Speaker 1: School of humans.
Speaker 2: Came from over there, due west towards those woods, following
Speaker 2: you Slick. Tom Slick, February fourteenth, nineteen fifty eight. My
Speaker 2: team and I have been out here in the Himalayas
Speaker 2: for months, rarely surviving on an expedition that's nearly hijack
Speaker 2: my life. Hell, it's taken everything, but we just heard it.
Speaker 3: The proof.
Speaker 2: To track the Ltty is an expedition of life and death,
Speaker 2: mister Slick.
Speaker 4: It's some mystery that does not want to be sogged.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm here.
Speaker 5: That's second something to the explode.
Speaker 2: Slick cut the brown wire. What if I told you
Speaker 2: I just cut the red one. We're gonna die Dulles
Speaker 2: when chance arrives at at.
Speaker 1: God, But blood pressure checked after that.
Speaker 4: Mom, you don't have to listen to this.
Speaker 6: If it's too much. These are my father's untold stories.
Speaker 1: I am listening.
Speaker 2: This is the mostly true tale of Tom Slick, the
Speaker 2: most interesting man you've never heard of.
Speaker 4: Welcome to chapter eight. Fact verse fiction. The director John
Speaker 4: Ford is credited with saying, when the legend becomes fact
Speaker 4: print the legend. This podcast follows the remarkable exploits of
Speaker 4: a real man who lived a legendary life. In this
Speaker 4: bonus episode, we'll separate the facts from fiction. I'm Caroline Slaughter,
Speaker 4: the writer and director of Tom Slick Mystery Hunter. I
Speaker 4: spoke with Tom Slick's descendants and those who are carrying
Speaker 4: on his legacy to reveal the real Tom Slick. Thomas
Speaker 4: Slick Junior was born in Clarion, Pennsylvania, on May sixth,
Speaker 4: nineteen sixteen. As depicted in the podcast. His father, Tom
Speaker 4: Slick Senior, was known as the King of the Wildcatters
Speaker 4: due to the large fortune he made mining the fields
Speaker 4: of Oklahoma for oil before his death in nineteen thirty
Speaker 4: at only forty six years old. Tom inherited millions after
Speaker 4: his father's death and used that inheritance to fund institutes
Speaker 4: dedicated to cutting edge scientific research, some of which still
Speaker 4: exist today. Slick also funded multiple expeditions to track down
Speaker 4: the Eddy. We'll get into all of that and more,
Speaker 4: but first things first. Did Tom Slick leave behind lost
Speaker 4: tapes documenting his exploits.
Speaker 6: There were no tapes in the archive. I found, just
Speaker 6: wonderful letters.
Speaker 4: This is Tom Slick Junior, historian and his niece Catherine
Speaker 4: Nixon Cook.
Speaker 6: I discovered in a shed in one of his scientific institutes.
Speaker 6: All of his letters written between nineteen forty one and
Speaker 6: nineteen sixty two, the year that he died.
Speaker 4: These letters served as research for the two biographies Catherine
Speaker 4: wrote about her uncle, including one titled Tom Slick Mystery Hunter.
Speaker 4: But unlike our podcast series, her books are composed of
Speaker 4: only facts.
Speaker 6: These letters of Tom Slick were deep. They talked about feelings,
Speaker 6: they talked about new ideas. They were a real treasure trove.
Speaker 6: There were stories of breeding the Brangus cattle. There were
Speaker 6: stories about the Yetti. There were stories about corresponding with
Speaker 6: Albert Schweitzer about birth control. He invented a hair dryer
Speaker 6: that we now would think of as a hooded hair dryer.
Speaker 6: He started an Institute for peace. Just really too many.
Speaker 4: To me, Catherine's right. Our podcast series covers only a
Speaker 4: portion of Tom Slick's unique and ambitious pursuits, and some
Speaker 4: of those escapades, as you'll find out in this episode,
Speaker 4: are largely dramatized, but they are based on truth. Though
Speaker 4: Tom Slick played many roles in his life as an explorer, inventor,
Speaker 4: and pioneer of science, the role he revered the most
Speaker 4: was being a father.
Speaker 1: My brother, tom, My, sister Patty, and I would spend
Speaker 1: the entire summer with Dad in San Antonio. Our times
Speaker 1: with him were really fun.
Speaker 4: That's Tom Slick Junior's youngest son, Charles urschel Slick, known
Speaker 4: to friends and family as Chuck. In the podcast, Tom
Speaker 4: Slick's story is told true tapes found by his supposed
Speaker 4: descendants Live and Claire Slick. Both are fictional characters I
Speaker 4: created for the podcast, but Chuck and his two siblings
Speaker 4: had first hand experience with Tom's as a devoted and
Speaker 4: engaged father.
Speaker 1: He was a really fun person and that, along with
Speaker 1: his interests in his enthusiasm for whatever his projects were,
Speaker 1: the fun part brought people along with him, even people
Speaker 1: who would have said, you know, oh my gosh, the yetie,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, but his enthusiasm was infectious.
Speaker 4: Chuck was four or five when his parents divorced. His
Speaker 4: mother moved them from San Antonio to New Jersey, but
Speaker 4: his father remained very involved in his children's lives.
Speaker 1: He took us traveling to a lot of places. We
Speaker 1: went to Bermuda, we went to Nassau, we went to Acapulco, Disneyland.
Speaker 1: But we didn't always go in the normal fashion. One
Speaker 1: time when we were driving to the Grand Canyon, he
Speaker 1: bought Volkswagen bus from his step brother Charles Erschel, but
Speaker 1: it didn't have air conditioning because it's nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 1: or nine. But that didn't slow him down. He got
Speaker 1: some of the engineers from Southwest Research Institute, one of
Speaker 1: his institutions, to come to his house and put a
Speaker 1: room air conditioner on the roof and pipe it into
Speaker 1: the bus, and we were just as cool as we
Speaker 1: could be.
