Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selex, I've chosen How Bigfoot Works.
Speaker 1: We released it on the very first day of the
Speaker 1: very heady year of two thousand thirteen, and we explore
Speaker 1: both sides of the issue, the very possibility that Bigfoot
Speaker 1: might exist. Although here's a spoiler. We conclude it probably doesn't,
Speaker 1: but we don't poo poo the whole idea because it
Speaker 1: is possible. So just listen with open ears, open mind,
Speaker 1: and open heart. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works, Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me
Speaker 1: is always a Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and um that
Speaker 1: makes this Stuff you should Know the podcast A right?
Speaker 1: Is that a wookie? That is me Messing with Sasquatched?
Speaker 1: It sounded more like um Frankenstein from Sarah. I remember that.
Speaker 1: I love that bad Fonto and Tarzan Tarzan classic skit.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the commercials Messing with Sasquatch? Yeah, Jack
Speaker 1: Links It's pretty funny. Yeah, all of them are. It's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite spots. Actually, well it contradicts um.
Speaker 1: I witness reports that paint Bigfoot is kind of a benign,
Speaker 1: shy creature. Now, as far as Jack Links is concerned,
Speaker 1: he goes a gro when you um, when you mess
Speaker 1: with him, I guess that's where it is. So I
Speaker 1: have an actual intro for this one. All right, let's here,
Speaker 1: we're talking big Foot, and very recently there was some
Speaker 1: enormous huge news um and UM. We should probably preface
Speaker 1: this one like, if you are a skeptic, don't worry.
Speaker 1: We're gonna give your side of this too. But we
Speaker 1: have found over the years that UM, it's very respectful
Speaker 1: to give voice to both sides. We try to and UM,
Speaker 1: we're not insulting you by speaking the other person's side.
Speaker 1: Will express your side as well, and when we do that,
Speaker 1: we're not insulting the other side. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it's about Bigfoot. So let's not get
Speaker 1: so worked up. Calm down, you know, it's all just fun.
Speaker 1: There's a a self professed veterinarian with twenty seven years
Speaker 1: experience including forensics named um Dr Melba Catchum Melba s
Speaker 1: Catchum and she supposedly she claims got her hands on
Speaker 1: some uh samples of bigfoot hair and has been testing
Speaker 1: it do running genetic tests on it, and recently announced
Speaker 1: and wrote a paper that's under pure view as it
Speaker 1: stands now, UM that she she managed to isolate three
Speaker 1: separate nuclear um d n A. Okay, uh, that that
Speaker 1: came from three separate groups. So one is the nuclear DNA. Remember,
Speaker 1: so you have um nuclear DNA is the mixture of
Speaker 1: the mothers and the father's DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is strictly
Speaker 1: from the mother. So the researcher found that the nuclear
Speaker 1: DNA came from a human bigfoot, which is a hybrid
Speaker 1: of the human and this third species, a non human species.
Speaker 1: Doesn't know what it is yet, but supposedly that's what
Speaker 1: this hair sample showed. Really, then this is just now right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe they made this announcement like in late November,
Speaker 1: early December, which is now under it is under peer
Speaker 1: of view. That doesn't mean that it's going to pass
Speaker 1: peer of view. She submitted the paper for peer review. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: she said that the the mitochondrial DNA in the sample
Speaker 1: was human, which means that this third thing, bigfoot, is
Speaker 1: the product of a female old woman and a this
Speaker 1: non human species, the mystery species reproducing informing Bigfoot, and
Speaker 1: she says that she isolated it to about fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. Now, anybody who's followed Dr Ketchum's career can
Speaker 1: poke holes all in this. There was apparently I read
Speaker 1: an early draft of the paper that she said this
Speaker 1: third this third um species was an angel. And people
Speaker 1: skeptics love beating up on people like this. But my
Speaker 1: hat is off to her for first of all, undergoing
Speaker 1: this using the scientific method to root out um the
Speaker 1: unexplained that's extremely forty in in nature and I love
Speaker 1: that stuff um. And then secondly to put it up
Speaker 1: for peer of view and to face that that kind
Speaker 1: of criticism. One of the big problems that she she
Speaker 1: isn't saying like where this sample, how she knows this
Speaker 1: is a sample of Bigfoot's DNA. She didn't say where
Speaker 1: she got it, not that not that I could find.
