speaker 1: be able to uh to ape pun intended, even without
Speaker 1: seeing it, that argument sounds specious. Tool like that. Well,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven was when this film was made, and
Speaker 1: it was made by Bob Jimlin and Roger Patterson Um,
Speaker 1: and they shot it in Bluff Creek in northern California.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing is that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of stories about this how this this film came to
Speaker 1: be made UM, including stories that reveal at least some
Speaker 1: level of hoax. So there was a guy named Ray
Speaker 1: Wallace who passed away in two thousand two, who was
Speaker 1: something of a prankster. He enjoyed a good prank now
Speaker 1: and then. And his son, Michael Wallace says that his
Speaker 1: father had a wood cover create a pair of sixteen
Speaker 1: inch long feet out of wood that you would strap
Speaker 1: on to your to your own feet, so like giant
Speaker 1: sandals essentially, and you could go tramping around wherever, making
Speaker 1: enormous tracks in the process. And his his dad, Ray Wallace,
Speaker 1: owned a construction company that built logging roads in northern California.
Speaker 1: So you had all these big roads with a lot
Speaker 1: large equipment going back and forth across them where there
Speaker 1: was ample opportunity to make some interesting tracks in the mud,
Speaker 1: which is what he would do. He would occasionally make
Speaker 1: big old tracks near them the equipment. You know, if
Speaker 1: equipment shuts down for the day, he would put these
Speaker 1: things on trump around a bit and then the next
Speaker 1: morning the workers would come out and say, holy crap,
Speaker 1: look at these these enormous footprints next to the bulldozer.
Speaker 1: What what's going on here? And it started this kind
Speaker 1: of legend of a creature with enormous feat that lived
Speaker 1: in the northern California woods, and Ray Wallace apparently just
Speaker 1: ate it up he thought was fantastic. Meanwhile, uh, he
Speaker 1: supposedly knew all about the actual uh filming of the
Speaker 1: the Bigfoot Creature by Patterson and Kimlin, and even knew
Speaker 1: who was quote unquote inside the suit, but did not
Speaker 1: give it away. Now, Gimblin seems, at least for his part,
Speaker 1: to have been completely uh believing that this was in
Speaker 1: fact a legitimate film. He was not. He was not,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, present when the filming was happening.
Speaker 1: That was Patterson who was there. Um. And the story
Speaker 1: was that Patterson had developed cancer and was looking for
Speaker 1: you know, trying to raise money so he could get treatment.
Speaker 1: The story is that this whole thing was orchestrated for
Speaker 1: his benefit essentially, and that a North Carolina costumer made
Speaker 1: this costume, this Bigfoot costume mail order, uh, made this
Speaker 1: for Patterson. Yeah, and that they even got a request
Speaker 1: about how to make it look taller, and the costumer
Speaker 1: had said, look, used shoulder pads like football shoulder pads
Speaker 1: to to increase the height, and use sticks in the
Speaker 1: arms to increase the the arm length so that it
Speaker 1: looks like it's got longer arms than what a human
Speaker 1: would have. Um Now, there are people who who dispute
Speaker 1: that this story is in fact legitimate, and that you know,
Speaker 1: the people who are claiming this are doing so just
Speaker 1: to you know, pull a prank of their own saying
Speaker 1: that they're responsible for it. But most reputable sources that
Speaker 1: I could find have pretty much said, like, there there's
Speaker 1: no reason to believe this was a person in a suit.
Speaker 1: In fact, like stan Stan Winston, right, he's the special
Speaker 1: effects guy. Yeah, he he said, yeah, that was not
Speaker 1: even a very good suit. He said that would be
Speaker 1: maybe a few hundred dollars. Then when he was interviewed,
Speaker 1: he said that would be a few hundred dollars Today
Speaker 1: when it was made, it was probably less than a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which was a lot of money back in
Speaker 1: those days. But still it was something that was totally
Speaker 1: in the realm of possibility. But That's not the only
Speaker 1: giant Bigfoot story. There was one here in Georgia not
Speaker 1: too long ago. Oh I remember this BA claiming that
Speaker 1: I think they claimed they had a big yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was back in two thousand and eight. The Georgia Boys,
Speaker 1: as they are some types called Matt Whitten and Rick
Speaker 1: Dyer who had collaborated on a hoax with another guy
Speaker 1: named Carmine Biscardi who had uh he had been like
Speaker 1: a promoter in Vegas for a while, and the three
Speaker 1: of them together really pushed a story to national prominence.
