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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

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Speaker 2: my name is Noman.

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Speaker 3: They call be Bed. We're joined as always with our

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Speaker 3: super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you

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Speaker 3: are you. You are here that makes this the stuff

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Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. And fellow Cryptid fans,

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Speaker 3: friends and neighbors, we have something special for you this evening.

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Speaker 3: I think we're all excited about this. I hope that's

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Speaker 3: the case. We all love a Cryptid episode, right, Can we.

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Speaker 4: Talk about in the past? We had too, because this

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Speaker 4: seems like a question that would obviously come up Cryptid

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Speaker 4: like fighting games or sort of Pokemon style or Magic

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Speaker 4: the Gathering style card games. I feel like one came up.

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Speaker 3: There are characters that occur in there, there are I

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Speaker 3: feel like that You're right, there has to be one,

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Speaker 3: because we know there are a couple of deity fighting games.

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Speaker 3: We talked about that previously, and we know there are

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Speaker 3: crypto zoological characters that occur in like Magic, the Gathering,

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Speaker 3: and so on.

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Speaker 4: There's a game on Steam called Beasts of Mystery. Have

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Speaker 4: you ever wondered what it would be like to see

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Speaker 4: Mothman fight the flat Woods Monster? Well now you can

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Speaker 4: find out in Beasts of Mystery, the cryptid fighting game

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Speaker 4: with hand drawn animation and approachable gameplay inspired by the

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Speaker 4: greatest fighting games of past and present.

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Speaker 3: What a time to be alive? What a time? May

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Speaker 3: twenty third, twenty twenty five. As we record this, we're

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Speaker 3: going to talk about one cryptid that may not be

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Speaker 3: a Beast of Mystery and may not be familiar to

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Speaker 3: a lot of us in the West. Our exploration takes

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Speaker 3: us far far from our home base of the Atlanta

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Speaker 3: metro area to the rugged, mountainous and forbidding interior of

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Speaker 3: the Hubei Province in China. Also in the research here,

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Speaker 3: I don't know about you, guys. I learned a new word.

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Speaker 3: We've got a local sparkling water company here called Montane.

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Speaker 3: Did you guys know Montane's an actual word. I thought

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Speaker 3: it was like a car name, like you made up

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Speaker 3: something that sounded like a real thing.

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Speaker 4: I guess it just sounds like a sort of like

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Speaker 4: a crooner from the fifties. You know, Johnny Montane.

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Speaker 2: Sounds like Fontaine to me. That's just something I'm familiar with. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: our buddy bre mm hmm.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that would be Debri right.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and our buddy pre the famous runner, right, wasn't

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Speaker 4: that Prefontaine?

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Speaker 3: Oh? Okay, comes and Montane. Just for any etymology, nerds

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Speaker 3: is a word that, weirdly, I don't think we had

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Speaker 3: encountered before. I didn't know was a real word. It

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Speaker 3: means of growing in were inhabiting mountain areas. Nice, that

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Speaker 3: makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's what you know. Really,

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Speaker 3: it's my fault for not having a good vocabulary. That

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Speaker 3: was like this Sparkling Water company just made up a

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Speaker 3: BS word.

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Speaker 4: Anyway, Man, I got to call you back for being

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Speaker 4: self deprecating. There to a fault. You have the best

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Speaker 4: vocabulary at anybody that I know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, if you have a bad vocabulary, But I don't

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Speaker 2: know what I am, I'm speaking dumb ass, not at all.

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Speaker 4: Can I really quickly just say this beast of mystery game?

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Speaker 4: Not to harp on it too. It looks like it

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Speaker 4: was created an MS paint, so that that alone is

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Speaker 4: worth the price of admission.

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Speaker 3: Do check it out. It looks ridiculous. Oh, and Triforce

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Speaker 3: points out there are a couple of Japanese role playing

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Speaker 3: games with Yo Kai. I am in dude, Yo Kai

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Speaker 3: are amazing.

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Speaker 4: Well, the guy we're talking about today is a little

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Speaker 4: bit Yo Kai esque, though it's not from Japan, it

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Speaker 4: is from China, but it has that mythical quality, right.

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Speaker 3: Oh, one hundred percent. Yeah. For thousands and thousands of years,

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Speaker 3: local rural populations in Hubay have have been or whubey

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Speaker 3: have been convinced they share the land with something not

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Speaker 3: quite ape, not quite human, you quite skunk, not quite skunk,

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Speaker 3: not quite swamp, not quite abominable. Uh yeah, it's a

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Speaker 3: huge thing. We've all heard of bigfoot, We've heard of

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Speaker 3: the abominable snowman. But what about the yarn And by

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Speaker 3: the way, what the heck is yarn fever? Uh yeah,

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Speaker 3: We're gonna pause for a second check in with our

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Speaker 3: medical experts to make sure we're still inoculated. Here are

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Speaker 3: the facts when we talk about bigfoot. And we've run

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Speaker 3: into this so often over the years. We continually see

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Speaker 3: this strange, near ubiquitous, ancient myth about something that inevitably

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Speaker 3: translates to either wild men or hairy men.

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Speaker 4: And one of my favorite Bigfoot superpowers I guess that

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Speaker 4: he would be able to use in a fighting game

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Speaker 4: is this idea that he can teleport and that he

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Speaker 4: can sort of fold time and space. And maybe that

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Speaker 4: accounts for some of the proliferation of these types of creatures,

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Speaker 4: you know, globally speaking.

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Speaker 3: Interesting and that's something our our, our good friend David

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Speaker 3: Bikera remarked about briefly when we interviewed him. How long

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Speaker 3: ago was that lo those many years ago?

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Speaker 4: And what is it called, guys Operation Bigfoot their expedition expedition,

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Speaker 4: But it very much is that, and I know we

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Speaker 4: harp on it every time, but like it has the

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Speaker 4: quality level to build the quality of like a really

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Speaker 4: rat Disney Universal Studios type exhibit. It is pretty badass.

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Speaker 4: If you find yourself in the North Georgia Mountains, do

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Speaker 4: give it a check.

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Speaker 3: Ry day of it. Yeah, yeah, cherry log near LJ

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Speaker 3: and make a day of it. Because it's also right

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Speaker 3: up the road from a place where you can rent

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Speaker 3: a tank, which our accounting department did not allow us

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Speaker 3: to do. Deny, Yes, I'm not going to let go

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Speaker 3: of that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, And just to the point of the number

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Speaker 2: of hairy man wild man stories that exist even within

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Speaker 2: the US and the different varieties of it. We had

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Speaker 2: another person we ended up speaking to that makes this

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Speaker 2: thing called map in black. You can check it out.

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Speaker 2: All of us have a copy now at this point

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Speaker 2: and it shows well, it's not for me, it's from

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Speaker 2: a listener.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but you got us the maps. Thank you.

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Speaker 2: Well, he sent us the maps. But the concept here

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Speaker 2: is that there are spread across just the United States.

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Speaker 2: I think, I want to say, around five or six

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Speaker 2: varieties of this specific form of cryptid just here in

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Speaker 2: the US, and then you look globally, it just there's

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Speaker 2: so many more.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, proliferates. That's a great point too. I remember seeing

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Speaker 3: that map and thinking, you know, this is somewhat similar

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Speaker 3: to regional variations of squirrels right or where, you know,

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Speaker 3: And if it's a natural organism that makes sense living

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Speaker 3: in the same place over vast swalls of time. It's

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Speaker 3: weird because everything we find when we look into historical

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Speaker 3: strangeness is that no matter how different a given culture

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Speaker 3: may be or when that culture occurs, they share surprising commonalities,

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Speaker 3: Like every single human civilization throughout history has at one

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Speaker 3: point managed to predict the passage of the seasons, and

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Speaker 3: they have all attempted to explain the movements of the

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Speaker 3: heavens in relation to the Earth. But the other really

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Speaker 3: strange thing is this weird myth that continues in the

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Speaker 3: modern day. Like you said, Matt, we call it bigfoot.

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Speaker 3: Regional variations here would be swamp ape, skunk ape, the

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Speaker 3: Irali from native culture and so on. You can find

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Speaker 3: ancient petroglyph depicting hairy people and then the entire lore

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Speaker 3: about them, and this dates back, you know, thousands of years.