Speaker 1: And I actually saw in one article that she's not
Speaker 1: saying where where it came from. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of holes in it. But if you wanted big current
Speaker 1: Bigfoot news, that's about as big as it gets. That's right, Uh,
Speaker 1: not quite as current as our our own uh law
Speaker 1: officer here in Georgia. Is that last year or the
Speaker 1: year before the one up in the North Georgia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: man with with his freezer, I didn't follow that very close.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and say that I really want
Speaker 1: to believe in Bigfoot, or not want to believe. I
Speaker 1: want to. I want there to be a Bigfoot. I
Speaker 1: don't think there is that means you want to believe
Speaker 1: in Bigfoot, but I still want to. I want to
Speaker 1: believe it's out there because it's just it would be
Speaker 1: so cool. And whenever, when I when I saw that story,
Speaker 1: the sheriff and I think he was a sheriff or
Speaker 1: deputy in North Georgia. It was a hoax, of course,
Speaker 1: but he said he had a body in a freezer,
Speaker 1: and they showed pictures of this uh uh what you know?
Speaker 1: It was in a guerrilla suit, right, that's what ended
Speaker 1: up being with and it had guts, had like animal entrails,
Speaker 1: but it looked like initially like oh, man, that looks
Speaker 1: like a dead big Foot, and then you look closer
Speaker 1: and it's like a suit that you can get online.
Speaker 1: I wish I had that kind of time to do
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, apparently portrayed a hoax. Apparently they
Speaker 1: were trying to try drum up potential business for leading
Speaker 1: big foot tours in North Georgia. It's a sound way
Speaker 1: to do it until you get found out and then
Speaker 1: ultimately either retire or get fired. No enforcement officer, things
Speaker 1: could still work. Oh well, okay, he lost his day job,
Speaker 1: is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, you can't do stuff
Speaker 1: like that. If you're a cop, you can't pull a hoax. No,
Speaker 1: you can't pull a hoax and try and snow people
Speaker 1: for money. It's not it's not legal. I don't know
Speaker 1: that it is illegal to uh to snow people for money,
Speaker 1: to promise them something that's not true and charge This
Speaker 1: guy says that you call it fraud, No, it's a hoax.
Speaker 1: There's a big difference between fraud and a hoax. If
Speaker 1: he had the business, it would be fraud. No. That
Speaker 1: would be like if he promised that you're going to
Speaker 1: see bigfoot, not a big foot tour, but he said
Speaker 1: you're gonna see bigfoot on this tour, and so he didn't,
Speaker 1: then you could get him for fraud. I think he
Speaker 1: would still be fraud if he founded that business and
Speaker 1: advertise it on a false premise, which is I found
Speaker 1: this thing, look at it. Yeah, I see your point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a jerk. Let's let's talk about Bigfoot. This guy
Speaker 1: up in North George is pretty far from the only
Speaker 1: person to pull a declared Bigfoot hoax. Um. What keeps
Speaker 1: this thing going is that there's some stuff out there
Speaker 1: that's considered this body of evidence of Bigfoot's existence that
Speaker 1: hasn't been definitively debunked and right. One of them other
Speaker 1: things that I think people who are believers in Bigfoot,
Speaker 1: like the ones that are out there like looking for
Speaker 1: Bigfoot and believe in Bigfoot. One of the things that
Speaker 1: keeps them going also is this correlation between big Foot
Speaker 1: sightings among people of European descent and big Foot legends
Speaker 1: of Native American tribes long before the Europeans ever got here.
Speaker 1: And if you, um, if you look at the names
Speaker 1: of that these different tribes have and take a step back,
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, these tribes were all over the place
Speaker 1: there somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, somewhere in Florida, somewhere
Speaker 1: in um the north, northeastern United States, and eastern Canada,
Speaker 1: and all of them have this weird um tall giant
Speaker 1: hairy man legend that they have a name for um
Speaker 1: even though they're you know, geographically scattered all over the place.