Speaker 1: And now it turned out it was really big foot. No, no,
Speaker 1: sadly it was. It was an actual Bigfoot costume. In fact,
Speaker 1: there were people who found the catalog item Bigfoot costume.
Speaker 1: It was a very good bigfoot costume. You know. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like, you know, a super cheap party city guerrilla
Speaker 1: suit or anything, but it was still a bigfoot costume
Speaker 1: and it was one that could be identified as such. Uh,
Speaker 1: And yeah it was. It was revealed as a hoax.
Speaker 1: Um there. You know, they didn't make a huge amount
Speaker 1: of money. I believe mark Matt Whitten was had formerly
Speaker 1: been a sheriff deputy and no longer has that career
Speaker 1: as a result of this story. Um, Rake Dyer was
Speaker 1: like a used car salesman, and so this was like
Speaker 1: a rough story all around. I think Dyer actually went
Speaker 1: on to make another claim not too long ago that
Speaker 1: was a similar bigfoot claim, but kind I've got a
Speaker 1: frozen cheap acabra. Yeah, yeah, we he did not do
Speaker 1: that as far as I know. But um, at any rate,
Speaker 1: the Bigfoot evidence is really more of a story of
Speaker 1: a lack of evidence. Then again, any sort of definitive proof. Well,
Speaker 1: I noticed that's a common thread and a lot of
Speaker 1: these crypted searches is the story of the evidence turns
Speaker 1: out to be a story of weird or debunked evidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's either fabricated or mistaken identity, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean people have stopped believing. In fact,
Speaker 1: this is huge. You go out just Google searching, look
Speaker 1: on the internet for people talking about their Bigfoot sightings
Speaker 1: and and whether or not they believe in these lake monsters.
Speaker 1: It's all over the place. Well it's it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be going away at all. Now they took journeys
Speaker 1: words to heart. They didn't stop believing. Um, and so
Speaker 1: now I guess we should transition to talking about the
Speaker 1: role that technology plays in in people search for these monsters,
Speaker 1: and whether advances in technology can or ever will affect
Speaker 1: the way people believe in them, Like can can it
Speaker 1: just be having better technology will finally dispel all of
Speaker 1: these beliefs about big foot in the lake monsters. I
Speaker 1: think it will make it harder to justify a belief
Speaker 1: in these things, But I don't think it's ever going
Speaker 1: to eliminate the belief in these things. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like in some ways it could go both ways. So
Speaker 1: I think one of the first things we should talk about,
Speaker 1: since it came up in both of these examples, is
Speaker 1: camera technology. So here's the thing. Camera technology has advanced dramatically.
Speaker 1: I really mean dramatically, right, I mean it really has advanced.
Speaker 1: So you can get a consumer model, just a regular
Speaker 1: off the shelf point and click camera that's gonna have
Speaker 1: zoom features, image stabilization, low LFE photography. If you're talking
Speaker 1: about a professional model camera, you know, the kind that
Speaker 1: you're spending a few thousand dollars for, you get even
Speaker 1: more incredib double pictures, control options, all these sort of things,
Speaker 1: um stuff that you know back in the day would
Speaker 1: have been unheard of. And today you have the option
Speaker 1: of incredible fidelity and resolution with your photos. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that's not just still photography. You know, your your video
Speaker 1: cameras have gotten really high resolution. I mean you could
Speaker 1: get a two K or four K camera and use
Speaker 1: that in your monster hunting techniques. And thus, if you
Speaker 1: capture anything, you're not gonna have one of those murky photos,
Speaker 1: right right, Well, I mean the photos and videos of bigfoot, locknest,
Speaker 1: monster UFOs all that they're always I mean, it seems
Speaker 1: to me, always grainy, low rez blurred. It seems to
Speaker 1: me that not just as this professional stuff comes out,
Speaker 1: but as high quality photographic equipment is more widely disseminated
Speaker 1: among the population, you don't have to be a professional
Speaker 1: photographer to take high quality images. And you don't even
Speaker 1: have to plan ahead and take a camera with you.