Speaker 4: It seems like he had a childlike spirit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he did. He was very interested in just all
Speaker 1: sorts of things. His mind was kind of wide open
Speaker 1: and very optimistic. He sort of thought, well, anything can happen.
Speaker 1: He thought nothing was impossible.
Speaker 4: It was this spirit that motivated his ambitious pursuits and
Speaker 4: just one of the many truths Slick bestowed on his children.
Speaker 1: He was big on aphorisms. Whenever we would complain about something,
Speaker 1: which was often, he would say, you have to be adaptable,
Speaker 1: or you'll become extinct like the dinosaurs. And when we
Speaker 1: were scared to do something like dive off the diving board,
Speaker 1: he would say, a coward dies a thousand deaths, A
Speaker 1: brave man only one.
Speaker 4: You may recognize this aphorism from episode four, when Owen
Speaker 4: Wilson's Slick tells the character Bud about his drive to
Speaker 4: find the Eddy. According to Chuck, it was an adage
Speaker 4: instilled in his father and childhood.
Speaker 1: The story was that they were out in the woods
Speaker 1: and there was some like a log bridge that you
Speaker 1: had to cross to get over the creek, and he
Speaker 1: was scared to do it, and either his father or
Speaker 1: his grandfather said that to him, a coward dies a
Speaker 1: thousand deaths, a brave man only one. And of course
Speaker 1: later on in his life, with all the things that
Speaker 1: he did, including in places like Brazil and the Amazon
Speaker 1: and the Himalayas, it certainly he took it to heart.
Speaker 4: This was one of the many things young Tom garnered
Speaker 4: from a pivotal figure in his life. Catherine Nixon Cook explains.
Speaker 6: Tom Slick was greatly influenced by his dad and did
Speaker 6: inherit that spirit of adventure and curiosity.
Speaker 4: While in the podcast we depict Slick Junior as having
Speaker 4: a competitive urge to escape living under the shadow of
Speaker 4: his father, that was an embellishment I set up to
Speaker 4: motivate him. According to Catherine, Tom respected and adored his father,
Speaker 4: and even though that contentious dynamic is dramatized in the series,
Speaker 4: there was a truth Slick Junior touched on in his
Speaker 4: speech to Bud that his father's fascinations inspired his own.
Speaker 6: Tom Slick Senior was away a lot looking for oil,
Speaker 6: but when he was home he was very tender, and
Speaker 6: his three children adored him. He read them stories. I
Speaker 6: love to talk about the Man of snow Lome Denege
Speaker 6: in the mountains, which started Tom's curiosity about the snow man,
Speaker 6: which would become the Yeti.
Speaker 4: So Slick Junior did, in fact, first hear about the
Speaker 4: Yeti from his father, a cryptozoological mystery that he would
Speaker 4: later pursue on multiple expeditions to the Himalayas. But this
Speaker 4: was just one of the influences his father had on him.
Speaker 4: The stories about Tom Slick Senior from episode one are
Speaker 4: largely true. I'll fill you in on that and more
Speaker 4: after the break.
Speaker 7: My father used to tell me a coward dies a
Speaker 7: thousand discs, brave man only one, and he lived by
Speaker 7: that motto, which made him a legend.
Speaker 4: Millie Kerr is an historian of Tom Slick Sor. She's
Speaker 4: also his great great niece, making her Tom Slick Junior's
Speaker 4: great niece. Millie says Tom Slick Sr. Was indeed the
Speaker 4: first lucky Tom Slick.
Speaker 3: What I love about Tom Slick Sr. Was that he
Speaker 3: really did make his own luck. His brother and father
Speaker 3: worked in the oil industry, but in sort of low
Speaker 3: level positions, and he was just determined to make it
Speaker 3: in this field. So he moved around a bit, and
Speaker 3: then he moved down to Oklahoma to find the big one,
Speaker 3: as he put it. And at that point he had
Speaker 3: actually been very unlucky, and he had earned the nickname
Speaker 3: dry hole Slick because everywhere he drilled it came up dry.
Speaker 3: But then he happened to discover the Cushing oil field,
Speaker 3: which was one of the most important and large oil
Speaker 3: fields in the US, and he essentially became an overnight millionaire.
Speaker 4: When Tom Slick Senior died, his estate was valued at
Speaker 4: somewhere between seventy five and one hundred million dollars in
Speaker 4: today's terms, that's between six hundred and fifty nine million
Speaker 4: and one point eight billion. He was reputed to be
Speaker 4: the wealthiest independent oil man in the world.
Speaker 3: And he ultimately became extremely successful. After a period of
Speaker 3: very bad luck, where a lot of people would have
Speaker 3: just thrown in the towel and said this is not working.
Speaker 3: But he was just determined to push on and find
Speaker 3: that big one. So his legacy was vast, and he
Speaker 3: really was a true wildcatter in that he was operating
Speaker 3: on his own and looking for his own luck and
Speaker 3: making it.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, Slick Senior died young, at only forty six years old.
Speaker 4: Tom Slick Junior was just fourteen at the time. Losing
Speaker 4: your father is hard enough, but there were other consequences
Speaker 4: of his death on the Slick family too.
Speaker 3: Tom Slick sor hated publicity, hated the press, only gave
Speaker 3: one interview, I believe in his entire career, and part
Speaker 3: of that was his concern about how his wealth and
Speaker 3: or his children's wealth might impact the family in the future.