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Speaker 3: You also to that point again, you hear legends about

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Speaker 3: this and other parts of the world, often remote mountainous

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Speaker 3: wildernesses right or stretches of forest cover. Russia had a lot,

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Speaker 3: or the Soviet Union, I should say, had a lot

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Speaker 3: of research into this, as did pre communist Russia. And

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Speaker 3: then you'll hear about the Yeti, the snowman, and of

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Speaker 3: course in China the Yarin. But they're all again, they're

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Speaker 3: all variations on the same idea that Homo sapien shares

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Speaker 3: earth with some reclusive, enigmatic, oddly intelligent species of something

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Speaker 3: that looks a little like a human, a little bit

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Speaker 3: like an ape. And I think, or I would posit

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Speaker 3: guys that in some of our previous explorations, we found

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Speaker 3: a really good answer for some of these common legends,

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Speaker 3: not just bigfoot stuff, but things like trolls or orcs

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Speaker 3: or goblins or hobbits, and they were kind of kissing

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Speaker 3: cousins to the humans.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and this extends into the modern day, this legacy

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Speaker 4: of ancient hominids and remains in the form of trace

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Speaker 4: amounts of DNA that's found in some modern humans. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 4: not those actual facts hobbits that you mentioned ben Homofluoresciensis,

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Speaker 4: though we don't. I don't think there are like, you know,

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Speaker 4: tolkien Esque hobbits. You know, they have their own little

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Speaker 4: hobbit holes and don't like their china to be yeah,

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Speaker 4: don't like their their plates to be chipped and crabs yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We haven't found the Bilbo Baggins yet,

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Speaker 3: but I love the point you're making there. In all

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Speaker 3: the so called hobbits of Southeast Asia, along with the

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Speaker 3: Denisovans you mentioned the poor Neanderthal. Further current science theorizes

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Speaker 3: humanity may discover yet more evidence of these ancient home

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Speaker 3: sapient hominid interactions and maybe even hidden somewhere in human

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Speaker 3: DNA remnant lines of other hominid groups. We don't know.

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Speaker 3: That's the pickle of it. And if you're a scientist,

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Speaker 3: that's either very exciting or very frustrating. If you're a

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Speaker 3: team of hapless podcasters, that's amazing, because that's an episode

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Speaker 3: if we find one for sure. So with all this

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Speaker 3: in mind, folks, we have proven that things close to

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Speaker 3: human existed at the same time as modern Homo sapiens,

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Speaker 3: and we also have solid proof through as you said,

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Speaker 3: old DNA evidence that these groups interacted. So there's this

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Speaker 3: compelling argument that at least some of these bigfoot myths

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Speaker 3: could be based on oral history about genuine encounters with

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Speaker 3: these things not quite Homo sapien. I don't know what

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Speaker 3: do you guys think.

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Speaker 4: Oh, just a quick shout out to you yourself, mister

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Speaker 4: Ben Bollen. You gifted both Matt Frederick and myself a

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Speaker 4: lovely graphic novel version of the book Sapiens. Credible illustrated volume.

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Speaker 4: I think it's part one of this book, but it

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Speaker 4: is absolutely fantastic. I haven't made my way all the

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Speaker 4: way through it yet, but it talks a lot about

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Speaker 4: these Dennis Ovins and some of these early hominives and

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Speaker 4: beautifully illustrates what that world might have looked like.

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Speaker 3: Oh man, you've all Noah Harari, what a guy.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, what a cool project to translate to visuals.

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Speaker 3: In that way. Agreed. Agreed, man, Ah that guys. I

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Speaker 3: love the way he writes. So, as any fan of

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Speaker 3: the History Channel can assure you, there is no shortage

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Speaker 3: of attempts to document Bigfoot or even to capture a

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Speaker 3: living specimen. We don't want to sound hyperbolic, but to date,

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Speaker 3: as far as modern science is concerned, all of these

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Speaker 3: attempts have failed, every single one. Even the expeditions that

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Speaker 3: found you know, the purported yetty scalp. Later testing proved

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Speaker 3: I think it was from like a mountain goat or

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Speaker 3: something of that nature. Yeah. Still it's important, you know,

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Speaker 3: we have to remember that even when science fails to

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Speaker 3: find the thing it's looking for, it has at least

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Speaker 3: provide a value by establishing that thing does not exist.

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Speaker 3: But what if we're looking at the wrong place. What

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Speaker 3: if the real Bigfoot is not in the Pacific Northwest,

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Speaker 3: but instead, what if it's half a world away, deep

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Speaker 3: into the interior of China. Unlike Western science's overall dismissal

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Speaker 3: of Bigfoot, China seriously scientifically investigated this creature's existence and

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Speaker 3: it became a social phenomenon. It became like a good

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Speaker 3: version of a moral panic hit the zeitgeist.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that is kind of like that concept that we

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Speaker 4: talked about with Yeah, correct, Yeah, the opposite of paranoia,

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Speaker 4: which is pro noia. The I guess it is inherently misinformed.

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Speaker 4: The other people are trying to help you. I don't

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Speaker 4: know if that in misinformed aspect is key to it,

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Speaker 4: but man, I love the idea of a positive moral panic.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, a moral euphoria, a moral panic.

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Speaker 4: We're doing a good job with this panic morally.

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Speaker 3: So let's get into it. Now. Here's where it gets crazy.

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Speaker 3: This is the story of the Yarin. It's a weird word.

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Speaker 3: In translation, you would spell it y e r e n.

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Speaker 3: People are going to throw, you know, little diacritics at

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Speaker 3: different points or little accent marks, but it roughly translates

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Speaker 3: to savage or wild man and Mandarin, so it'd be

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Speaker 3: like Jillian or Cantonese sweat Gin suasion. We should go

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Speaker 3: ahead I think and say, or at least I have

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Speaker 3: to say, we are not native Mandarin speakers. We don't

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Speaker 3: speak the dialects that we are going to be approaching

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Speaker 3: in part of this. So please bear with us. And

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Speaker 3: if we're what about this guys, if we're not sure

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Speaker 3: about our pronunciation, maybe we just spell the word yeah.

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Speaker 4: And I will also defer to Ben because you have

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Speaker 4: done some studies of the language. All I've done is

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Speaker 4: seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

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Speaker 3: Which is you know they make you watch that when

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Speaker 3: you study Chinese.

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Speaker 4: Well, if I'm not mistaken, I do remember that being

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Speaker 4: the first time that was like identified as this is

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Speaker 4: like a dialect, a particular dialect of Mandarin that was

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Speaker 4: used in that film, at least in my experience. But

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Speaker 4: I'm also joking. Ben, you really do have kind of

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Speaker 4: expertise and studied time on this stuff. So but we

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Speaker 4: will do our level best.

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Speaker 3: As always, it's too kain noel, and got to be honest,

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Speaker 3: as anybody who studied Chinese knows, they really string you

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Speaker 3: along with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. They make you watch

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Speaker 3: it early and they strongly imply that you'll learn how

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Speaker 3: to run and jump from tree tops.

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Speaker 4: Secretly though, guys, they used wires.

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Speaker 3: That's the word on the street, and that's why I

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Speaker 3: got a B plus instead of any movie though.

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Speaker 4: In that fricking soundtrack with Yo Yo ma, oh my god,

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Speaker 4: excellent stuff.

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Speaker 3: It's amazing, you know. It's this thing. The Erin is

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Speaker 3: often referred to as sort of the Chinese version of

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Speaker 3: the Tibetan. YETI kind of like how the skunk Ape

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Speaker 3: or swamp ape might be referred to as the insert

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Speaker 3: region x here version of the Bigfoot.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting that it's that just Okay, So I don't

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Speaker 2: know much about this as well, but I do know

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Speaker 2: that it is we're basically talking about a forested area.

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Speaker 2: Is it an area? Do we know if it is

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Speaker 2: covered in snow? Often? It seems just from its latitude

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Speaker 2: that it maybe isn't covered in snow.

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Speaker 3: Right exactly. It's a much more hospitable region to wildlife

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Speaker 3: than say Everest or the upper reaches of the Himalayas.

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Speaker 3: It's the shinong Jia Forestry District. I messed up to

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Speaker 3: tone there. If you had to pick a spot for

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Speaker 3: the Chinese Bigfoot, this would be peak real estate. Okay,

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Speaker 3: it's free real estate. It's like about the more than

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Speaker 3: one thousand, two hundred square miles of mountainous forest right

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Speaker 3: just approaching the timber line. Right, it's which makes it

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Speaker 3: technically montane. There we go, and it's the elevation is

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Speaker 3: pretty high, about six thousand, five hundred to six nine

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Speaker 3: hundred feet up. Okay, yeah, so it's like it's a

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Speaker 3: pretty dope spot if you're looking for a creature like this.

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Speaker 2: Well, it does make sense. Then why the YETI would

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Speaker 2: be the comparison there because of it must get highly

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Speaker 2: cold there at times, simply because of the elevation, which

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Speaker 2: is why you may see it as more of a

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Speaker 2: snow creature than a you know, the way we'd imagine

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Speaker 2: a big foot, which is very much just a forest boy,

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Speaker 2: you know, just in the tree line, in the trees,

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Speaker 2: not with the you know, the even the coloring of

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Speaker 2: the fur, if there is fur.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Also reminds me of

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Speaker 3: the various I can't remember the specific cards in magic

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Speaker 3: the gathering, but the various troll uh specializations. Right, aren't

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Speaker 3: there different kinds of trolls? I might be thinking of something.

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Speaker 4: You've got your bridge trolls, you got your your your

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Speaker 4: your your mal trolls. Yeah, what are the ones with

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Speaker 4: the funny hair and the jewels in their belly?

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Speaker 3: Buttons?

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Speaker 4: Troll dolls, that's the one.

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Speaker 3: You got, your doll?

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Speaker 4: Trolls is a smurf A kind of troll.

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Speaker 3: A smurf is more akin to a smaller for spirit,

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Speaker 3: maybe like a brownie and gnome.

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Speaker 4: Do you know what they call the smurfs in Germany?