Speaker 1: And it's possible that they these all of these different
Speaker 1: um legends share a single common ancestor that it's further back,
Speaker 1: maybe located on the steps of Eurasia. But it's also
Speaker 1: kind of noteworthy that they all have different legends for it. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Himalays, even the Yeti, the acominable snowman in Asia
Speaker 1: very popular. Um. Apparently you hear that one more than
Speaker 1: you see it. Yeah, which I didn't know. But we
Speaker 1: should call this thing sasquatch because that is the most
Speaker 1: common name they use nowadays. And um, even though some
Speaker 1: of the names from Native American tribes when Dago, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was Ohma Rugaru and books is some of the
Speaker 1: names that has gone by Native American lord, but sashquatch
Speaker 1: shash squatch comes from I have no idea how to
Speaker 1: pronounce that. It looks like sess shock anyway, that that
Speaker 1: word in another word from the area around British Columbia
Speaker 1: were similar enough that in the nineteen twenties, white school
Speaker 1: teacher named J. W. Burns coined the term sasquatch, and
Speaker 1: it's basically it's the umbrella term for any big foot
Speaker 1: like man, right, so we should. Even though these sightings
Speaker 1: have varied in their description over the years, they're a
Speaker 1: few marks that pop up. One is that this is
Speaker 1: a tall beast between seven and fifteen feet, which is
Speaker 1: that's is enormous. Yeah, I haven't most of the ones
Speaker 1: I've heard of between like seven and eight feet. Have
Speaker 1: you seen the troll Hunter? I saw that recently. Actually,
Speaker 1: that first troll that they watched, the guy zap and
Speaker 1: trying the stone. That thing was about fifteen ft tall.
Speaker 1: That's huge. Yeah. That was a pretty good movie. I
Speaker 1: buy ten ft no way, no way. Yeah. Did you
Speaker 1: like the movie? Hunter was excellent? Yeah? I kind of
Speaker 1: got it, kind of wore on me towards the end.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a little long, but it was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah, and the imagination that it used it
Speaker 1: was just beautiful. Totally agreed. Hunter people. Um it walks
Speaker 1: on two legs, that's a big one. Was that bipedal?
Speaker 1: That what they say? Um, it's upright and has a
Speaker 1: loping gate. Um, he's seen that elf? Right, the movie Elf? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one shot where they mimic the uh the famous
Speaker 1: sixteen millimeter film where it's it's Will Ferrell and Central
Speaker 1: Park and they like have that from frame three fifty
Speaker 1: two of the sixteen millimeter film. It's pretty funny. So
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell's doing sess it says like, you know, the
Speaker 1: strange elf was seen wandering through Central Park and they
Speaker 1: mimic that. Yeah, yeah, that's very good. Um. And then
Speaker 1: long reddish fur. That's a big one, reddish brown that's
Speaker 1: and that's really interesting that it's um that sasquatch is
Speaker 1: typically described as having long, reddish brown fur. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really specific thing for everybody to report. And again
Speaker 1: it's possible that like people have heard other reports and said,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what they're expecting to see or that's
Speaker 1: what they're reporting because that's what Sasquatch has. But it's
Speaker 1: still it's significant. Um, you said that the YETI uh
Speaker 1: was more heard than seen. Yeah, Bigfoot is usually more
Speaker 1: seen than heard. But when Bigfoot is heard, um, the
Speaker 1: he makes gurgling noises, howling noises, noises that sound totally
Speaker 1: alien to the people reporting it. Yeah, I've heard weird
Speaker 1: noises in the woods camping all my life, and I've
Speaker 1: never thought, oh, that's a big Foot. I just think
Speaker 1: that's just something some animal making a strange sound that
Speaker 1: I've never heard because you live in the city, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Supposedly this uh sasquatch also has sort of a man
Speaker 1: like face, and reports from either being really really really
Speaker 1: smelly to not smelling at all. Oh, yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: in this article. I forgot about how smelly Bigfoot is
Speaker 1: supposed to be. Yeah, I supposedly have heard that many times. Um.