Speaker 3: But when he died, he couldn't control the fact that
Speaker 3: his death was widely reported in the papers, and a
Speaker 3: lot of those articles referenced his net worth. And then
Speaker 3: several years later, when his widow, Bernice, married Charles Erschel,
Speaker 3: they tried to keep their wedding completely private, but it
Speaker 3: got picked up in the press and so the public
Speaker 3: and criminals like machine Gun Kelly discovered the immense wealth
Speaker 3: of this family, and that made the surviving family members
Speaker 3: really vulnerable because at the time, kidnapping became sort of
Speaker 3: the new trend in criminal activity. After the end of Prohibition.
Speaker 3: Criminals who had been bootlegging were trying to figure out
Speaker 3: new ways to make money, and so they began kidnapping
Speaker 3: wealthy individuals for ransom, and Machine Gun Kelly and his
Speaker 3: wife Catherine decided to kidnap a family member.
Speaker 4: That's right, machine Gun Kelly, not the rapper, but the
Speaker 4: infamous bank robber, really did kidnaps like junior stepfather Charles Erschel.
Speaker 4: According to Millie, that target was originally supposed to be
Speaker 4: Tom's sister Betty.
Speaker 3: Apparently they thought for quite a while about kidnapping my grandmother,
Speaker 3: who I believe was about fifteen at the time, But
Speaker 3: in the end, when machine Gun Kelly and his accomplice
Speaker 3: came to the family home in Oklahoma City, they took
Speaker 3: my step great grandfather Charles Erschel, and this ended up
Speaker 3: being one of the most highly publicized notable kidnappings in
Speaker 3: American history.
Speaker 4: In episode two, Tom Slick Junior figures out from a
Speaker 4: ransom note where Charles Erschel is being held hostage, but
Speaker 4: that didn't really happen. First of all, at the times,
Speaker 4: like Junior was in boarding school at Exeter, so he
Speaker 4: didn't face off with machine Gun Kelly as I depicted
Speaker 4: in the podcast. And second of all, my.
Speaker 3: Great grandmother Bernice paid the ransom, and at that time
Speaker 3: it was the highest kidnapping ransom that had ever been paid,
Speaker 3: and because of that, Charles Erschel was released by the crimine.
Speaker 4: But there is a really remarkable element of this story
Speaker 4: that is true. While kidnapped, Charles Erschuel did keep track
Speaker 4: of the plane routes, and after he was released, Ursul
Speaker 4: provided that and other information to authorities in order to
Speaker 4: help track down Machine Gun Kelly's location.
Speaker 3: While he was held hostage, he noted everything he could,
Speaker 3: including the times of the day when planes would fly overhead.
Speaker 3: He just used his bodyclock to estimate what time that was.
Speaker 3: He also worked out where approximately the kidnappers had taken him,
Speaker 3: just based on things like sounds and smells and how
Speaker 3: long they'd been on one road before they turned and
Speaker 3: he essentially gave this investigation over to j Edgar Hoover
Speaker 3: on a silver platter.
Speaker 4: In the podcast, this occurs in the late thirties, not
Speaker 4: long before World War Two, but Charles Ersul's kidnapping actually
Speaker 4: happened earlier, in nineteen thirty three. After the Lindberg ab
Speaker 4: kidnapping in nineteen thirty two, which was a case the
Speaker 4: FBI flubbed, President Herbert Hoover needed a win, so he
Speaker 4: was determined to track down Machine Gun Kelly and his accomplices, which,
Speaker 4: with Charles Urschel's help, he did.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 4: It was Ursul, not Tom Slick, who was by their
Speaker 4: side when the FBI rated Machine Gun Kelly's farm Don't
Speaker 4: You gam It, Don't You, and after a highly publicized trial,
Speaker 4: Kelly was imprisoned in Alcatraz. For the show, we moved
Speaker 4: the kidnapping back a couple of years so that our
Speaker 4: hero Tom Slick would be old enough to assist the
Speaker 4: FBI in tracking down his stepfather. This also works so
Speaker 4: that his Road to Damascus moment would land right before
Speaker 4: World War Two, when Alan Dulles, who at the time
Speaker 4: was an OSS secret agent, could theoretically recruit Slick for
Speaker 4: a more substantial mission.
Speaker 6: But in real life, Allan dllis is an interesting character
Speaker 6: to place in the podcast, but the relationship is fictional.
Speaker 6: He was old enough to be Tom's father, and he
Speaker 6: went to Princeton.
Speaker 4: Tom Slick went to Yale, which, as Catherine points out.
Speaker 6: Yale was a big recruiting ground, first for the OSS
Speaker 6: and then for the CIA. So that connection, that link,
Speaker 6: that possibility is in the true Tom Slick story.
Speaker 4: So most of you probably know about Yale's notorious secret
Speaker 4: society Skull and Bones, which was prime recruitment for the OSS,
Speaker 4: which became the CIA, and there is an air of
Speaker 4: mystery about Tom Slick's potential involvement with the society when
Speaker 4: he went to school there. So while we don't know
Speaker 4: that Dulles and Tom Slick ever knew each other, the
Speaker 4: idea that our hero might have cross paths with the
Speaker 4: longest serving director of the CIA could have happened later.
Speaker 4: As the threat of World War II loomed. In nineteen
Speaker 4: forty one, Tom Slick did volunteer for naval duty, but
Speaker 4: was disqualified due to poor eyesight. So, as was depicted
Speaker 4: in the podcast, Tom Slick was sent to Santiago, Chili
Speaker 4: by the War Production Board.
Speaker 6: When Tom Slick was working as a dollar a year
Speaker 6: man at the beginning of World War Two, he was
Speaker 6: mysteriously posted to South America.
Speaker 4: At the time, a Nazi spirring was operating in Chile,
Speaker 4: and there was in fact a German mission to bomb
Speaker 4: the Panama Canal called Operation Pelican. When I found out
Speaker 4: that Tom Slick was in Chile at the same time
Speaker 4: that this operation was underway, I connected the two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just pulled up declassified files released in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: They're all about a Nazi spiring headquartered in Chile. Nazi
Speaker 3: spiring headquartered in Chili, and Dad was there, yep.