Speaker 1: You probably have a very high quality camera in your phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a really good chance that you or someone with
Speaker 1: you does. It's so funny because you know, you think
Speaker 1: about back in the day, like think about when America's
Speaker 1: funniest home videos first came out, and you would ask
Speaker 1: yourself why the heck, would anyone be videotaping this particular
Speaker 1: moment that we're watching? How can this not be staged? Right?
Speaker 1: Because back then video cameras were not everywhere. You didn't
Speaker 1: have one on your phone just sitting in your pocket.
Speaker 1: So the fact that someone's actually video taping something usually
Speaker 1: meant that there was something there to be videotaped, and
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have done it just for no reason. Wow,
Speaker 1: how lucky that these guys had a video camera in
Speaker 1: the woods with them when they saw Bigfoot. Right now,
Speaker 1: these days, it would be very unusual to not have
Speaker 1: at least a few people with access to it. You're
Speaker 1: taking a big group out there, somebody's gotta you know,
Speaker 1: somebody's gonna be able to shoot this intin ADP. I mean, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: They'll be able to use the iPhone and put it
Speaker 1: in slow motion if they want, right, so you can
Speaker 1: see it in incredible detail with you know, two frames
Speaker 1: a second. And in the next generation, I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's going to go even further, like why didn't they
Speaker 1: get this in gigapixel? Uh no, see, I think at
Speaker 1: this point, when you've got this level of of fidelity already,
Speaker 1: the question you'd have to ask, is why is this
Speaker 1: so poor quality? Right? If it's if you're thinking everyone
Speaker 1: has access to something that's got at least like a
Speaker 1: six or eight megapixel camera in it, Yeah, not everyone,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's just common enough that it's going
Speaker 1: to be really frequent that if bigfoots walking around, he's
Speaker 1: frequently going to encounter people who have high quality video.
Speaker 1: Particularly if you're talking about people who are actively looking
Speaker 1: for these creatures, right, We're not just talking about the
Speaker 1: people who would happen upon it, although that's a big
Speaker 1: issue there too. Uh, We're talking about the folks who
Speaker 1: have made a career out of looking for these kind
Speaker 1: of creatures. They're obviously going to be relying upon technology
Speaker 1: that is going to have this level of detail, because
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they It would It would be suspicious if
Speaker 1: they did not. If you're telling me like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I only work into Gara type and I'd be
Speaker 1: thinking maybe maybe monster hunting isn't so legitimate. But if
Speaker 1: you're talking, I'm going to use this high speed, high
Speaker 1: resolution camera that works in low light levels so that
Speaker 1: I can have the best chance of getting a really
Speaker 1: good image of this thing that I believe exists, but
Speaker 1: we've never been able to capture it before. That makes
Speaker 1: more sense. Um, And so yeah, the fact that everyone
Speaker 1: has cameras, that that kind of suggests to me that
Speaker 1: since we don't see a huge number or at least
Speaker 1: a significant number of pictures and videos of these kind
Speaker 1: of creatures, it obviously you can't prove a negative, but
Speaker 1: it it certainly goes a long way to say, well,
Speaker 1: if there's not all this evidence, where are these critters? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing I would like to point out is the
Speaker 1: recent widespread dissemination of easy photo manipulation techniques. So if
Speaker 1: you wanted to doctor a photo or make it look
Speaker 1: like an alien or a monster or two picabra. Back
Speaker 1: in the day, this used to be a much more
Speaker 1: arcane and obscure art. People had their own, you know,
Speaker 1: photo manipulation techniques. A lot of times they'd involve these
Speaker 1: different kinds of art tools like ink and and paints
Speaker 1: and erasers and things like that. Now you've got ten
Speaker 1: million people who have abe photoshop, Yeah, and some significant
Speaker 1: amount of those people have enough skill to manipulate pretty
Speaker 1: much any photo to look like something really weird is
Speaker 1: going on in it. And one of the funny things
Speaker 1: about this is I think this actually should be reason
Speaker 1: for an increase in skepticism, even though you're gonna have
Speaker 1: probably even more were weird photos, you know, photo of
Speaker 1: a of a megalodon jumping over the Golden Gate Bridge,
Speaker 1: because you can see stuff like that on the Internet
Speaker 1: all the time. I think the net result is that
Speaker 1: people are more skeptical when they're looking at a photo. Now,
Speaker 1: I think video is still probably the the go to for,
Speaker 1: you know, people who are waiting to hoax others, because
Speaker 1: video is the perception is that video is much harder
Speaker 1: to fake than photographs. I guess it probably is harder.