Speaker 1: They're also supposedly very wary of people, but also at
Speaker 1: the same time intensely curious about us. Um and Uh.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who have made eyewitness reports say
Speaker 1: that they weren't scared, which is weird. Yeah. Most people
Speaker 1: say that, like I didn't feel threatened, right, and that
Speaker 1: kind of jibes with UM. Most Native Americans legends about
Speaker 1: Bigfoot that it was Um, it's a a benign creature. Uh,
Speaker 1: and often it's it has intellect and um, it's given
Speaker 1: spiritual powers in Native American lower So it wasn't something
Speaker 1: to be afraid of tasquatches, your friend. Yeah. Uh. They
Speaker 1: usually are by themselves, but there have been reports of
Speaker 1: several of these sasquatches hanging out together and chatting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but for the most part they're usually alone. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: So you put all this together and you've got like
Speaker 1: a pretty good common It's like the A. K. C.
Speaker 1: Breed for sasquatch. These are its characteristics. I love it. Okay. Um,
Speaker 1: if you take this at at face value, which you should,
Speaker 1: sure if you're a skeptic, you should always look at
Speaker 1: things at face value, not just immediately dismissed her poop
Speaker 1: po it. Yeah, try to get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 1: And that's what we're about to do now. The first
Speaker 1: question is, um, could a creature that matches this description
Speaker 1: possibly exist? Yeah, And it's important when considering this to
Speaker 1: point out that we'd have never despite all the sightings
Speaker 1: and little still shots and film clips and audio clips,
Speaker 1: there's never been any conclusive evidence. They've never found bones,
Speaker 1: but that's huge or anything like that. Um, a lot
Speaker 1: of footprints and stuff like that. So moving forward, could
Speaker 1: this exist perhaps in the giganto pithecus, right, because that's
Speaker 1: a creature that that actually did exist at some point.
Speaker 1: And it says here in the article that the gigant
Speaker 1: epithis Epipthecus, which was the largest primate in the fossil record,
Speaker 1: lived between one and nine million years ago. Actually, I
Speaker 1: saw um an article that had updated that to about
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand years ago, which meant that humans and
Speaker 1: gigant Epithecus lived side by side. Have you seen this thing?
Speaker 1: I have? It looks like a big foot, um, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then like, oh, well, I guess if someone saw
Speaker 1: that in the woods, I would think it was a
Speaker 1: sasquat um. It lived in Southeast Asia or in Central Asia,
Speaker 1: and it's a relative of the orangutane yeah, big time,
Speaker 1: So it looks a lot like one. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: all extremely interesting stuff in case you didn't know, because orangutans,
Speaker 1: for starters, have reddish hair, reddish orange hair, so that's
Speaker 1: one connection to gigant Epithecus. Yeah. They've got the long
Speaker 1: arms like that. Yeah. Um. They walked up right about
Speaker 1: ten feet tall, usually about pounds um. And if since
Speaker 1: orangutans are the closest modern relative of gigantapithe kiss it um,
Speaker 1: it makes sense to kind of look at them, look
Speaker 1: at their behavior. Does it match bigfoot stuff? Yeah? They
Speaker 1: have teeth similar to humans, so that could account a
Speaker 1: little bit for the man like look that people often
Speaker 1: talk about, uh make occasionally will make a loud howling
Speaker 1: calls uh that sound odd to other orangutans. Another thing
Speaker 1: that kind of separates them too, aside from being um
Speaker 1: Asian whereas most primates are African um, is that they
Speaker 1: tend to live solitary lives, so they don't aggregate in groups.
Speaker 1: They live by themselves mostly. Okay, so chalk one up
Speaker 1: for the big Foot enthusiasts. Yeah again, they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: well that's it's gigantapithe kiss. Uh. They live a long time,
Speaker 1: and because they are widely dispersed, they may not even
Speaker 1: see other orangutangs for many long stretches. So of course
Speaker 1: they may not see a human either exactly, you know.