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Speaker 3: What do they call the smurfs in Germany? And I

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Speaker 3: like that that's not true. Why does everything sound so

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Speaker 3: aggressive in that language? I'm so prejudiced? All right, sorry,

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Speaker 3: but uh, this this area, Yeah, I'm thinking in terms of,

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Speaker 3: you know again, regional variations like with squirrels or whatever,

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Speaker 3: geographic variations. I'm thinking it would make sense, to your point, Matt,

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Speaker 3: for a very similar kind of animal to adapt to

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Speaker 3: different environmental pressures. And this forest we're talking about is

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Speaker 3: one of the most biodiverse areas in the nation. It's

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Speaker 3: home to tons of rare species with pretty great names.

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Speaker 4: Correct per our Pals over at Onesco in their Delightful

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Speaker 4: World Heritage sites. The area in question here is already

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Speaker 4: home to tons of actual facts. To quote Lauren Vogel,

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Speaker 4: bum identifiable species like the Chinese giant salamander, the golden

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Speaker 4: or Sichuan snubnosed monkey.

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Speaker 3: I don't like him.

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Speaker 4: He's two snubnosed, so snobby. What's up with that? Why's

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Speaker 4: he got his nose turned up like?

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Speaker 3: And also there's the clouded leopard.

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Speaker 4: Not what makes it clouded? Is it just something about

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Speaker 4: its pattern?

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Speaker 3: No, it's it's just it's sketchy and it has a

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Speaker 3: bad memory.

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Speaker 4: Got it the cloud We've also got the much less

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Speaker 4: remarkable common leopard, which I don't know why that even

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Speaker 4: made the list, to be.

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Speaker 3: Honest, guys, it's crazy because they're I don't know, to

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Speaker 3: the point about slightly different regions. It's not Neither of

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Speaker 3: these are the same as the snow leopard, right, So

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Speaker 3: it feels like there's a gradiation or gradation there from

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Speaker 3: common to cloud it to snow. I don't know anyway.

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Speaker 2: It's also just something to note there there are dangerous

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Speaker 2: species in these forests, right that you should be aware

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Speaker 2: of if you're going to be trekking out there looking

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Speaker 2: for stuff. And also there are things like the Chinese

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Speaker 2: giant salamander that don't seem real. It doesn't seem like

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Speaker 2: a salamander should get that large if you've seen pictures

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Speaker 2: of it. I remember watching a video way back in

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Speaker 2: the day of one of the largest salamanders ever, you know,

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Speaker 2: in captivity or was caught, and these things are huge.

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Speaker 2: It looks like the size of a dog. But it

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Speaker 2: is a salamander.

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Speaker 4: So it's not just a clever name.

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Speaker 3: No, no, no. They are actually giant and harrison to

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Speaker 3: the vast majority of salamanders. And they're kind of cool man.

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Speaker 3: I'll be honest. They're no Asian black bear, because those

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Speaker 3: guys are hanging out in this area as well. It's

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Speaker 3: just important for us to establish the biodiversity here. It's

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Speaker 3: another point to the argument for the real estate right,

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Speaker 3: especially in a country that is rapidly industrialized over such

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Speaker 3: a short span of time. You know, often in the West,

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Speaker 3: when you see pictures of China, you see pictures of

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Speaker 3: these crazy factories, right, these huge works of human beings.

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Speaker 3: Or you see a picture of a panda in the

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Speaker 3: middle of nowhere that is just doing its best to

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Speaker 3: figure out how to eat bamboo.

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we're going to look in a little lonely.

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Speaker 4: I'm not gonna lie. He's a panda, friend.

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Speaker 2: Oh yes, and pop hube Providence into your maps Google like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: but yeah, pop pop it into your maps app and

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Speaker 2: just look at the spaces between the civilization talking about

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Speaker 2: that the way the expansion is occurring, right, and you

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Speaker 2: can really see exactly what Benn is saying. There are

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Speaker 2: still extremely remote areas here where there's just humans are

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Speaker 2: not there.

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Speaker 3: M yeah, even in even in such a populous country.

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Speaker 3: You know, the population of China is huge, but it's

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Speaker 3: quite unevenly distributed, so such that you know, you think

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Speaker 3: most Americans live in cities or urban areas, You're absolutely right,

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Speaker 3: but that is exacerbated in China so much so that

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Speaker 3: the current government has some hard laws about who can

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Speaker 3: move where and when and why you have to get

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Speaker 3: a license to do so.

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Speaker 2: And do you know what's in the eastern side of

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Speaker 2: Hubay Province.

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Speaker 3: What's in the eastern side of Hubei Province?

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Speaker 2: Wuhan?

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Speaker 3: I got you all in Czech yea famous Muhan clan.

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Speaker 3: And I still true, I still am so flummoxed by

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Speaker 3: I rememberer when uh when wu Ha came out, not Wuhan.

385
00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:08,479
Speaker 3: And when Wuha came out, I was texting with some

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Speaker 3: fellow hip hop heads, and this was I. I had

387
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Speaker 3: not searched the lyrics myself, and I thought when he

388
00:22:15,040 --> 00:22:18,720
Speaker 3: was saying I thought he was saying stuff like I've

389
00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:21,600
Speaker 3: got that eggnog shit that makes you sweat your neck.

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Speaker 3: Who haw, I've got you all in check. And I

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Speaker 3: thought it was c Z E C H.

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Speaker 4: And I'm certain this has come up before, I remembering.

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Speaker 3: Not to tell the same story twice. But you know,

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Speaker 3: I hated. I hated for it that myth to be

395
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Speaker 3: busted because I love the idea that New York slang

396
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:43,760
Speaker 3: was just that extreme and wild, and it still is

397
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Speaker 3: very colorful and wild, it sure is. And what on

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Speaker 3: earth is a flip mode squad? I've never fully.

399
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Speaker 4: Wrapped my head around that you haven't flipped No, well never, No,

400
00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:56,240
Speaker 4: I am loyal. I would slip them. So that's drop

401
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Speaker 4: a dime on no one.

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Speaker 3: So the reason we're pretty especially that this economy, but

403
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Speaker 3: the reason we're we're already we're bringing up the idea

404
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:07,479
Speaker 3: of busting the myth is because in our conversations with

405
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Speaker 3: some of our friends who have searched for Bigfoot or

406
00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:15,520
Speaker 3: other cryptids, you get the feeling at times that maybe

407
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:17,880
Speaker 3: they don't want to find the thing. Maybe it's more

408
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:21,080
Speaker 3: about the journey, and so maybe I should have never

409
00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:24,600
Speaker 3: checked on those buster rhyme lyrics and kept the mystery alive.

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Speaker 3: But even without the hunt for a creature called a

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Speaker 3: cryptid like the yarin, this area has been a hotbed

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Speaker 3: for scientific inquiry. From eighteen eighty four to eighteen eighty

413
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:41,920
Speaker 3: nine alone, scientists found five hundred news more than five

414
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:44,919
Speaker 3: hundred new species of plant. It was kind of like

415
00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:51,960
Speaker 3: that older movie with Sean Connery in the Amazon Medicine Man.

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Speaker 4: Where dude, that was not a good movie.

417
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:57,439
Speaker 3: It was not a good movie. The previce was that

418
00:23:57,520 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 3: he is like, he's the guy who is an outsider,

419
00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:04,200
Speaker 3: but he knows the jungle. He discovers these new species

420
00:24:04,240 --> 00:24:07,120
Speaker 3: and he's like fighting big Pharma or something like that.

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00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:10,399
Speaker 4: And I believe the love interest is Elaine Brocco, doctor

422
00:24:10,440 --> 00:24:12,040
Speaker 4: Melfi from the Sopranos.

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Speaker 3: Uh.

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Speaker 4: And of course you know Goodfellows as well.

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Speaker 3: Ah. So we know that people have been searching this area.

426
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Speaker 3: They've found strange animals already, they've found things that were

427
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 3: not known to exist in the larger scientific record, and

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00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:31,520
Speaker 3: as we record today, there are perhaps there are certainly

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Speaker 3: more plants and perhaps even animals that are still out

430
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Speaker 3: there waiting to be discovered. Before we continue, we've got

431
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:40,960
Speaker 3: to point out that we're getting a lot of this

432
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:44,280
Speaker 3: information on the erin from one of the best academic

433
00:24:44,400 --> 00:24:47,880
Speaker 3: Western sources out there. It's a book called The People's

434
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:53,000
Speaker 3: Peaking Man, Popular Science and Human Identity in twentieth century China,

435
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 3: written by Sigrid Schmolzer. And this was probably name I

436
00:24:57,080 --> 00:25:00,200
Speaker 3: know right. This was published in two thousand and eight.

437
00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:03,639
Speaker 3: So as the world of this kind of literature goes,

438
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 3: and as world of cryptozoology goes, it's kind of recent.

439
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 3: You know, it's not a breathless yellow journalism headline.

440
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, But we've also found a bunch of sources

441
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:20,760
Speaker 2: from the late nineties up into pretty recently twenty twenty

442
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 2: four where there are active discussions of the search for

443
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:28,880
Speaker 2: this specific cryptid through all of that time span.