Speaker 4: But as far as we know, Tom Slick had no
Speaker 4: involvement in sabotaging the Nazis diabolical plan. That said, government
Speaker 4: files about Nazi activity in South America during World War
Speaker 4: II are now being to classify, so who knows what
Speaker 4: might turn up about Tom Slick Junior.
Speaker 6: There were rumors within the family and with close friends
Speaker 6: who knew him, that perhaps Tom Slick was involved in
Speaker 6: espionage during the war.
Speaker 4: In the podcast in Awestruck, Claire played by Sissy Spask,
Speaker 4: finally remembers her father laughing off these accusations.
Speaker 6: I was always a rumored that he was some sort
Speaker 6: of secret agent, but he just laugh at all.
Speaker 8: Well, now you know.
Speaker 6: And indeed his reaction was to just laugh it off,
Speaker 6: and none of us ever really knew the truth.
Speaker 4: Along with this fact, there is another one I wove
Speaker 4: into episode two in.
Speaker 6: The Panama Canal Caper, Tom says, when chance arrives act
Speaker 6: that's a very Tom Slick saying something his father taught
Speaker 6: him when he was a little boy, and certainly he
Speaker 6: would have said it over and over again to whomever
Speaker 6: he was working with in South America Dallas.
Speaker 7: Chance arrived at.
Speaker 4: Tom Slick's fortitude is what led me to connect him
Speaker 4: to another clandestine mission. His assistance in helping the mysterious
Speaker 4: and mystical Lama X escape Tibet.
Speaker 6: We all could guess that Lama X is loosely based
Speaker 6: on the Dali Lama. There are very interesting stories about
Speaker 6: how the Dalai Lama was rescued from Tibet. When the
Speaker 6: Chinese were moving in in nineteen I want to say
Speaker 6: nineteen fifty seven, might have been nineteen fifty eight. It
Speaker 6: was the same time that Tom Slick was on expedition in.
Speaker 4: Nepal, one of his Yetti Hunt expeditions.
Speaker 6: So there were always very remote rumors that perhaps he
Speaker 6: and Peter Burn helped with that.
Speaker 4: Remember in episode six when Jimmy Stewart's character meets Bud
Speaker 4: at the airport and almost calls him Peter. That's because
Speaker 4: even though Bud is completely made up, I was inspired
Speaker 4: by the real man Peter Byrne, who is one of
Speaker 4: Tom Slick's lead guides on his yetty expeditions. The Bud
Speaker 4: character is a composite of a handful of Slick's expedition
Speaker 4: team members, but Burne's tenacity and experience with big game
Speaker 4: hunting was a significant influence on Bud's character. Additionally, the
Speaker 4: Chilean spy Dominique pure fiction, but who doesn't love writing
Speaker 4: a fearless and savvy female operative.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's how I get my secrets.
Speaker 4: Catherine is all in for that.
Speaker 6: She did not exist that I know of, But every
Speaker 6: story needs romance.
Speaker 4: So Tom Slick's involvement and the Dalai Lama's escape from
Speaker 4: Debet is rumored. There's no solid proof, but it's not
Speaker 4: all made up. Tom Slick did really meet the Dali Lama,
Speaker 4: and there's one scene in the podcast about that interaction
Speaker 4: that's true. Katherine Nixon Cook explains.
Speaker 6: In the podcast, Tom Slick asks the if he can
Speaker 6: have a crash course in enlightenment, and in fact, he
Speaker 6: really did ask the Dali Lama that very question. When
Speaker 6: he met the Dali Lama in nineteen fifty seven, Tom
Speaker 6: was very interested in cosmic consciousness, something that would later
Speaker 6: translate to his institute, the Mind Science Foundation. He asked
Speaker 6: his Holiness if he could attain cosmic consciousness. The Dali
Speaker 6: Lama replied, well, yes, that's possible. How long do you have?
Speaker 6: Tom Slick replied, I've got one week.
Speaker 4: Tom Slick might have had limited time due to an
Speaker 4: expedition that, unlike the CIA missions, was quite true. His
Speaker 4: hunt for the yetty Slick launched multiple Yetti expeditions in
Speaker 4: the Himalayas throughout the nineteen fifties. His fascination with cryptozoology,
Speaker 4: which is known as the science of hidden animals, is
Speaker 4: well documented and started as early as his college years,
Speaker 4: when he per just a hote, allegedly a cross between
Speaker 4: a hog and a goat. He didn't crossbreed the animal himself,
Speaker 4: but tracked it down after reading about it and Ripley's
Speaker 4: Believe It or Not and Believe It or Not. He
Speaker 4: did actually name it Sweet William. This was followed by
Speaker 4: his real hunt for the Lognus monster in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 4: an adventure he embarked on with his fraternity brothers during
Speaker 4: a summer break from Yale. According to Catherine Nixon Cook,
Speaker 4: unlike what we depicted in the podcast, Slick took this
Speaker 4: expedition very seriously, and though he didn't find NeSSI on
Speaker 4: this trip, he did discover that science and fun can coexist.
Speaker 4: In fact, if you visit Tomslick Park in San Antonio, Texas,
Speaker 4: there's a metal sculpture of NeSSI submerged in the park's lake,
Speaker 4: another thrilling adventure that adds to the legend of Tom
Speaker 4: Slick Junior.
Speaker 7: My first fling with crypto's zoology. I didn't even get
Speaker 7: to first base.
Speaker 4: Look, it's important to note that at the time, cryptozoology
Speaker 4: was thought of very differently than it is today. Chuck
Speaker 4: Slick explains.