Speaker 1: And if they're intellectual or if they have intellect um,
Speaker 1: as people who believe in Bigfoot like to point out,
Speaker 1: they would be able to successfully hide from humans, probably
Speaker 1: especially if their habitat was the woods and the mountains. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you put all that together that they have
Speaker 1: a long lifespan, meaning there's not a lot of them
Speaker 1: dying frequently. They live, they're spread out population wise, and
Speaker 1: they tend to live in remote geographic regions that if
Speaker 1: you add all that up, that's a pretty good reason
Speaker 1: why you wouldn't have found any bones. Yes, because bones
Speaker 1: can decay and the wild like that between five and
Speaker 1: ten years. And um, the author of this was this
Speaker 1: the Grabster. This is Tom Harris. I'm Harris. He's a
Speaker 1: good one to um. He points out that the Bob
Speaker 1: never gone on bigfootbone hunting expeditions, so like people aren't
Speaker 1: looking for these things, so they may not have found him. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a guy actually who's um looking for Bigfoot,
Speaker 1: his Idaho State anthropology professor, and he has he's crowdsourcing
Speaker 1: blimp to hunt for Bigfoot with thermal imaging cameras and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And he's three and if you're interested
Speaker 1: in it, you can check out that I thought it was.
Speaker 1: But he's got his own website called Falcon Project UM
Speaker 1: and that's what he's trying to do with it. So
Speaker 1: there is at least one person trying to do a
Speaker 1: rigorous scientific hunt for Bigfoot. But and then there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of groups looking right. Yeah, there's even a show
Speaker 1: on Animal Planet, one of our UH Discovery Channel stations,
Speaker 1: one of our I would call it a sister station,
Speaker 1: but we're not a station one of our colleagues. And
Speaker 1: it's uh, what's it called finding Bigfoot? And these people
Speaker 1: are out there hunting Bigfoot. And I have even watched
Speaker 1: bits of it because I just think it's cool and
Speaker 1: interesting and uh, it's kind of a fun little show.
Speaker 1: So I recommend it. And weren't we weren't even asked
Speaker 1: to plug that. I'm just plugging it go. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: do you have a possible link between the orangutan, um right,
Speaker 1: and Bigfoot? And that link might be a gigantopithecus. Question
Speaker 1: is still remaining. Um, how did gigant Epithecus get here? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: we walked over the Uh was that the land bridge
Speaker 1: bearing land bridge? Yes, yeah, just like we did. Sure,
Speaker 1: not you and me, But you know, well that's one theory. Um.
Speaker 1: But the big problem here, Chuck, is the absence of
Speaker 1: proof doesn't prove anything. The fact that we haven't found bones,
Speaker 1: even though you can explain it, we still haven't found
Speaker 1: any bones, and it doesn't mean that something exists, and
Speaker 1: that's a it's a big problem in this debate. You
Speaker 1: can also point to, though very happily, the Ceila canth right. Uh,
Speaker 1: Cela Kanth was thought to have gone extinct sixty five
Speaker 1: million years ago. It's a fish I thought to have
Speaker 1: gone extinct in the Late Cretaceous period, and then they
Speaker 1: found it swimming off the coast of Africa. So you
Speaker 1: can point to that and say it's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: gigantopith kists survived somehow and we just didn't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and scientists are they'll point out that there are all
Speaker 1: kinds of creatures that are still undiscovered, but most of
Speaker 1: them are sea creatures. And that makes sense too because
Speaker 1: we don't spend very much time under the sea now,
Speaker 1: we don't, um, whereas you know, we spend a decent
Speaker 1: amount of time in the woods. Um. Okay, So if
Speaker 1: you're a skeptic, everything we just said probably made the
Speaker 1: hair on the back of your neck bristle in irritation.
Speaker 1: And um here's why, because, like we said, the absence
Speaker 1: of proof doesn't prove anything true. Um. And it's entirely
Speaker 1: possible that all of this evidence, this body of evidence, Um,
Speaker 1: it's just basically a bunch of independent hoaxters fooling a
Speaker 1: bunch of people over time. Yeah, or uh, innocent mistaken
Speaker 1: identity they're not all hoaxters. Some people have perhaps gotten
Speaker 1: confused about things, said, boy, that mangie bear doesn't look right.