Speaker 1: It definitely takes. It definitely takes a set of skills
Speaker 1: that is beyond the average person. Right at least it's
Speaker 1: more work. Yeah, it's a lot more work, and uh
Speaker 1: and to make it convincing, it requires skills that most
Speaker 1: people just aren't familiar with. Of course, then again, for
Speaker 1: reasons of just data storage and and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: video is often lower resolution than still photographs, So maybe
Speaker 1: you could more easily fudge something on a video because
Speaker 1: the photo, the still photo you'd be expecting, should be
Speaker 1: high res solution and you can take a kind of
Speaker 1: grainy image these days and get away with it. Well maybe,
Speaker 1: but I mean there are more and more high quality
Speaker 1: video cameras being included with things like smartphones easies too,
Speaker 1: like to the point where seeing, uh, seeing a camera
Speaker 1: that's capable of capturing images like video in two K
Speaker 1: is not that far off. So if you take a
Speaker 1: video with my phone, I mean, there's probably gonna be
Speaker 1: a mothman. And yeah, that's that's fair. My phone the
Speaker 1: camera quality has degraded over time, and in fact, it
Speaker 1: would get to a point now where if I took
Speaker 1: a photo of a child's birthday party, you'd be pretty
Speaker 1: sure it would be a bunch of sasquatches getting a
Speaker 1: gathering around a bonfire or something. So yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: but but I think, you know, there are also people
Speaker 1: who are good at doing digital effects and and doing
Speaker 1: them in a way that's subtle enough where it's not
Speaker 1: easy to just pick out. And we're seeing that with
Speaker 1: things like like viral marketing campaigns, to where it's you know,
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of it wasn't to fool people that's necessarily,
Speaker 1: or at least not indefinitely into believing that this creature exists,
Speaker 1: but was rather a promotional thing for something else. We've
Speaker 1: seen that happen a few times. So yeah, well, while
Speaker 1: photos and videos can be faked, it does require a
Speaker 1: lot of work. And I think we're starting to see
Speaker 1: a little more skepticism in the general public. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're always going to be people who react very quickly
Speaker 1: to something that's presented as real. Like if you present
Speaker 1: something as real on Facebook, there's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of reaction until someone finally says, hey, wait, let's slow
Speaker 1: down and apply some critical thinking here. But um, I
Speaker 1: don't I give the fact that we don't see tons
Speaker 1: of this stuff is more of again evidence against their
Speaker 1: them existing. Yeah, I mean face value is more highly
Speaker 1: valued than we might expect. So how about sonar. That's
Speaker 1: another one, because Yeah, you said a minute ago that
Speaker 1: you can't prove a negative. I guess that's true in
Speaker 1: a certain way if if you make uh, you know,
Speaker 1: exceptions for well, maybe the monster is invisible and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But barring that kind of thing, you sort
Speaker 1: of can prove a negative if you can exhaustively look
Speaker 1: for something in the only place you would expect to
Speaker 1: find it, and it's something that you should see if
Speaker 1: you look. So. In other words, you're saying that if
Speaker 1: you were to take a confined area like a lake, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you were to apply sonar a very a very
Speaker 1: thorough sonar survey of this lake, and you were not
Speaker 1: to find any evidence of monsters in that lake, then
Speaker 1: you could pretty firmly say this monster doesn't exist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's about as close to proof as you
Speaker 1: could want. Yeah, unless you have people immediately claim that
Speaker 1: the lake has got underground caves connected to it that
Speaker 1: the monster lives in, which, by the way, is again
Speaker 1: one of the things you hear about luckness and didn't
Speaker 1: many times somebody sonar scanned it and they said there's
Speaker 1: nothing there there. Well, there are multiple sonar scans that
Speaker 1: have happened of the lake, and some of them came