444
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:34,920
Speaker 3: Yes, very much so. And so deep do these searches

445
00:25:34,960 --> 00:25:37,920
Speaker 3: go that it would be impossible for us to name

446
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:42,880
Speaker 3: every single expedition in this episode alone, but we'll we'll

447
00:25:42,880 --> 00:25:46,679
Speaker 3: take you through several of the possibilities here as we

448
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,080
Speaker 3: get to the search. As a matter of fact, maybe

449
00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:52,080
Speaker 3: now that we've done some intros for our sources, we

450
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 3: pause for a word from our sponsors and then dive in.

451
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 3: All right, Mountain, Mama, take me home, countrys Country. The

452
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:15,880
Speaker 3: cat returns, and so we returned to Cigared Schmalzer, who

453
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:19,840
Speaker 3: traces the Chinese search for the Gharran from the days

454
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:23,879
Speaker 3: of ancient folklore to the discovery of something called the

455
00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:27,359
Speaker 3: Peking Man. And we've all heard about the peking Man,

456
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 3: which was for a long time considered a legend until

457
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 3: it was discovered or hard evidence like fossils were discovered

458
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:40,640
Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenties. It's kind of homo erectus, correct.

459
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 4: The peking Man was a prominent symbol of bringing science

460
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 4: to the people. That's kind of cool as a post

461
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:53,920
Speaker 4: revolutionary bit of kind of positive communist propaganda, wouldn't you say.

462
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, Because we know that during the Communist Revolution, the

463
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 3: new government was seeking to reframe popular narratives. Right, this

464
00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:08,520
Speaker 3: is the people's move This is a world wherein the

465
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:12,640
Speaker 3: history of humankind is a history of progress through labor,

466
00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 3: through secular learning. This is not a result of divine intervention,

467
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 3: ghost spirits, or the supernatural.

468
00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:24,399
Speaker 4: That's interesting, So sort of an imposed enlightenment and a

469
00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:29,120
Speaker 4: mandated step away from the religious towards the secular.

470
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:32,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I like imposed enlightenment. That's a that's a

471
00:27:32,840 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 3: really great term for this because we see, you know,

472
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 3: even now in Chinese authorities have a bad reaction to

473
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 3: films with ghosts in them, things like that.

474
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:48,440
Speaker 4: You know, Ben, I was thinking about this when looking

475
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:50,720
Speaker 4: through your research dot com before we went on the air,

476
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 4: and it occurred to me that a lot of American

477
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 4: films when they get Chinese releases, they have to be

478
00:27:56,840 --> 00:28:02,160
Speaker 4: recut almost entirely to remove mentions of the supernatural.

479
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:05,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, which we discussed in our previous episode.

480
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:08,400
Speaker 4: I thought, yeah, doesn't isn't that a sort of aligned

481
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:09,119
Speaker 4: with that shift?

482
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:12,720
Speaker 3: One hundred percent, dude, one hundred percent. And so as

483
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:18,680
Speaker 3: this government is seeking to undermine religion to move people

484
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 3: away from previous superstitions, they also want to champion socialism

485
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 3: and advanced science. So if you go to chapter seven

486
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 3: of Schmalzer's work in specific, you get this fascinating anecdote

487
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 3: that tells us how this phase of urine fervor urine fever,

488
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 3: I should say, and scientific investigation begins to say, you're

489
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,760
Speaker 3: in fever. It's yeah, yeah, funny. Yeah. Well, if you

490
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:52,360
Speaker 3: like terrible puns, you're in luck. Yeah. Well, let's let's

491
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 3: share the story, guys, like, how how did this go

492
00:28:55,680 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 3: from a thing of legend and folklore to a rush

493
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 3: of scientific investigation.

494
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 2: Well, so let's begin with just the peaking man at least,

495
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 2: reconstructions of some of the shards of the peaking man's

496
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:14,480
Speaker 2: skull and pieces of the peaking man's skull were thought

497
00:29:14,520 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 2: to be Homo rectus, so a version of human before

498
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 2: we the version of us. And there are a couple

499
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 2: of professors there in nineteen fifty six that are checking

500
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 2: it out. It's the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Natural

501
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 2: History Museum. They're looking at this reconstruction of the peaking

502
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:41,080
Speaker 2: Man's skull, and one of them made a little statement.

503
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's professors Mao Guangyan and Wang Ziatlin. And Mao

504
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:51,680
Speaker 3: is looking at this stuff. These guys are both att

505
00:29:51,680 --> 00:29:54,720
Speaker 3: at professors, as you said, And he hears his colleague

506
00:29:54,720 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 3: Wang say this, Yonren, I've seen it before. Ed. Mao says, basically,

507
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:04,920
Speaker 3: what is wrong with you? Are your nerves all right?

508
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:08,520
Speaker 3: Do you have a fever? Bro? Peeking mad is a

509
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:11,960
Speaker 3: human ancestor from five hundred thousand years ago. How could

510
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:14,720
Speaker 3: you have seen one living with your own eyes?

511
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:18,560
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, he's already talking about the fever. The Wang

512
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 4: goes on to explain that back in nineteen forty, while

513
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:24,840
Speaker 4: on safari or on an expedition for the Yellow River

514
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 4: Water Control Committee, he and others in his group came

515
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 4: across this sort of half ape, half human, chimera hybrid

516
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:35,040
Speaker 4: kind of creature who had been shot dead by indigenous

517
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 4: folks or folks local to that area. So let's keep

518
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 4: in mind that these aren't just too you know, crotchety, old,

519
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 4: get off my lawn type dudes shooting the breeze, you know,

520
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:49,440
Speaker 4: at the local coffee shop, t shop, you know, passing

521
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:53,959
Speaker 4: around tall tales, spinning yarns. No, these are experts in

522
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 4: their fields, vetted professors, and their conversation at the museum

523
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 4: launched and other like minded colleagues into you guessed it

524
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 4: that you're in full blown You're in fever.

525
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:10,320
Speaker 2: Yellow River. You're in fever. Come on, guys, what's going

526
00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 2: on here?

527
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 3: Think about it. Picture us as Charlie Day by the

528
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:19,560
Speaker 3: red string board and think about it.

529
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:22,040
Speaker 2: But it does make sense, right, Okay, So if one

530
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 2: of these Vetta professors says, hey, I've seen this thing before.

531
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, I have this specific instance where I

532
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:32,520
Speaker 2: saw something very much like this dead like a version

533
00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 2: of it. Now, it would make you, as a professor,

534
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 2: want to go check that out, because my god, guys,

535
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:42,880
Speaker 2: if there are versions of humanity that still exist somewhere,

536
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 2: deep in a cave system, deep in a forest system,

537
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:51,200
Speaker 2: somewhere that's hidden, a population that is specifically attempting to

538
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:55,000
Speaker 2: hide from all of the stuff outside of their world,

539
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 2: then we it would be awesome to find it. Right,

540
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:01,200
Speaker 2: You're at least as a professor, you're going to get

541
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 2: some grants off of that.

542
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 3: Right.

543
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:05,360
Speaker 2: Sorry, don't mean to make it about money, but yeah, I.

544
00:32:05,320 --> 00:32:07,440
Speaker 3: Mean it is. It's about money. It's about the things

545
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 3: beyond money, like prestige and legacy. Right, And this is

546
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:14,560
Speaker 3: I think this is a fantastic point because it also

547
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 3: incorporates some incredibly important social context. Now had probably heard

548
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 3: stories like this fourth or fifth hand from rural populations,

549
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 3: but even at the time when all people were supposed

550
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 3: to be equal under the Party, there was a ton

551
00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 3: of prejudice from urban elites against rural people. The phrase

552
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 3: translates to stuff like country bumpkin. You know. So they

553
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 3: had all these stereotypes about people who lived outside of

554
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 3: the cities. This doesn't have that stereotype apply. It's a

555
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 3: respected colleague, right, Well, we've both been to school, etc.

556
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 3: We have quote unquote seeing the world or read about it.

557
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 3: And because of this we see the origins of yarn fever.

558
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:05,719
Speaker 3: Now it doesn't take off right away. It's a bit artsy,

559
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 3: like if you've ever met an academic in Williamsburg or Brooklyn,

560
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 3: you know it's a bit rarefied air. The nineteen fifties

561
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties, you see these relatively comparatively small scale research

562
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:27,000
Speaker 3: efforts on yerin documenting historical records, maybe sending a few expeditions.

563
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 3: And these occur thanks to the work of Mao in particular,

564
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:36,400
Speaker 3: again not Mao Zedong different now, and then there are

565
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 3: other Chinese scientists who kind of wu tang in on this,

566
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 3: namely folks from what's called the Institute of Vertebrae, Palaeotology

567
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:50,160
Speaker 3: and paleo Anthropology or IVPPP. See not gonna let you

568
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:57,440
Speaker 3: down right PPT. For about two decades after that museum conversation,

569
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:01,760
Speaker 3: the idea that we could leverage science to learn more

570
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:05,720
Speaker 3: about this. It was restricted to some rural communities and

571
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:10,400
Speaker 3: intellectuals who were at that time frankly considered eccentric, and

572
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 3: maw was a one a man army. For a minute,

573
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 3: he was looking at possible relations between the YearIn stories

574
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:22,240
Speaker 3: and legends of the Yetti. He was looking at fossil

575
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:26,080
Speaker 3: records of apes and hominids. He was doing some bone

576
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:31,360
Speaker 3: comparison modern humans. And the further he went, even starting

577
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:34,239
Speaker 3: so skeptically, the further he went, the more convinced he

578
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 3: was that he was on to something.