Speaker 1: It's standing up on its back legs too. Or the
Speaker 1: recent photo that was that still image captured at night
Speaker 1: and that's what they said it was, was a mangie bear.
Speaker 1: But that thing was kind of weird looking, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like a Knight image shot and it was
Speaker 1: on it was on four leg or four you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if their arms or what. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, it looked odd, but they, you know, they
Speaker 1: explained it away as a mangie bear. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of hoaxes over the years. Yeah. And if you
Speaker 1: go into the woods and you're even the least bit
Speaker 1: familiar with any kind of big foot lore and you
Speaker 1: see something that's that possibly fits it, you may be
Speaker 1: the victim of wishful thinking or being impressionable or what
Speaker 1: have you. Yeah, that's a that's a pretty good accusation,
Speaker 1: a skeptical level against somebody reports a big foot siding.
Speaker 1: And the first, um, an easiest way to hoax someone,
Speaker 1: to pull a hoax on someone is the old fake footprint. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not too hard to do, you make a fake foot,
Speaker 1: you wear it on your feet and you perhaps run
Speaker 1: along in the woods, maybe lope, maybe leap to make
Speaker 1: the footsteps you know, the gate correct, Um, and then
Speaker 1: you make a plaster mold of it. Uh. The problem
Speaker 1: with these is there hares in so many over the
Speaker 1: years that it's like clear that they're hoaxes, because this
Speaker 1: one is two toes, this one has claws, this one
Speaker 1: has eight toes, And you know there are people aren't
Speaker 1: getting together on these and making them consistent. Um. Probably
Speaker 1: the most contentious bit of Bigfoot evidence was that sixteen
Speaker 1: millimeter film you mentioned that was made seven by a
Speaker 1: guy named Roger Patterson, the Patterson Gimblin Film, and it's
Speaker 1: from Bluff Creek, California, and basically it shows Bigfoot walking
Speaker 1: across basically a clearing into the woods, and Bigfoot is
Speaker 1: aware that he's being watched, and he turns and looks
Speaker 1: at the camera. Like you said, Will Ferrell didn't help. UM.
Speaker 1: And I remember years ago like watching this and when
Speaker 1: I was back in my time life books phase like
Speaker 1: I'll believe anything, just tell me, um. And they were
Speaker 1: saying that one of the reasons that this thing was
Speaker 1: so convincing that it was Bigfoot? Was that and he
Speaker 1: looked over his shoulder rather than looking with just his head.
Speaker 1: Just turning his head, Bigfoot turns his whole shoulder and
Speaker 1: torso along with his head, which is something that a
Speaker 1: primate would likely do, and non human primate, I should
Speaker 1: or someone in an ape suit shad possibly that's another
Speaker 1: possibility to They also point out that bigfoots walking with
Speaker 1: his knees bent in this that's another sure sign of primate,
Speaker 1: whereas I did that today. By the way, is it hard? Well,
Speaker 1: it's not the easiest thing, but what it makes you
Speaker 1: do is sort of lope along with a kind of
Speaker 1: a funny gate, a loping gate. Yeah, yeah, um, that's
Speaker 1: That's something that bigfoot enthusiast point too, is that this
Speaker 1: thing was walking with knees bent um. And I didn't
Speaker 1: realize this until I read this in the article. But
Speaker 1: humans lock their knees with each step. We don't walk
Speaker 1: with our knees bent um. And then also the lastly
Speaker 1: that the creatures fur is clearly rippling, like the skin
Speaker 1: beneath his rippling, and like some costumes, some ape suit
Speaker 1: isn't going to do that on its own. Put all
Speaker 1: this together, and if you're a big Foot believer, this
Speaker 1: is irrefutable evidence that there's such thing as big foot.