Speaker 1: back with stuff that was inconclusive, like they saw large
Speaker 1: shapes under the water and said, well, this might be debris,
Speaker 1: it might be an organism, it might be a school
Speaker 1: of fish. The point was it was always inconclusive, and
Speaker 1: in fact, telling the difference between a school of fish
Speaker 1: and a large creature it can be a little tricky
Speaker 1: depending upon the resolution of the technology you're using so
Speaker 1: as technology improved over time, we saw multiple scans of
Speaker 1: the lake happen over and over again. Um, some of
Speaker 1: which were used as proof that there was a monster there,
Speaker 1: some of which was said, no, there's no monster there.
Speaker 1: The most recent one was done in two thousand three
Speaker 1: and it was sponsored by the BBC, and I think
Speaker 1: the BBC would definitely prefer there to have been a monster.
Speaker 1: But the conclusion they came up with was that there
Speaker 1: was no monster in Locked nest They did a high
Speaker 1: resolution scan of the lake and didn't find anything mysterious
Speaker 1: or inexplicable. And they they said they essentially scoured the
Speaker 1: lake from one end to the other and did the
Speaker 1: effect of a full net across the entire lake. I'm
Speaker 1: sure the local tourism board was not happy with them. Now, well, then,
Speaker 1: the Nesti tourism has taken a bit of a hit
Speaker 1: over the last few couple of decades. Maybe uh hit
Speaker 1: a hit, kind of a high note sometime in the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties and then has been declining ever since.
Speaker 1: They still, you know, have people come out there and
Speaker 1: I mean the lake is still lovely, but it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily a monster haven. Um, what about the way technology
Speaker 1: enables sort of a bird's eye view of the Earth,
Speaker 1: So satellite imagery, yeah, and you know, like aerial photography. Sure. Um, again,
Speaker 1: we've got examples where people have said, look, there's nothing
Speaker 1: here to to support a claim of a crypted living
Speaker 1: in this area. Then we have others that, you know,
Speaker 1: people have said anything that was remotely out of the
Speaker 1: ordinary was evidence that the crypted lived there. So for
Speaker 1: one thing, a lot of satellites don't have the resolution
Speaker 1: to get down to a level where you'd be able
Speaker 1: to look at individual creatures. Yeah. I did wonder if
Speaker 1: this might apply to like the people who believe, for example,
Speaker 1: that I think there's a belief that there's a dinosaur
Speaker 1: living in the Congo. It's like a really large organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you'd expect to see that. At least one of
Speaker 1: those was very obvious hoax. The images were terrible, but
Speaker 1: I can't remember. It was something rex was what they
Speaker 1: called it. But that was just one of those examples.
Speaker 1: There have been multiple legends of that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's not been any evidence of that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Some people would just say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: satellite images are made over time, right, it's not like
Speaker 1: it's a constant surveillance of the entire earth. You get
Speaker 1: images that are made as the satellite passes over the areas,
Speaker 1: and then what you end up with the maps is
Speaker 1: a composite of all of these different images that are
Speaker 1: kind of stitched together. So it could just be that
Speaker 1: you're taking pictures everywhere where the dinosaur isn't. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a decent point. Yeah, it's also very convenient, but you
Speaker 1: know that's possible. And then one of the things I
Speaker 1: think would be interesting is if monster hunters start using
Speaker 1: things like drones um with cameras on them. Well, because
Speaker 1: you think, like, if your argument is that the monster
Speaker 1: lives in some area that is difficult for people to access,
Speaker 1: using something like a drone in order to get to
Speaker 1: areas that you normally would have a lot of difficulty
Speaker 1: getting to makes a lot of sense. You take away
Speaker 1: the risk factor of a human being putting themselves in
Speaker 1: a situation that could end an injury or death. Um,
Speaker 1: you know you can get a high view of everything.