579
00:34:38,160 --> 00:34:41,400
Speaker 4: So in the closing years of the cultural revolution in China,

580
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:43,799
Speaker 4: which was kind of a big deal and not quite

581
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:47,080
Speaker 4: as cool as it sounds, guys, Right, doesn't it sound

582
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:49,640
Speaker 4: like a positive thing, like a really positive sea change,

583
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:53,800
Speaker 4: But it was very much an iron fisted grasp over culture,

584
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 4: and that was the revolution in question, right, Ben.

585
00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, that's right.

586
00:34:58,040 --> 00:34:58,120
Speaker 2: No.

587
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 3: The idea is that we can get rid of all

588
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:03,760
Speaker 3: the beliefs of the past.

589
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:06,080
Speaker 4: We need to embrace cleaners.

590
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, clean clean house will remake the foundations of the house.

591
00:35:10,560 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 3: It's very A lot of people died, right, and a

592
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 3: lot and there you know, the idea of human rights

593
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:19,800
Speaker 3: is something that gets thrown out the window.

594
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,799
Speaker 4: Oh there's just so many good little things about communism.

595
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:24,479
Speaker 4: No one's just figured out how to do it well.

596
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, socialism maybe more so.

597
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:30,879
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's crazy how it starts off with good

598
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 4: intentions and inevitably becomes a totalitarian dictatorship wherein anybody who

599
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:36,759
Speaker 4: is different is squashed.

600
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 3: And what makes the YearIn is such an electric, galvanizing

601
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 3: subject of interest in research. It happens because of the

602
00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:51,560
Speaker 3: social context in which this exploration occurs. It goes down

603
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 3: to really three major factors. I don't know if we

604
00:35:55,080 --> 00:35:58,000
Speaker 3: want to walk through these briefly, but I think they

605
00:35:58,160 --> 00:35:59,320
Speaker 3: tell us about the story.

606
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 4: So at this point, some of these extreme, very aggressive

607
00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 4: political campaigns that sort of typified the beginning of the

608
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:10,719
Speaker 4: cultural revolution, we're starting to die down. So people were

609
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:13,880
Speaker 4: starting to be a little less afraid of the consequences

610
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:17,440
Speaker 4: of associating themselves with things that were identified as superstitious.

611
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 4: This started to be perhaps a little bit of a

612
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,880
Speaker 4: sense of maybe things were going to improve, perhaps or

613
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:27,239
Speaker 4: that I don't know, people were a little less terrified

614
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 4: of stepping out and owning these you know, past beliefs.

615
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:38,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of like pilots and military aviation professionals reporting

616
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:41,759
Speaker 3: strange stuff in the sky. Once one person is coming

617
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 3: out and talking about it and not getting punished, other

618
00:36:44,760 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 3: people feel less hesitant to.

619
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 4: Do specially especially now that we even have government acknowledgment

620
00:36:50,080 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 4: of some of those things to some degree. It feels

621
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:52,759
Speaker 4: like it does open the.

622
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:56,919
Speaker 3: Floodgates, and then so people are less hesitant to talk

623
00:36:56,920 --> 00:37:01,560
Speaker 3: about this. That's right. Second, a lot of Western writing

624
00:37:01,920 --> 00:37:06,040
Speaker 3: is newly available where scientists in China we can't wait

625
00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:09,279
Speaker 3: to read and translate this stuff. We have received a

626
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 3: directive right to push forward with science. And while we're

627
00:37:13,160 --> 00:37:18,720
Speaker 3: reading this stuff, we find loads of reports from our neighbors,

628
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:23,319
Speaker 3: to the North Russia Soviet Union on their version of

629
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:25,319
Speaker 3: this kind of cryptid We see a lot of stuff

630
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 3: about Yeti and Bigfoot, because that stuff was already in

631
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:32,760
Speaker 3: those other cultural zeitgeist. It was already getting written about

632
00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 3: a lot. So people are therefore more likely to read

633
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 3: about things related to this. And then what do we

634
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 3: do when we read about something happening somewhere else, We

635
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:45,360
Speaker 3: immediately try to connect it to something closer to home.

636
00:37:45,800 --> 00:37:46,960
Speaker 3: And that's what occurred.

637
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:50,000
Speaker 2: We talked about it in a couple of our primary

638
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:54,560
Speaker 2: Bigfoot episodes about signings in the US were occurring back

639
00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 2: in the eighteen hundreds, right with logging camps, Like way

640
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:02,000
Speaker 2: back in the day, people were seeing stuff stuff, Harry,

641
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 2: wild guys out there in the forest as the forests

642
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:08,839
Speaker 2: are being chopped down. And you can only imagine that

643
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 2: if those stories had been around for so long. Yeah,

644
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:13,840
Speaker 2: you're it's exactly right, Ben. You want to find the

645
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 2: ones that are out near you if there are these things.

646
00:38:18,239 --> 00:38:23,280
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, exactly, especially when you see those The reports

647
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 3: grow more vague the further back we go in history.

648
00:38:26,239 --> 00:38:29,719
Speaker 3: But now you start, you're one of these Chinese scientists, researchers,

649
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 3: you start reading about indigenous people's stories right in the Americas,

650
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,440
Speaker 3: in North America, on that continent specifically, and then you

651
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:42,319
Speaker 3: start saying, hang on a tick I remember. Because you're

652
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:46,960
Speaker 3: unreasonably British, You're like, hey, got a tick I remember? These? Uh,

653
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:50,719
Speaker 3: these stories kind of beat for beat, go with the

654
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:54,759
Speaker 3: stories we ignored from all those country bumpkins, all those peasants.

655
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:58,399
Speaker 3: What if they were onto something They can't figure it out,

656
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:04,080
Speaker 3: But me a learned man, well, tally ho, they said,

657
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:10,879
Speaker 3: in right, and so now because like the point you made,

658
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:14,720
Speaker 3: it's easier to publish things without being arrested, right, without

659
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:20,000
Speaker 3: being a target of a political campaign. Now people are

660
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:24,239
Speaker 3: able to publish more easily, and there is a proliferation

661
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 3: therefore of popular science and science fiction. And the Errant

662
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:31,840
Speaker 3: is the perfect subject for this. It touches evolution, it

663
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:35,160
Speaker 3: touches the identity of the wild and the urban, It

664
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 3: touches what it means to be a modern human and

665
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:41,399
Speaker 3: the importance of science. So these three factors can buy

666
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 3: and they make a feedback loop, an ouroboros of interest

667
00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:49,800
Speaker 3: and reading and publishing that begins to consume itself and grow,

668
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,360
Speaker 3: which is not how consuming oneself works. We're going to

669
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 3: leave that analogy. It's been a weird week for all

670
00:39:56,000 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 3: of us. We'll pause for word from our sponsors, and

671
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:02,480
Speaker 3: then we'll get to the hunt, because there are some

672
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:05,759
Speaker 3: human characters in this story just as important as the

673
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:13,239
Speaker 3: Yarin itself.

674
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 2: And we've returned. Let's get to the actual physical attempt

675
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:21,360
Speaker 2: to find a urin, and we are jumping to a

676
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 2: gentleman named Li Jian. This is an historian. He's working

677
00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 2: as the vice secretary of a propaganda department in this

678
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:31,760
Speaker 2: area that we talked about, Shenungia.

679
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:35,200
Speaker 3: Oh and think about it. Propaganda, just gonna point that out.

680
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Propaganda, which it's information that seeks to sway

681
00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 2: somebody to whoever's writing it or whoever's controlling the writings

682
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:50,319
Speaker 2: way of thinking. So propaganda guy vice secretary in the

683
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:54,759
Speaker 2: same area where this Shenania forest is. He began collecting

684
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:57,279
Speaker 2: all kinds of reports from people who had been out

685
00:40:57,320 --> 00:41:00,359
Speaker 2: in the forested area who had said, hey, hey, I

686
00:41:00,400 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 2: saw something that I can't explain. I believe it's one

687
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 2: of these urine things. We think local villagers here, locals

688
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:10,960
Speaker 2: that have been seeing this four years, going all the

689
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:15,160
Speaker 2: way back to nineteen forty five. He this person Lee

690
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:18,880
Speaker 2: gained the nickname the Minister of Urine.

691
00:41:21,080 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 3: Y Yeah, yeah, king himself sorry y e ri e yes.

692
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:32,480
Speaker 3: And so in nineteen seventy six, the stuff he's collected,

693
00:41:32,880 --> 00:41:36,759
Speaker 3: it gets the attention of a guy. He's a professor

694
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:42,279
Speaker 3: of evolutionary theory in East China Normal University. His name

695
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 3: is Liu min Shuang, and he goes on to become

696
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:51,319
Speaker 3: the most prolific writer about yurin in China, and again

697
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:54,080
Speaker 3: he's a professor, so he gets a nickname as well,

698
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:58,959
Speaker 3: the Professor of Urine. I do think, if we're going

699
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 3: with the pea puns, Minister of Urine is probably a

700
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:05,040
Speaker 3: better name. Professor of Urine feels weird, even though we

701
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:09,080
Speaker 3: know urologists or a real thing. Anyway, Other scientists, including

702
00:42:09,120 --> 00:42:13,720
Speaker 3: those from the IVPP, jump on board, and Schmalzer says

703
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,799
Speaker 3: there are teams of scientists and technicians, local officials and

704
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:21,840
Speaker 3: rural people who have had eyewitness accounts. They start tracking

705
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:26,319
Speaker 3: the yeh in earnest. They get dozens of reports, they

706
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:31,359
Speaker 3: find footprints, even a few alleged hair samples, and by

707
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven, scientists are publishing articles about this in

708
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:41,480
Speaker 3: popular science magazines, but also they're publishing serious scientific research.