Speaker 1: If you're skeptic, you can shoot a hole in all
Speaker 1: of those, can't you. Sure? Um? Since this film came
Speaker 1: out in seven it's been like the most reviewed and
Speaker 1: made fun of or backed piece of evidence ever for
Speaker 1: Bigfoot or Sasquatch. And um, Roger Patterson it turns out
Speaker 1: was making trying to make a movie about Bigfoot. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't just some guy out there that happened
Speaker 1: to have a camera. He was trying to put together
Speaker 1: a film. Um. Since this has come out, there have
Speaker 1: been various people. One guy came out and said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I made the suit for him. He paid
Speaker 1: me a thousand bucks to make him the suit. Well,
Speaker 1: the guy who supposedly did make the suit is never
Speaker 1: admitted to. Well, now there's a bunch of guys that's
Speaker 1: not the same guy. There's Chambers, and then there's this
Speaker 1: other dude. They aren't the same people. That's why it's
Speaker 1: it's kind hinky because multiple people have claimed they made
Speaker 1: the suit. This one guy says that he was the
Speaker 1: guy in the suit, and um, but his suit story
Speaker 1: didn't match up with the guy who claimed he made
Speaker 1: the suit did match up with his suit story. But
Speaker 1: then people said, you know what, Patterson could have altered
Speaker 1: that original suit to match the guy who said he
Speaker 1: was in the suit. Then there's Chambers who other people
Speaker 1: say it made the suit, but he says he didn't
Speaker 1: make the suit. Well, it's a longstanding Hollywood rumor that
Speaker 1: actually John Landis, the director of American Werewolf in London.
Speaker 1: Um came out and and and said, yeah, this is true. Um.
Speaker 1: When he was a young pup, he was working at
Speaker 1: one of the studios and he became friends with John Chambers,
Speaker 1: who did the ape suits for Planet of the Apes,
Speaker 1: which came out right around that time, right, Um, and Uh,
Speaker 1: he had heard that Chambers had done this, and he
Speaker 1: befriended Chambers and said, yes, it's true. This is John Chambers.
Speaker 1: And Chambers never has never taken credit for it. He's
Speaker 1: never come out and said, yeah, I did it. But
Speaker 1: if you ask the average special the effects guy or
Speaker 1: makeup guy these days, if you show them that, they're like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is ape suit. There's a water bag underneath that's
Speaker 1: making the skin ripple. Um and I like, that's a guy.
Speaker 1: That's a man. Right, I watch it again today, like
Speaker 1: five times. Yeah, I mean too, it's really neat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of fun. I mean just the detail they
Speaker 1: went into, like the the crooked legs, the bent knees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the shaky cam like it looked like someone scared and
Speaker 1: discovering something. Yeah, it's it's perfect. If it's a fraud,
Speaker 1: it is perfect because think about it. The thing was
Speaker 1: shot in nineteen sixty seven. It's two thirteen, and people
Speaker 1: are still debating whether or not it's authentic. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's gone through lots of rigorous testing by
Speaker 1: people that study whether or not the film was tampered,
Speaker 1: and they have determined that nothing was tampered post shooting.
Speaker 1: Like if it was anything, it was a dude in
Speaker 1: ape suit and they really went out there in the
Speaker 1: woods and shot it. Uh. But like I said, this
Speaker 1: is all just kind of fun to me. People get
Speaker 1: so worked up over this. I don't get it. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the harm unless someone's like defrauding people out of money?
Speaker 1: You know. Um, there are people who dedicate their careers
Speaker 1: to this. There's a woman named um Kathy moscowitz Strain,
Speaker 1: and she is a forest archaeologist for the U. S
Speaker 1: Forestry Service who basically became an anthropologist and an archaeologist
Speaker 1: so that she could hunt for Bigfoot. And she's very
Speaker 1: respected even among skeptics who counter all of our arguments. Um,
Speaker 1: but she is very much searching for Bigfoot and has
Speaker 1: been for many years, and she believes or just wants
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of it. She believes that
Speaker 1: there's a bigfoot, that there's another species out there, some
Speaker 1: primate species that is what we call sasquatch or bigfoot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the arguments against like, to me, if you can't say
Speaker 1: something like, well, somebody would have definitely seen it, Mike
Speaker 1: by now and proven it, Like you just can't say that,
Speaker 1: like the Pacific Northwest is so vast that an animal
Speaker 1: could probably hide if there was only a few of
Speaker 1: them left from people, you know. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you also like, I can't say it exists because of
Speaker 1: this these hoaxes and these sounds, and like you need
Speaker 1: some sort of like scientific evidence. Bones, bones would help.