Speaker 1: Drones probably freak out a lot of critters, but you
Speaker 1: know you'd still be able to get a high level
Speaker 1: view of whatever area you're looking at You know, it
Speaker 1: does seem to be a view very often among the
Speaker 1: monster enthusiasts, and I don't mean the fictional monster enthusiasts
Speaker 1: like us, but the people who really believe in these
Speaker 1: cryptids that I don't know, they're just not usually where
Speaker 1: people are, you know, It's just you're not likely to
Speaker 1: run across them. For some reason that's there. I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's just something about them. Maybe maybe having people there
Speaker 1: with cameras drive them away. I think that. I think.
Speaker 1: I think people who exist drive away the things that
Speaker 1: don't exist. I think that's where the problem relies. But
Speaker 1: that's that's my own personal opinion. Yeah. Well, one answer
Speaker 1: to that kind of belief might be the kind of
Speaker 1: automated visual cataloging of the world that's now going on
Speaker 1: because of things like Google Earth and Google Maps. Are
Speaker 1: you about to tell me that they found bigfoot on
Speaker 1: street view? You're just zooming down Oxford Street and there, Hey,
Speaker 1: look it's big foot. Uh that. There have been all
Speaker 1: kinds of claims, And I think that it's interesting that
Speaker 1: this is going both ways. On one hand, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're taking all of these automated photos of
Speaker 1: places where nobody's there to look, so you know, if
Speaker 1: Bigfoot's hanging around, we should see him pop up sometime
Speaker 1: and then people come out and say, yeah, there he is.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that anyway. There was one story, uh,
Speaker 1: The UK Independent reported on November one that there was
Speaker 1: a YouTube video. Seriously, This was an article drawing attention
Speaker 1: to a YouTube video high journalism right here right that
Speaker 1: had been posted a few days before. A user called
Speaker 1: Wow for real has three ees for real that sounds
Speaker 1: pronounced real posted a video showing Google street view for
Speaker 1: this deserted section of highway in British Columbia that's in
Speaker 1: western Canada, and the highway was running through a forest
Speaker 1: and on one side of the road in one particular
Speaker 1: frame of street view, there appears to be a vaguely
Speaker 1: humanoid shape loping through the brush. Obviously, there he is,
Speaker 1: and what else could it be? John John Lithgal's right
Speaker 1: next to him. They're re enacting Harry and the Henderson's.
Speaker 1: To me, it looks like a shadow some kind, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's a particular angle on a tree stump. Could
Speaker 1: have also been like a bear, you know, like there
Speaker 1: are bears in Getada. By the way, to me, it's
Speaker 1: it's of the quality that it's more likely a shadow
Speaker 1: than a bear to me. And yeah, so so the
Speaker 1: level of quality goes let me get this straight. For
Speaker 1: big Foot believers, level of quality goes bear shadow big Foot.
Speaker 1: That's just my my opinion. Lots of people are looking
Speaker 1: at like, yeah, obviously there he is anyway right the
Speaker 1: YouTube video now, at the time, I had like thirty
Speaker 1: thousand views, uh, from when I read this article from
Speaker 1: the Independent. The Mirror also quote reported it. Now it
Speaker 1: has two hundred and twenty thousand views. There was another
Speaker 1: one actually where Nessie showed up on Apple Maps. Okay,
Speaker 1: was she in lockness Oh yeah, okay, well that was
Speaker 1: a big that was a big if. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: Apple Maps apparently showed an aerial photo of lock Nest
Speaker 1: that had this large, dark, almost catfish like shape appearing
Speaker 1: in the water, uh, producing wake on either side. The
Speaker 1: waves were coming out, so moving through the water is
Speaker 1: obviously not just stationary and moving along the surface. It
Speaker 1: looked like too bad, it was just a boat. Well
Speaker 1: it looks What it looks like is that it looks
Speaker 1: like a boat where the boat has been removed and
Speaker 1: there's like this boat wake. But I've seen it compared
Speaker 1: to other photos of large boats and lock nest producing wake,
Speaker 1: and the wakes exactly the same. So it might just
Speaker 1: be an angle where you can't see the boat very well.