709
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 3: These are where you see magazines like Scientific Experiment and

710
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:50,440
Speaker 3: an outfit called Fossils, which is the publication of IVPP,

711
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:55,240
Speaker 3: And then general interest magazines and newspapers start carrying stories

712
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 3: about the investigation referencing this other stuff. This is a

713
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 3: huge win because unlike other Western papers, the Chinese experts

714
00:43:04,200 --> 00:43:09,080
Speaker 3: aren't really debunking the erin. They're taking a different approach,

715
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:14,320
Speaker 3: and intellectuals experts stem. Experts in other fields are hopping

716
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:17,560
Speaker 3: into the game, and there are government officials, there are

717
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:20,960
Speaker 3: professional writers who are working on this. If you want

718
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:25,319
Speaker 3: to be a cool party member or party official, why

719
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 3: not make a little peace of the erin for your

720
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:31,640
Speaker 3: local paper and they'll be like, oh, deputy vice subprime

721
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:37,920
Speaker 3: assistant to the subprime deputy actual, he gets it. I

722
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:40,359
Speaker 3: wish I could vote, I'd vote for him.

723
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just reminder, the IVPP as the Institute of

724
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:48,239
Speaker 2: Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

725
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:51,680
Speaker 4: So let's go into some of the inclusions of this

726
00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 4: kind of lore, I guess is the appropriate term here,

727
00:43:55,680 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 4: into popular culture and into literature. So since it was

728
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 4: the social trend as much as it was a scientific trend,

729
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 4: there's not much of a surprise that year and fever

730
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 4: started to expand beyond nonfiction and into the world of

731
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 4: literary fiction. Plays were written, novels, poems. There's lines between

732
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:18,399
Speaker 4: genres was being crossed just as much as the line

733
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:23,840
Speaker 4: between science and kind of zeitgeisty pop culture was being crossed. Maybe,

734
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 4: if not crossed, then certainly blurred.

735
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:31,359
Speaker 2: It feels a little bit like the propaganda thing is working.

736
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:34,759
Speaker 3: Exactly and you have to wonder too about motivation. We

737
00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:37,600
Speaker 3: have not spoken with these scientists directly, by the way,

738
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 3: many of them have passed away, but the science does continue,

739
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 3: imperfect as it may be, there are legitimate, good faith inquiries.

740
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:51,920
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty one, the newly minted Chinese Anthropological Society

741
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:56,279
Speaker 3: has their first get together, right, and in that get

742
00:44:56,280 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 3: together they endorse the establishment of the Chinese Yarin Investigative

743
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:07,279
Speaker 3: Research Association. This is a level of official approval that

744
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 3: simply had not existed in the Western world for things

745
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:14,799
Speaker 3: like Bigfoot or in the United States in particular. And

746
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:19,320
Speaker 3: this association grows to have hundreds and hundreds of members,

747
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 3: and the majority of these members are legit scientists, and

748
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:27,560
Speaker 3: the goal to find the Yarin still exists in step

749
00:45:27,600 --> 00:45:32,799
Speaker 3: with the goal to push science over fantasy. So they're

750
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:36,520
Speaker 3: saying the Yarin is an organism, a living thing, right

751
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 3: that eats, sleeps, and shits and reproduces. It is not

752
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 3: MP's obviously, and is not a legend, a ghost or

753
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 3: a spirit. So this means that Yarin fever also becomes

754
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 3: socially powerful for people. They can challenge these once sacracainct

755
00:45:56,960 --> 00:46:01,240
Speaker 3: cognitive institutions like the hard belief in God. They can

756
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:06,160
Speaker 3: also kind of ask themselves what the yerin tells them

757
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:12,080
Speaker 3: about themselves. It's a really rapidly industrializing nation. It's in

758
00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 3: a deep I don't want to call it an identity crisis,

759
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:18,200
Speaker 3: but it's in an interrogation of its own national identity.

760
00:46:18,520 --> 00:46:22,160
Speaker 3: So now the Urin is representing an opportunity to ask

761
00:46:22,239 --> 00:46:25,960
Speaker 3: questions about the line between man and animal science, superstition.

762
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:29,200
Speaker 3: People are reading about the Yurin and they're saying, what

763
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:31,480
Speaker 3: does it mean for me to be a human today?

764
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:36,680
Speaker 3: So it hits the zeitgeist perfectly. It's a bullseye, you know.

765
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:40,680
Speaker 3: And then we have to get to the We have

766
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:42,279
Speaker 3: to say it. I don't love to say it because

767
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:44,480
Speaker 3: I think we're having a fun time with this exploration.

768
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 3: But did they ever actually find one? No?

769
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 4: Do they ever?

770
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:53,200
Speaker 3: Not that we know of, Not that we know of.

771
00:46:53,960 --> 00:46:57,280
Speaker 3: I love a world where maybe they did find a yarin.

772
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:00,320
Speaker 3: It was far more intelligent than they assumed, and it

773
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 3: gave him some like rousing al Pacino ted Lasso's speech,

774
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:07,879
Speaker 3: and they said, okay, we'll keep your secret. But as

775
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,360
Speaker 3: far as we know, that didn't happen either. The theories

776
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:16,640
Speaker 3: are increasingly scientifically based the idea that it could maybe

777
00:47:16,719 --> 00:47:23,400
Speaker 3: have been descended from Gigantopithecus. Maw believed that was documented

778
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:27,440
Speaker 3: in old Imperial era writing. He definitely didn't think it

779
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:33,560
Speaker 3: was supernatural stuff. We know that people became increasingly, i

780
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:37,640
Speaker 3: would say, first more secular and the more skeptical as

781
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:40,920
Speaker 3: time went on. There's the idea. I thought we'd love

782
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 3: this one. In nineteen seventy nine, a scholar named Seang

783
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:49,440
Speaker 3: Yu Cheng started advancing this idea that's already familiar to

784
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:53,520
Speaker 3: Western cryptozoology, and he basically said, look, the people who

785
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:57,880
Speaker 3: are giving us all these eyewitness reports, they're not experts,

786
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, they're not themselves bylogists or

787
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:04,360
Speaker 3: botanist or what have you. They may have seen something

788
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:08,360
Speaker 3: and then they mistook it for an extraordinary creature because

789
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:12,720
Speaker 3: of the circumstances. I feel like that's a little dismissive, because,

790
00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:16,359
Speaker 3: as we know, when you grow up and spend your

791
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:20,120
Speaker 3: entire life in a specific area of the world, a

792
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:22,560
Speaker 3: specific you know, a stretch of woods, you get to

793
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:25,000
Speaker 3: know those woods pretty well, you know what I mean.

794
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it reminds me of I'm going to bring

795
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:32,839
Speaker 2: it back to Department of Truth one more time.

796
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 3: Guys.

797
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 2: It reminds me of this concept of once you believe

798
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 2: hard enough in something or what Once enough people believe

799
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:44,120
Speaker 2: in something, it kind of becomes more true. And I'm

800
00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:47,520
Speaker 2: not saying that it creates a yurine out there, but

801
00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 2: now that the popular culture has swelled to a point

802
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 2: where it feels as though it could be a thing

803
00:48:55,000 --> 00:48:59,080
Speaker 2: out there lurking in the woods, you are probably more

804
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 2: likely to mistake something that's far out in the distance

805
00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:04,880
Speaker 2: or a certain sound that you're not familiar with it,

806
00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 2: even if you are familiar with the woods as like

807
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:11,520
Speaker 2: possibly this other thing right right.

808
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 3: It's the pattern you're primed to accept at that point.

809
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 2: I feel like that's a strong thing in all cultures

810
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:22,279
Speaker 2: when there is a tale of something like this that

811
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:23,800
Speaker 2: might be lurking out there.

812
00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 3: One hundred percent, I'll see you on that. And add

813
00:49:27,040 --> 00:49:31,560
Speaker 3: another factor that should be considered, which is that imagine

814
00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 3: you're growing up in a non wealthy, rural part of China.

815
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:40,840
Speaker 3: The urban and intellectual elites have historically just talks so

816
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:43,960
Speaker 3: much spack about you and been rude and dismissive, and

817
00:49:44,000 --> 00:49:46,239
Speaker 3: now all of a sudden you have the opportunity to

818
00:49:46,280 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 3: be an expert on a thing the errand therefore becomes

819
00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:54,279
Speaker 3: a possible means of income. Right, I'm a guide now

820
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 3: in an expedition, and perhaps more importantly than the money, now,

821
00:49:58,120 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 3: people who did not respect me are listening to me.