Speaker 1: If you think about it in the nineteen fifties, in
Speaker 1: a sort of pre GPS and Google Earth world, that
Speaker 1: it might perfectly been reasonable that some creature like the
Speaker 1: Yeti could exist in a place like the Himalayas, which
Speaker 1: was almost completely undiscovered by Western scientists and geographers, and
Speaker 1: there was sort of the theory that it was possible
Speaker 1: that the Yeti was some sort of a missing link
Speaker 1: in the evolutionary chain between apes and men, and that
Speaker 1: would have been quite a scientific find.
Speaker 4: So, as we make clear in the podcast, Slick's interest
Speaker 4: in the Yetti was grounded in science and because of
Speaker 4: a handful of cryptozoological discoveries made in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 4: Slick wasn't the only one to mount to hunt in
Speaker 4: the Himalayas. Sir Edmund Hillary, most widely known as the
Speaker 4: first Western explorer to climb Everest, led an expedition in
Speaker 4: search of the Yeti with Sherpa mountaineer tin Zang Norgay
Speaker 4: around nineteen sixty one, but Slick pioneered the quest for
Speaker 4: the legendary creature.
Speaker 6: Before that, Tom Slick went on three different Yetti hunts
Speaker 6: in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 4: Catherine Nixon Cook covers the specifics of each of these
Speaker 4: expeditions in her book In Search of Tom Slick, and
Speaker 4: it's thanks to Catherine's research that I slipped another fact
Speaker 4: into the podcast. Tom Slick did meet the Maharaja of
Speaker 4: Baroda before heading out on his first expedition.
Speaker 7: My Roger listen, I'm not hunting the Yeti to kill it.
Speaker 7: I'm a man of science.
Speaker 8: But those in your rent don't believe what they can see.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I agree, some don't, but I'm not one of them.
Speaker 7: Science is about exploring the unknown.
Speaker 4: And though Slick did in real life tell the Maharaja
Speaker 4: about his quote snowman hunt, the Maharazon never warned him
Speaker 4: about tracking down the Yetti, so Slick dove in full force.
Speaker 6: With true adventuresome spirit. He lined up all kinds of
Speaker 6: things to help the hunt, including tracking dogs, which did
Speaker 6: not work. They wore special boots in the snow. He
Speaker 6: had the idea of a plane that would hover and
Speaker 6: look for a Yetti in the hills. He added all
Speaker 6: sorts of scientific components to these hunts. He took along
Speaker 6: the Burn brothers, Peter Burn being one of those who
Speaker 6: were known for their hunting and tracking abilities, and was
Speaker 6: sure that he had found evidence of the Yeti several times.
Speaker 4: Those Slick never found the Yetti. There were two discoveries
Speaker 4: he made on these tracks.
Speaker 6: There's the story of the Yeti footprint, which came back
Speaker 6: to Texas as a plaster cast and sat on his
Speaker 6: dining room table. When I was a little.
Speaker 4: Girl, Catherine's biography of Slick traces his discovery of the
Speaker 4: footprint in the snow at about ten thousand feet in
Speaker 4: a mountain range bordering the Rune Valley in the Himalayas.
Speaker 4: It was approximately thirteen inches long and was similar to
Speaker 4: tracks Peter Byrne found at eight thousand feet, which were
Speaker 4: the five toed footprints of a bipedal creature, one that
Speaker 4: walks on two legs, not four, of considerable weight.
Speaker 5: Holy Holy how released this?
Speaker 2: This footprint must be around thirteen inches long five inches wide.
Speaker 4: Yes, we posted some of the photos from the expeditions,
Speaker 4: including the footprint and other historical documents, on the School
Speaker 4: of Humans Instagram page, so go check it out. Chuck
Speaker 4: Slick was a very young boy when his father embarked
Speaker 4: on his Yetty expeditions, but he did get a kick
Speaker 4: out of these initial discoveries.
Speaker 1: Oh did give him plaster casts of Yetty footprints, which
Speaker 1: was a great thing to talk about at cocktail parties. Somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's just disappeared over the years.
Speaker 4: Slick's next discovery will not be a new one to listeners,
Speaker 4: even if it could have been ripped from a movie script.
Speaker 6: The Jimmy Stewart smuggling story in the podcast is mostly
Speaker 6: true and it sounds totally made up. Tom Slick did
Speaker 6: meet during his life all sorts of fascinating people, some
Speaker 6: of them movie stars like Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 4: According to Catherine and a handful of sources, Jimmy Stewart
Speaker 4: did in fact smuggle a Yetti appendage from Calcutta to
Speaker 4: London in nineteen fifty eight. Catherine shares details there.
Speaker 6: Were rumors that a Yetti hand was in a monastery
Speaker 6: high in the mountains of Nepal. If this was true,
Speaker 6: it could help prove the existence of the Yetti. Tom
Speaker 6: Slick asked one of his expedition members ud in the podcast,
Speaker 6: Peter Byrne in real life, to go to the monastery
Speaker 6: and acquire just the thumb of the hand. That is
Speaker 6: what was needed for the scientific study, since it would
Speaker 6: be an opposable thumb if indeed it was a primate.
Speaker 6: Peter Burn did a very delicate operation of removing the
Speaker 6: thumb and sewing in its place a human thumb that
Speaker 6: he had brought with him on the expedition. It was
Speaker 6: not a paw but a thumb, and instead of going
Speaker 6: through glorias Stewart's Laingerie.
Speaker 3: After fondling your unmentionables.
Speaker 6: I do hope the creature's fingers are still intact. Although
Speaker 6: I love that story. It was actually in a film
Speaker 6: canister in the days when we carried little canisters for
Speaker 6: our film, and it got to London where it mysteriously
Speaker 6: disappeared from the lab a few years later.