Speaker 1: So so too bad. It was just a boat, and
Speaker 1: too bad somebody was using Apple Maps. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: your problem, right, there is a problem. I don't know
Speaker 1: how many millions of people use that, But here we
Speaker 1: have a series of vaudevillian musings on lock Ness in
Speaker 1: the Apple Maps. Uh so you hear. The Longness Monster
Speaker 1: recently appeared on apple Maps. It took people a while
Speaker 1: to catch on because it was labeled as the Jersey Devil.
Speaker 1: But when apple Maps caught a glimpse of the Longness Monster,
Speaker 1: many excited monster hunters rushed to the scene. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: ones who used Apple Maps navigation ended up on the
Speaker 1: runway at the Glasgow Airport. That's another good one. Now
Speaker 1: here's why the Longness Monster was in fact identified by
Speaker 1: Apple Maps in Lake Champlain. Or try asking Syria about
Speaker 1: where you can find the Longness Monster. You'll be surprised,
Speaker 1: and so will I. Because I don't have an iPhone,
Speaker 1: I don't know what would happen. I could try with Google.
Speaker 1: I've got I've got a Google phone right here if
Speaker 1: you want to find out what happens if I ask Google,
Speaker 1: what I think where I can find loss has not
Speaker 1: appeared on Google Earth as far as I am. But
Speaker 1: so anyway, that that looked like it was just a boat.
Speaker 1: So it's weird. It seems like, on one hand, if
Speaker 1: we're getting a better and better view of more and
Speaker 1: more parts of the world, it should be sort of
Speaker 1: like opening the door into a dark room and eliminating
Speaker 1: the shadows. I mean, shouldn't it like that, You're you're
Speaker 1: letting the light in, You're looking in more and more places,
Speaker 1: You're eliminating the places where these monsters could hide. But
Speaker 1: it just doesn't seem to be working. I mean, these
Speaker 1: examples we just showed, it seems like it's only opening
Speaker 1: up more and more avenues for people to find evidence
Speaker 1: of these monsters. And that sort of brings us to
Speaker 1: the question of why we hunt monsters. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't believe in any of these monsters, but I do
Speaker 1: love this stuff. It's lots of fun. Going back to
Speaker 1: the X Files, I think it all hinges on that
Speaker 1: famous poster above Moulder's desk. I want to believe because
Speaker 1: it gives you this feeling like there's something magical or
Speaker 1: unknown out there and and the possibility of that is
Speaker 1: very enticing. Um And I totally get that. I mean,
Speaker 1: as a kid, like I said, I was fascinated by
Speaker 1: the same reason I was fascinated by dinosaurs. The idea
Speaker 1: of these enormous creatures that had far more power than say,
Speaker 1: the evil parents who would make me go to bed
Speaker 1: at a reasonable hour did. And so there were there
Speaker 1: were these creatures that once were more powerful than my parents.
Speaker 1: I wanted to believe, and in fact that one, you know,
Speaker 1: we have evidence for it's actually those were real creatures,
Speaker 1: but to think that such a thing could still exist
Speaker 1: was very enticing. Um And I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that that's still around, this idea that it is
Speaker 1: kind of a more magical place with these creatures in existence.