822
00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:04,920
Speaker 3: So if I have therefore a yearn story, then I

823
00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:09,919
Speaker 3: have raised to some degree my social status. That's that's

824
00:50:10,040 --> 00:50:14,120
Speaker 3: just a sad part of human dynamics. Right. We also know,

825
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:18,879
Speaker 3: all right, this guy we mentioned, Shang, he said, yeah,

826
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:22,480
Speaker 3: I said, untrained observers might be mistaken, and he pointed

827
00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:26,000
Speaker 3: to one of our favorite examples. It's just how Western

828
00:50:26,040 --> 00:50:31,000
Speaker 3: science eventually proved mermaids were probably just marine mammals cited

829
00:50:31,040 --> 00:50:36,120
Speaker 3: by extremely horny, desperately lonely sailors to the point about

830
00:50:36,160 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 3: primed to see a pattern. You know what I mean.

831
00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:41,239
Speaker 3: I mean, you think a man, it is ugly man,

832
00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:44,200
Speaker 3: but spend eight months at sea and then check back in.

833
00:50:45,520 --> 00:50:47,319
Speaker 2: Or don't just don't.

834
00:50:47,480 --> 00:50:49,319
Speaker 3: You could always write us, You could write us.

835
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:53,280
Speaker 4: I think mandates have a certain kind of uncanny beauty

836
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:54,520
Speaker 4: to them personally.

837
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're coming from, you know, a very anthrocentric aspect.

838
00:50:59,280 --> 00:51:02,279
Speaker 3: You know, they probably think we're ugly as sin, you

839
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:02,839
Speaker 3: know what I mean?

840
00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:06,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, or then we're way too hairy and you're.

841
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 3: Way too hairy weird for yourself. I'm just hairy enough.

842
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 3: So these later scholars will also we're talking about this

843
00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:17,640
Speaker 3: a little bit off air. Later scholars, especially Western ones,

844
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:21,360
Speaker 3: like writing in twenty twenty one. In more recent years,

845
00:51:21,680 --> 00:51:26,080
Speaker 3: they'll often posit that the myth of the rain is

846
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:30,200
Speaker 3: based on early encounters in Central and western China with

847
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:34,399
Speaker 3: more Semitic or European people who would tend to have

848
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 3: more facial hair, would definitely speak unknown languages and maybe

849
00:51:40,040 --> 00:51:42,719
Speaker 3: a real shock to see him in the woods. But

850
00:51:42,800 --> 00:51:45,600
Speaker 3: then the question becomes, why were they naked?

851
00:51:47,360 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 2: That's the way to be.

852
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:50,720
Speaker 4: It is the natural state.

853
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, not kidding. Boys, if you saw me just out

854
00:51:55,640 --> 00:51:58,040
Speaker 2: naked in the woods in my natural state before I

855
00:51:58,080 --> 00:52:01,359
Speaker 2: found manscaped, would not know what to think.

856
00:52:02,239 --> 00:52:04,760
Speaker 4: An ad not an ad.

857
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:10,839
Speaker 3: So uh, yeah, we're actually not working with manscape. We're

858
00:52:10,840 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 3: now working with yarinescapes. There we go, which is which,

859
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:18,520
Speaker 3: how far do we want to go into this? No,

860
00:52:18,760 --> 00:52:21,120
Speaker 3: because it's the opposite of manscape. It's a thing you

861
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:23,799
Speaker 3: rub on and it just like creates strips of hair

862
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:27,440
Speaker 3: where you rub it so that you can cover yourself

863
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 3: in hair, which is you, guys, listen to this episode

864
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:34,759
Speaker 3: years in the in the future, it's going to be

865
00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:37,720
Speaker 3: pressing it. You're welcome erinescaped fifteen percent off.

866
00:52:38,040 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 2: If you can come up with that, whoever you are

867
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 2: listening to that, and you just had a light bulb

868
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:45,480
Speaker 2: go off, you would make billions of dollars.

869
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:49,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're not saying fifteen percent off when you order.

870
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 3: We're saying, if you come up with it, fifteen percent

871
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:55,600
Speaker 3: for us. Yeah, expliration, you can pay us in big

872
00:52:55,640 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 3: foot hair. The So anyway, we know this social content

873
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:03,760
Speaker 3: of China. It helps create this craze, but it also

874
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:10,480
Speaker 3: complicates it because China is attempting to explain things through

875
00:53:10,960 --> 00:53:15,960
Speaker 3: a very localized perspective. We mentioned embracing the concept of evolution,

876
00:53:16,560 --> 00:53:20,719
Speaker 3: but I don't know if every Western knows this. There's

877
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 3: a popular belief in China that is sometimes accepted as

878
00:53:24,200 --> 00:53:28,200
Speaker 3: hard science that modern humans did not originate on the

879
00:53:28,239 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 3: African continent, that instead they originated in China and then

880
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:36,720
Speaker 3: spread from there. So the erin was used to justify

881
00:53:36,760 --> 00:53:38,680
Speaker 3: that by some authors.

882
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:41,960
Speaker 2: We'll see that's very interesting, and there's something I wanted

883
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:43,359
Speaker 2: to bring up here. I think there's a good place

884
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:48,960
Speaker 2: to do it. Recently, Popular Mechanics wrote a story about footprints,

885
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:52,600
Speaker 2: a very specific set of footprints from a tetrapod. So

886
00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:57,160
Speaker 2: that's just a four legged creature that theoretically where they

887
00:53:57,200 --> 00:54:00,400
Speaker 2: found it. When they found it within the fossil record,

888
00:54:00,960 --> 00:54:06,359
Speaker 2: it pushes back the development of a type of humanity, right,

889
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:11,920
Speaker 2: not necessarily Homo erectus or Homo sapien, but way far back.

890
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:16,240
Speaker 2: It pushes forward the development of tetrapods by forty million

891
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:21,920
Speaker 2: years potentially, which means we really could have some of

892
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:27,600
Speaker 2: our stuff way way wrong. I mean only because what

893
00:54:27,640 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 2: we know is what we've found of us far and

894
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 2: maybe we just haven't found those things, including all of

895
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:36,760
Speaker 2: these missing links, right, including all of the time scales

896
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:40,000
Speaker 2: and timelines that are mysterious to us.

897
00:54:40,880 --> 00:54:44,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that's a salient point. That's why

898
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:47,440
Speaker 3: it's also interesting to go back and revisit these episodes.

899
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:53,799
Speaker 3: As more investigation continues, we're continually learning, by we, I

900
00:54:53,800 --> 00:54:58,399
Speaker 3: mean modern society human and not. We're continually learning that

901
00:54:59,280 --> 00:55:04,120
Speaker 3: the timeline is a little bit longer than people thought

902
00:55:04,160 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 3: it was. And that's why lost civilizations are also another

903
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:11,360
Speaker 3: fascinating exploit. We still don't know what caused the Bronze

904
00:55:11,400 --> 00:55:15,120
Speaker 3: Age collapse. We have no idea. Somewhere along the line,

905
00:55:15,239 --> 00:55:18,480
Speaker 3: things just screwed up, and we still don't know so

906
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:24,720
Speaker 3: many things about what, when, and where breakthroughs and evolution occurred.

907
00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:27,759
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and by the way, that forty million years

908
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:30,799
Speaker 2: thing makes me think about the I can't remember the

909
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:34,080
Speaker 2: name of the theory. The theory that there was potentially

910
00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:36,440
Speaker 2: another advanced civilization.

911
00:55:36,280 --> 00:55:38,319
Speaker 3: That was hilary and hypothesis siluriing that.

912
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:44,440
Speaker 2: Was potentially not based in ape human intelligence and advancement,

913
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:48,239
Speaker 2: but in maybe reptilian advancement or something other.

914
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:53,440
Speaker 3: And that is spot on with that, folks. We do

915
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:55,759
Speaker 3: have an episode on that wall. We went through a

916
00:55:55,760 --> 00:55:59,520
Speaker 3: phase with that one. I remember it and the research.

917
00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 3: The researchers there phrase that as a thought experiment. They

918
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:07,200
Speaker 3: make such a compelling argument for that conspiracy. We also

919
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:10,920
Speaker 3: know that the Erin fever has largely faded, but it's

920
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:15,919
Speaker 3: still got a significant mark on society. The IVPP their

921
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:20,880
Speaker 3: magazine Fossils. A little while back they decided to stop

922
00:56:20,920 --> 00:56:25,280
Speaker 3: publishing papers about the Erin because none of the expeditions

923
00:56:25,360 --> 00:56:29,080
Speaker 3: produced any solid proof. But then after that they did

924
00:56:29,080 --> 00:56:31,560
Speaker 3: a poll in their magazine, and the poll had some

925
00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 3: surprising results. These are all Chinese nationals who get pulled.