Speaker 4: So that whole daring museum heist when Slick steals the
Speaker 4: Yetti Paul before it's exposed to the masses. Well, I
Speaker 4: wish I could say that it's the reason the Yeddi
Speaker 4: appendage vanished in real life. But that caper was pure fiction.
Speaker 4: That said, the Yeti thumb did disappear, so maybe the
Speaker 4: truth is stranger than fiction.
Speaker 6: It's another unsolved Tom Slick mystery.
Speaker 4: Tom Slick took his Yeti expeditions very seriously, as was
Speaker 4: noted in an editorial in the San Antonio Express in
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty six, which is featured in Catherine Nixon Cooke's
Speaker 4: biography In Search of Tom Slick. In the article, he
Speaker 4: told a friend about his belief in the Yetti. When
Speaker 4: his friend expressed doubt, Slick said he would donate one
Speaker 4: thousand dollars to his friend's favorite charity if the Yetti
Speaker 4: was not found before the end of nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 4: Then followed that up in the article by saying, quote,
Speaker 4: before any mistaken conclusions are drawn, let me emphasize that
Speaker 4: this does not signifying that I take the matter lightly
Speaker 4: far from it. Indeed, it indicates how nearly positive I
Speaker 4: am in my own mind that the Yeti exists as
Speaker 4: a humanoid creature. The search for it is surely a
Speaker 4: scientific project of major importance, which could add immeasurably to
Speaker 4: our knowledge of mankind.
Speaker 7: As a man of science, I will not hunt down
Speaker 7: some fantasy, but I will expose one of the greatest
Speaker 7: mysteries of our time.
Speaker 4: Those Slick's dedication to this cryptozoological pursuit was real. Chuck
Speaker 4: Slick wants to make one thing very clear.
Speaker 1: He was never obsessed with the Yeti. It was just
Speaker 1: one more thing, was the next challenge that he was
Speaker 1: looking into. I'm sure he spent plenty of money on it.
Speaker 1: I know he did, but it never would come anywhere
Speaker 1: near depleting his assets. He never almost bankrupted him like
Speaker 1: in the Podcas.
Speaker 4: But it sure makes for higher stakes in the show.
Speaker 4: While his YETI expeditions might be Slick's most entertaining pursuit.
Speaker 4: They can't compare to the real story of Slick's impact
Speaker 4: on science, innovation, and the world. We'll hear all about
Speaker 4: Tom Slick's legacy after the break in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 4: when Tom Slick was a young man, he used his
Speaker 4: inheritance to establish scientific research institutes, and they're some of
Speaker 4: his most enduring and impactful accomplishments.
Speaker 5: We were instrumental in bringing the Pfizer vaccine to the
Speaker 5: FDA for clinical trials.
Speaker 4: This is Larry Schlessinger, President and CEO of Texas Biomedical
Speaker 4: Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. He's speaking about the
Speaker 4: COVID nineteen vaccine, which we're all familiar with. Texas BioMed
Speaker 4: was on the front lines of bringing the vaccine to
Speaker 4: the masses.
Speaker 5: Estimated to have saved over twenty million lives as a
Speaker 5: result of having those vaccines come so quickly.
Speaker 4: Texas BioMed was established in nineteen forty one, when Tom
Speaker 4: was only twenty five years old. It is one of
Speaker 4: the five institutes Tom Slick Junior founded and one of
Speaker 4: the three that are still thriving today.
Speaker 5: Texas biomgal Research Institute has a mission, and that's protecting you,
Speaker 5: your families, and the global community from the threat of
Speaker 5: infectious diseases. You know, we say that cancer affects one
Speaker 5: in three people, which is an astounding number, but I
Speaker 5: like to say infection affects one in one. No one
Speaker 5: escapes and infection in their lifetime.
Speaker 4: Texas BioMed has been at the forefront of combating infectious diseases, which,
Speaker 4: along with advancing the first COVID nineteen vaccine, also resulted
Speaker 4: in the first bullet treatment, the first hepatitis C therapy,
Speaker 4: and extensive research around HIVAS, along with many more developments,
Speaker 4: most notably the high frequency neonatal ventilator, which provides breathing
Speaker 4: support for infants and children who are too ill or
Speaker 4: premature to breathe on their own. And as we depict
Speaker 4: in the podcast, Tom Slick did believe that non human
Speaker 4: primates could serve as a prime model of human health.
Speaker 4: That vision led to pioneering advancements for humanity in both
Speaker 4: science and medicine. Since then, Texas BioMed has enhanced their
Speaker 4: National Primate Center, which was originated by Tom Slick. As
Speaker 4: committed as the institute is to fighting infectious diseases that
Speaker 4: afflict us today. They also have an eye on the
Speaker 4: future and are training the next generation by providing STEM education,
Speaker 4: which in the past year around ten thousand youth have
Speaker 4: engaged in.
Speaker 5: Tom had a guiding principle in his life, and that
Speaker 5: god in principle was that the welfare of humankind is
Speaker 5: advanced through scientific research. He wasn't a scientist himself, but
Speaker 5: he definitely had this spirit of one and as a
Speaker 5: result of what he created in the nineteen forties, he
Speaker 5: left an enduring legacy.
Speaker 4: Schlessinger explains where that legacy originated.
Speaker 5: Tom Slick Junior was a twenty five year old young
Speaker 5: man who had a vision, and that vision was that
Speaker 5: the advance of a human health would occur through biomedical
Speaker 5: research and in vision San Antonio as a city of science.
Speaker 4: And this in and of itself was both innovative and risky.