Speaker 1: I would counter that, however, by saying that we're using
Speaker 1: this amazing technology, these these scientific approaches processes to learn
Speaker 1: more about our earth and the place is phenomenal, Like
Speaker 1: we're learning so much incredible stuff. We're encountering uh species
Speaker 1: that we had never seen before that are are amazing,
Speaker 1: legitimately amazing creatures. They are not the mystical monsters of lore,
Speaker 1: and maybe some people look on them as being less
Speaker 1: interesting for that reason, but to me, they are just
Speaker 1: as fascinating as the creatures that inhabit folk tales from
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of years ago. But I think that
Speaker 1: we're always going to have this kind of curiosity and
Speaker 1: this desire for things that have yet to be discovered
Speaker 1: to be out there, because we do like to discover things.
Speaker 1: We're curious people. Well, of course there's a lot that
Speaker 1: is out there to discover, and a lot of it's
Speaker 1: really weird. Yeah, yeah, I mean, like the real world
Speaker 1: is weird. If I think it's about as weird as Bigfoot.
Speaker 1: Finding organisms that can survive in uh, in incredibly toxic
Speaker 1: environments for humans, like you know, at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean, near a crack in the earth where you're kidding,
Speaker 1: these incredibly hot jets of water coming out, and there
Speaker 1: are creatures that can live in the chemicals of that.
Speaker 1: That's phenomenal. Like that is something that if you told
Speaker 1: me as a kid, I would have thought that's a
Speaker 1: science its fiction story that couldn't be possible. That couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly be true about the tartar grades that can survive
Speaker 1: all kinds of radiation and live in empty space. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean again, really amazing stuff. And you know, some
Speaker 1: of the cryptids that are on the big long list
Speaker 1: are things like, uh, types of dogs or cats, type
Speaker 1: types of canines or feelines that haven't been um found
Speaker 1: so that you know they're they've they've been talked about
Speaker 1: in in stories or whatever, but there's never been any
Speaker 1: direct evidence for them. It may turn out that there's
Speaker 1: some parts of the world where we come across some
Speaker 1: of some creatures of a significant size that we haven't
Speaker 1: encountered before, at least haven't classified before. Uh, that's the possibility.
Speaker 1: It's it's you know, of course, it gets less likely
Speaker 1: the more of the Earth we we explore, we find
Speaker 1: more and more of those, and the number of of
Speaker 1: undiscovered creatures decreases over time. You know, I think the
Speaker 1: undiscovered dog variant that we're going to find is Marmaduke.
Speaker 1: You think is it mar Marmaduke weather All, because I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure he passed away, But oh, you mean the
Speaker 1: the enormous Well, if he looks exactly like the cartoon,
Speaker 1: he will be lovable. Uh. Yeah, so this was a
Speaker 1: fun thing to to kind of talk about just this
Speaker 1: the science and technology behind monster hunting and the psychology
Speaker 1: behind monster hunting. I'm glad that we were able to
Speaker 1: look into this and and to tie it into our
Speaker 1: other October slash Halloween type episodes. And this is not
Speaker 1: the end, folks. We're gonna have another Halloween episode. Uh
Speaker 1: in the you know, to to round out the experience,
Speaker 1: We're gonna be looking at a famous fictional monster and
Speaker 1: asking whether or not such a fictional monster could ever
Speaker 1: become a real creature, but one might wander through a
Speaker 1: Frankenstein creation of science. Yeah, not to not to totally
Speaker 1: give away what the monster is, Okay, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: it's critters. Um no, No, We're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: Frankenstein in a new in an upcoming episode, so keep
Speaker 1: your ears out for that one. And guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for episodes for forward thinking, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get away from the monster topic because now
Speaker 1: that Halloween is gonna pass by, we're going to look
Speaker 1: at other issues. But there's ever anything you're interested in
Speaker 1: hearing more about, right us. Let us know we've got
Speaker 1: plans for another really fun, wacky episode in the very
Speaker 1: near future that I think you guys are gonna dig.
Speaker 1: But anything like if from fusion power to nanotechnology, anything
Speaker 1: that interests you about the future, let us know. Send
Speaker 1: us an email that addresses f W Thinking at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Twitter,
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Speaker 1: and Facebook and we'll pop right up and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
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