926
00:56:36,880 --> 00:56:39,640
Speaker 3: Thirty two percent of the people in the poll say

927
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:43,000
Speaker 3: they don't believe the Erin ever existed. We got something

928
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:46,839
Speaker 3: wrong in the folklore. Twenty three percent say I think

929
00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:49,520
Speaker 3: it was around at some point, and like so many

930
00:56:49,560 --> 00:56:54,800
Speaker 3: other animals, it went extinct. And then seventeen percent, almost

931
00:56:54,800 --> 00:56:58,600
Speaker 3: twenty percent of the people that they asked, they said, yeah,

932
00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:01,040
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, it might be like I've never

933
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:06,280
Speaker 3: been to that forest. I've never seen a giant salamander,

934
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:08,919
Speaker 3: but I have Google, you know, I could. I could

935
00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:13,839
Speaker 3: see it, Like, it's not impossible. And so all of

936
00:57:13,840 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 3: this means that the Yarin is still kind of retreated

937
00:57:17,560 --> 00:57:20,760
Speaker 3: to the position of fringe science, similar to that of

938
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 3: the Western Bigfoot. But the weirdest thing is, as we

939
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:29,280
Speaker 3: record Friday, May twenty third, the search continues today. What

940
00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:31,200
Speaker 3: do we think, guys, do we want to give an

941
00:57:31,240 --> 00:57:35,840
Speaker 3: absolute yes no on Yerin? Do we want to pull ourselves?

942
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say maybe no.

943
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 4: I think it's might be a no for me, Doug,

944
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:42,360
Speaker 4: maybe a no for no.

945
00:57:43,720 --> 00:57:44,320
Speaker 3: I don't know.

946
00:57:44,400 --> 00:57:48,600
Speaker 2: I'm jumping over to China Daily real quick reading a

947
00:57:48,600 --> 00:57:52,280
Speaker 2: little article here about nature observers and how the job

948
00:57:52,320 --> 00:57:57,880
Speaker 2: postings in twenty twenty four in July lists that one

949
00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:00,800
Speaker 2: of the things you need to be a nature observer

950
00:58:01,280 --> 00:58:06,919
Speaker 2: is to have the capability of outrunning urine. So I mean, hey,

951
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:09,800
Speaker 2: come on, I.

952
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:13,560
Speaker 3: Mean, no matter how you want to punt it, it's

953
00:58:13,600 --> 00:58:18,200
Speaker 3: always good. It's always a good idea outrun. Now, don't

954
00:58:18,240 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 3: let the urine run on you less it is. Is

955
00:58:23,680 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 3: it matt from your sense when you're reading that, Is

956
00:58:26,240 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 3: that meant to be like fun satirical or does it

957
00:58:28,760 --> 00:58:30,720
Speaker 3: feel like okay, okay.

958
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:32,920
Speaker 2: I'm being fun and satirical about it. I think I

959
00:58:32,920 --> 00:58:35,800
Speaker 2: think if you destroy like you, if you go to

960
00:58:35,840 --> 00:58:38,640
Speaker 2: the absolute position of this is hogwashing, dumb, and we

961
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:41,680
Speaker 2: shouldn't think about it. I think that it defeats the

962
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:44,760
Speaker 2: point of it, which is just like it's a way

963
00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:46,240
Speaker 2: to get people out in the woods.

964
00:58:47,240 --> 00:58:48,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's important.

965
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:54,480
Speaker 2: Humans plus woods equals probably a cooler civilization just because

966
00:58:54,520 --> 00:58:56,520
Speaker 2: and when you hang out in nature like that, you

967
00:58:56,600 --> 00:58:57,880
Speaker 2: see things a little differently.

968
00:58:58,160 --> 00:59:01,840
Speaker 3: I think it has hard physicological effects on the human

969
00:59:01,880 --> 00:59:04,800
Speaker 3: as well, like beneficial effects. I would say, all we

970
00:59:04,880 --> 00:59:08,280
Speaker 3: need to caveat that with is humans hanging out in

971
00:59:08,320 --> 00:59:12,080
Speaker 3: the woods without destroying the woods. A that's cool, you

972
00:59:12,080 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 3: know what I mean?

973
00:59:12,840 --> 00:59:18,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, only you can prevent forest fires and urine attacks.

974
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:21,760
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so go camping. That's one of our takeaways.

975
00:59:22,120 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 4: In order for urineto attack, doesn't it always kind of

976
00:59:24,320 --> 00:59:27,280
Speaker 4: require a slight downhill slope. That's the only way that

977
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:28,920
Speaker 4: it can, you know, advance.

978
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:31,680
Speaker 2: It depends on the pressure of the system, I think.

979
00:59:31,720 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 3: And you're talking about city urine.

980
00:59:33,920 --> 00:59:35,720
Speaker 4: That's right, you're talking about country urine.

981
00:59:35,840 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, we brought the prejudice back. Yeah, it's a

982
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:42,120
Speaker 3: good question. This is the last note we always like

983
00:59:42,160 --> 00:59:45,520
Speaker 3: to end on with cryptid episodes. Humanity, as you hear

984
00:59:45,600 --> 00:59:49,800
Speaker 3: this is reaching one of the most profound periods in history.

985
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 3: As humans continue to encroach into wild areas, and as

986
00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:59,240
Speaker 3: surveillance technology has more and more sophisticated breakthroughs year over year,

987
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:03,920
Speaker 3: civilization is now more than ever, thank you, Fox News,

988
01:00:04,280 --> 01:00:08,280
Speaker 3: likely to find undiscovered animals, and there's a ticking clock

989
01:00:08,320 --> 01:00:11,200
Speaker 3: on this. There's a time window because those animals, those

990
01:00:11,200 --> 01:00:17,280
Speaker 3: same organisms are now more than likely going extinct and compare.

991
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:19,960
Speaker 3: We're in the middle of what is called the sixth

992
01:00:20,040 --> 01:00:24,280
Speaker 3: Great Mass Extinction, so we want to hear from you, folks.

993
01:00:24,320 --> 01:00:26,320
Speaker 3: Tell us about the Erran, tell us if you've seen

994
01:00:26,320 --> 01:00:30,080
Speaker 3: a bigfoot or some hominid cryptid, and tell us what

995
01:00:30,320 --> 01:00:34,640
Speaker 3: if any creatures you think may be discovered in the

996
01:00:34,680 --> 01:00:38,320
Speaker 3: coming decades. We're gonna call it evening. We're off to

997
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:43,800
Speaker 3: octivigate and do our bigfoot hoots that thing. Remember that

998
01:00:46,480 --> 01:00:50,080
Speaker 3: while we're practicing our bigfoot accent. We'd love to hear

999
01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:52,760
Speaker 3: from you. You can give us a good old fashioned email.

1000
01:00:52,800 --> 01:00:54,720
Speaker 3: You can call us on the phone. You can find

1001
01:00:54,800 --> 01:00:55,640
Speaker 3: us on the lines.

1002
01:00:55,920 --> 01:00:58,120
Speaker 4: It's right. You can find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff,

1003
01:00:58,120 --> 01:01:00,919
Speaker 4: where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group here's

1004
01:01:00,920 --> 01:01:04,440
Speaker 4: where it gets crazy. On x FKA, Twitter, and on

1005
01:01:04,520 --> 01:01:07,200
Speaker 4: YouTube where we have tons of video content for your

1006
01:01:07,240 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 4: perusing enjoyment. On Instagram and TikTok. On the other hand,

1007
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:11,800
Speaker 4: we're Conspiracy Stuff Show.

1008
01:01:13,200 --> 01:01:15,320
Speaker 2: We have a phone number. It is one eight three

1009
01:01:15,440 --> 01:01:20,120
Speaker 2: three std WYTK. We need you to call in. We're

1010
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:22,680
Speaker 2: running low on voicemails. You gotta call in. Do you

1011
01:01:22,680 --> 01:01:25,680
Speaker 2: have a thought? Call in? It's one eight three three

1012
01:01:25,920 --> 01:01:29,720
Speaker 2: std WYTK call that number, leave a voicemail. You got

1013
01:01:29,720 --> 01:01:32,080
Speaker 2: three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname, and say whatever

1014
01:01:32,120 --> 01:01:34,320
Speaker 2: you'd like do. Let us know within the message if

1015
01:01:34,320 --> 01:01:36,120
Speaker 2: we can use your name and message on the air.

1016
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:37,800
Speaker 2: If you got more to say, they can fit in

1017
01:01:37,840 --> 01:01:40,320
Speaker 2: three minutes. Or you want to type something out send

1018
01:01:40,720 --> 01:01:44,400
Speaker 2: I don't know pictures, links, anything, Why not instead send

1019
01:01:44,480 --> 01:01:45,080
Speaker 2: us an email.

1020
01:01:45,240 --> 01:01:48,920
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence

1021
01:01:48,960 --> 01:01:52,600
Speaker 3: we receive. Be well aware. Yeah, it's unafraid. Sometimes the

1022
01:01:52,760 --> 01:01:55,520
Speaker 3: void writes back. As a matter of fact, we'll be

1023
01:01:55,560 --> 01:01:59,400
Speaker 3: following up with some correspondents for several of you just

1024
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:03,480
Speaker 3: after these next recordings. So join us out here in

1025
01:02:03,560 --> 01:02:06,040
Speaker 3: the dark, and please, please please tell us your favorite

1026
01:02:06,040 --> 01:02:09,320
Speaker 3: CRYPTI tell us the stories. We love them. They make

1027
01:02:09,360 --> 01:02:31,520
Speaker 3: our evenings. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

1028
01:02:31,680 --> 01:02:33,760
Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production

1029
01:02:33,880 --> 01:02:38,400
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1030
01:02:38,480 --> 01:02:41,720
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.