Speaker 5: In nineteen forty one, in the wild west of Texas,
Speaker 5: where there was no graduate education, no medical school, he
Speaker 5: thought about building these nonprofit research institutes that would focus
Speaker 5: on science, and so with inheritance he he purchased sixteen
Speaker 5: hundred acres of a cattle ranch in San Antonio, Texas,
Speaker 5: and he started to build a science infrastructure on that campus,
Speaker 5: and he titled the portion of the land that he
Speaker 5: purchased through inheritance the SR ranch EESSAR, which is phonetic
Speaker 5: for S and R for scientific Research. And in the
Speaker 5: nineteen fifties he developed what is our current site of
Speaker 5: Texas Biomedical Research Institute. What is fascinating about this is
Speaker 5: that in his twenties, Tom Slip Junior traveled the world
Speaker 5: and he had this notion about innovation and science. He's
Speaker 5: been called a true visionary, But really what compels me,
Speaker 5: since I meet a lot of so called visionaries in
Speaker 5: my career, is that he actually executed on that vision,
Speaker 5: forming these biomedical research institutes.
Speaker 4: Tom Slick's dream was to establish a city of science
Speaker 4: in San Antonio, and he did it mid twenties when
Speaker 4: most of us are still figuring out what we want
Speaker 4: to do with our lives. The names of the institutes
Speaker 4: may have changed over the years, but Slick's intention has
Speaker 4: endured to implement the machinery of science towards the advancement
Speaker 4: of humanity.
Speaker 8: Well, at any given day, we typically have about four
Speaker 8: thousand active research projects.
Speaker 4: That's Adam Hamilton, the President and CEO of Southwest Research Institute, which,
Speaker 4: as I'm sure you've guessed, is another one of Tom
Speaker 4: Slick's prosperous scientific research institutes.
Speaker 8: We're also able to focus our research on topics that
Speaker 8: range from anything deep sea to deep space and practically
Speaker 8: everywhere in between. Selfist Research Institute itself is one of
Speaker 8: the largest applied R and D organizations that's independent and
Speaker 8: nonprofit in the country and also in the world.
Speaker 4: Hamilton ran down an extensive list of what the institute
Speaker 4: is working on.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: There's the Lucy Mission, which, on an expedition to the
Speaker 4: Trojan asteroids in Jupiter's orbit, made the accidental discovery of
Speaker 4: an asteroid that had its own moon. They're also working
Speaker 4: on a multimillion dollar project with the Department of Energy
Speaker 4: on modifying traditional combustion engines so that they run on
Speaker 4: one hundred percent hydrogen. Not a small feed, but I
Speaker 4: don't think Tom Slick would expect anything less from one
Speaker 4: of his institutes. Tom Slick Junior was serious about his
Speaker 4: scientific pursuits, but as Chuck mentioned earlier, he also knew
Speaker 4: how to have fun, and, as Hamilton notes, the Southwest
Speaker 4: Research Institute mixes that element of playfulness into their culture.
Speaker 8: So we have a Yeti in our newsletter that's hidden
Speaker 8: every month, and staff members have the opportunity to win
Speaker 8: a prize if they're the first one to find the Yeti.
Speaker 8: And we also have large yettis that we hide at
Speaker 8: various places on our fifteen hundred campus. But we also
Speaker 8: then celebrate excellence. We have Yety awards here on campus
Speaker 8: for safety and for other things like that. It's a
Speaker 8: part of our culture that I hope represents Tom Slick
Speaker 8: in a very positive light.
Speaker 4: Slicks Institutes are keeping his spirit alive in more ways
Speaker 4: than one.
Speaker 6: I've called him a pioneer of the possible.
Speaker 4: In addition to being his biographer, Catherine Nixon Cook served
Speaker 4: as the president of Tom Slick's Mind Science Foundation.
Speaker 6: When he was in the Himalayas, he met lamas who
Speaker 6: seemed to defy Western science. He saw monks levitate, and
Speaker 6: by that it's not the levitating you see in movies.
Speaker 6: It was more of a jumping just a few feet up,
Speaker 6: but nonetheless quite humanly impossible for you or me to do.
Speaker 6: He saw them raise and lower body temperature at will
Speaker 6: or simply through meditation. Saw feats of psychokinesis where things
Speaker 6: seemed to move without explanation, and came back and started
Speaker 6: his last institute, the Mind Science Foundation, to study these phenomena,
Speaker 6: wanting to study them though from a scientific.
Speaker 4: Point of view. Though Tom Slick did study these mystical,
Speaker 4: unexplained occurrences. That is Mind Science Foundation Today. It's primary
Speaker 4: focus is on neuroscience research, using the technology and tools
Speaker 4: available to us in the twenty first century to explore
Speaker 4: the vast potential of the human mind.
Speaker 6: Although the Mind Science Foundation focuses now on the neurosciences,
Speaker 6: not long ago it still studied a few of these
Speaker 6: mysteries that fascinated Tom Slick. Back in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 6: we took a trip to Indonesia to study a keygong
Speaker 6: healer named Dynamo Jack. I personally saw him light a
Speaker 6: fire with his hands and pass a chopstick through a
Speaker 6: solid wooden table. We took the wooden table back to
Speaker 6: another of Tom's institute's, Southwest Research Institute to see if
Speaker 6: the table had been tampered with. It had not. The
Speaker 6: scientists there said, we simply don't understand energy.
Speaker 4: Catherine told me the story when I was writing the
Speaker 4: scripts and the enigma surrounding Dynamo Jack and his mystifying
Speaker 4: capabilities informed the character of Lama as.
Speaker 1: Lightning.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is unbelievable lighting when there's nothing around.
Speaker 4: But from what I've learned about Tom Slick, examining phenomenas
Speaker 4: like Dynamo Jack was less about exploring the mystery for
Speaker 4: him and more about a search for scientific understanding.
Speaker 6: He saw these as examples of human potential. Tom Slick
Speaker 6: believed that the human mind is the greatest unexplored frontier
Speaker 6: of all.
Speaker 4: For most of Tom Slick's life, the world was his
Speaker 4: frontier and science was his compass. And even after everything
Speaker 4: we've covered in this episode, there's still more we only
Speaker 4: touched on, like how he developed a new breed of
Speaker 4: cattle by crossbreeding the heat and insect resistant Indian Brama
Speaker 4: with the tastier Scottish Angus. Obviously, he named it the
Speaker 4: Brangus cattle. Or the construction method he innovated called the
Speaker 4: Lifts Lab, which was utilized to build Trinity University in
Speaker 4: San Antonio, a college he had a significant role in establishing.
Speaker 4: Tom Slick also had a great interest in understanding women's
Speaker 4: reproductive medicine and did pioneering research toward the creation of
Speaker 4: birth control and IVF, and in the nineteen fifties he
Speaker 4: launched an expedition to find a diamond pipeline in the
Speaker 4: Amazon and studied alternative medicine in the use of medicinal
Speaker 4: plants with shamanic healers oh An. Slick also had an
Speaker 4: extensive art collection which included Picasso, Joe O'Keefe and other
Speaker 4: prolific modern artists, which was an art form ahead of
Speaker 4: its time. Like the collector Tom Slick himself and we
Speaker 4: can't forget Slicks hunt for Bigfoot. He partnered on this
Speaker 4: expedition with his Yeti Hunt collaborator Peter burn and journeyed
Speaker 4: out west and through British Columbia. Burne pursued this mystery
Speaker 4: until his death in twenty twenty three. But Tom Slick's
Speaker 4: last big pursuit was so extraordinary it's hard to imagine.
Speaker 4: Here's Chuck Slick again.
Speaker 1: He became very interested in what was probably the biggest
Speaker 1: challenge he could ever take on world peace in the
Speaker 1: time of the Cold War. He wrote two books about it.
Speaker 1: One was called The Last Great Hope and the other
Speaker 1: one was called Permanent Peace, and he spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time and money creating these peace conferences. They would
Speaker 1: have these experts in foreign affairs and diplomats and so
Speaker 1: on would come together and talk about how we could
Speaker 1: achieve world peace. And when he died, he left most
Speaker 1: of his estate to the foundations, but there was a
Speaker 1: proviso in his will that said some of his assets
Speaker 1: were supposed to be used quote to achieve world peace.
Speaker 4: Tom Slick Junior died on October sixth, nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 4: on his way back from a pheasant hunt in Calgary, Canada.
Speaker 4: He was a passenger and a Beachcraft Bananza thirty five
Speaker 4: that crashed in the mountains of Montana. Catherine Nixon Cook's
Speaker 4: book explains that the plane appeared to have gone to
Speaker 4: pieces in flight, possibly as a result of an explosion
Speaker 4: or lightning. Wreckage was strewn over a three quarter mile area,
Speaker 4: and Slick's body was found nearly a mile from the
Speaker 4: center of the crash site. Like his father, Tom Slick
Speaker 4: was only forty six when he died, but even death
Speaker 4: couldn't stop the great Tom Slick Junior.
Speaker 9: Catherine, you help me come up with this idea of
Speaker 9: Slick living on another plane and being able to communicate
Speaker 9: with his granddaughter live in the podcast, who is a
Speaker 9: fictional character. But would the real Slick have believed this
Speaker 9: was possible working from the other side.
Speaker 6: He did say often to people that he thought he
Speaker 6: might find a way to work from the other side
Speaker 6: those very words. But remember he was a man who
Speaker 6: believed in science and the scientific method. So in the podcast,
Speaker 6: Tom Slick says to his granddaughter.
Speaker 7: Does believing in something make it real?
Speaker 4: I think it does.
Speaker 6: Do you live in real life? Tom Slick did not
Speaker 6: think so. He was an optimist. He was a possibilist.
Speaker 6: He believed in possibilities and potential, but he had to
Speaker 6: see the scientific proof to know something was real.
Speaker 4: Though Slick valued science and fact over a blind belief,
Speaker 4: he still pursued the unknown, hunting down answers to unexplainable mysteries,
Speaker 4: and even after everything we now know about Tom Slick,
Speaker 4: he still remains a bit of a mystery himself.
Speaker 6: When the bio containment lab opened at Texas BioMed more
Speaker 6: than a decade ago, there was silence as his sister,
Speaker 6: who was still alive, cut the red ribbon to the
Speaker 6: door of the bio containment lab. All of a sudden
Speaker 6: in the silence as the audience sat there, you heard
Speaker 6: a low hum of an airplane. Everyone looked up in
Speaker 6: the sky and there, flying low and slow was a
Speaker 6: vintage Beechcraft Bonanza, Tom Slick's type of plane, and I
Speaker 6: personally thought he was there celebrating the legacy of science
Speaker 6: that he saw living on.
Speaker 4: Thank you for listening to Tom Slick Mystery Hunter, a
Speaker 4: podcast about the most interesting man you've now heard of,
Speaker 4: A real man who lived a legendary life.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it really happened, but that's what
Speaker 1: they say. What a tale, that's right.
Speaker 4: This final episode of Tom Slick Mystery Hunter fact Verse
Speaker 4: Fiction was written and hosted by Me Caroline Slaughter, with
Speaker 4: production assistance from Amelia Brock, audio and score assembly by
Speaker 4: Noah Kamer. Were grateful to our guests for their perspectives,
Speaker 4: Charles Chuck, Slick, Catherine Nixon, Cook, Billy Kerr, Larry Schlessinger,
Speaker 4: and Adam Hamilton. Executive producers for the series include Owen Wilson,
Speaker 4: Sissy Spasic, Skuyler Fisk, Jeb Stewart, Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley,
Speaker 4: Brandon Barr, Virginia Prescott, and Me Caroline slaughter,