Speaker 1: You do need that unless you're just enjoying thinking about it. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: another thing you can enjoy that's kind of related is
Speaker 1: watching the Mystery Science Theater three thousand of the Legend
Speaker 1: of Boggy Creek to se that one. It's arguably the
Speaker 1: best episode that. Oh my god, it's hilarious. Strong statement,
Speaker 1: but it's related. It's a based on a big foot
Speaker 1: like creature. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Tom points out to that
Speaker 1: the reason people want to believe in stuff like this
Speaker 1: is the same reason some people want to believe in aliens.
Speaker 1: Um that like, the sense of adventure is seemingly lost
Speaker 1: these days. There's nothing new to discover. And God, if
Speaker 1: we could just discover a big foot, that would be
Speaker 1: so huge and so monumental. Um. And I get that
Speaker 1: that's probably why I want to believe. You know, yea,
Speaker 1: it would rock the world of science. Oh it totally one.
Speaker 1: But then we'd put it in a zoo. Yeah, poke
Speaker 1: it with electricity we humans. Yeah. Um, all right, well, uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, if you want to learn more about bigfoot,
Speaker 1: you can type that word into the search part how
Speaker 1: stuff works. Um, there's an adorable picture of a baby
Speaker 1: oranguting in this article, so you want to take that out. Um,
Speaker 1: that's b I G F O O t um. And
Speaker 1: it'll bring that up and since I said search parts
Speaker 1: time for listen to mail, I'm gonna call this. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember what this was. Oh, meth showers,
Speaker 1: H Josh Chuck and Jerry A k A L. Chuck Tran.
Speaker 1: My name is Jimmy Griffith from leon Or, South North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Uh or linoiff I'm not sure you pronounced that. I'm
Speaker 1: originally born in Brazil, A relatively young listener, and after
Speaker 1: listening to how meth works reminded me of a story
Speaker 1: from my college days. I used to know these identical
Speaker 1: twin brothers that went to Appalachian State with me. You
Speaker 1: know what goes on that school? Yeah, they beat Michigan
Speaker 1: with a bunch of hippies, a bunch of party kids
Speaker 1: at friends that went there. Uh. At one time, one
Speaker 1: of them was having um explained hallucinations see what I mean,
Speaker 1: and other weird psychological issues. That twin with hallucinations feared
Speaker 1: that he might have schizophrenia, but that did not make
Speaker 1: sense since his identical twin did not share the symptoms.
Speaker 1: As I understand, if one had the disorder, the other
Speaker 1: would also have it since they are identical. And that's right,
Speaker 1: that's true. It's probably like a percentage fail. I think
Speaker 1: it's automatic um. After dealing with his issue for a
Speaker 1: little while, the twin with hallucinations decided to see a
Speaker 1: doctor and, after running a few blood tests, tested positive
Speaker 1: for meth. This made no sense since he had never
Speaker 1: used meth. Uh. After a few questions about the daily routine,
Speaker 1: they found out that most of what they did was similar,
Speaker 1: except one of the twins preferred to take baths, the
Speaker 1: one suffering hallucinations, and the other preferred showers. This led
Speaker 1: to further investigation of the rental house they lived in.
Speaker 1: They found out there was a high concentration of meth
Speaker 1: on the bathtub on the porcelain of the bathtubs, which
Speaker 1: indicated whoever lived there previously made meth in the bathtub.
Speaker 1: As you would expect, they shut down the house, the
Speaker 1: twins moved out, and cleaning crew with has met suits
Speaker 1: moved in. The twin with issues ceased to have hallucinations involuntarily.
Speaker 1: He says, I probably need to point that out, and
Speaker 1: he came back to his old self. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to share that if you're having a great week, someday,
Speaker 1: I hope to visit the studio in Atlanta and meet Jerry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that right here is Jimmy Griffith from North Carolina
Speaker 1: originally from Brazil. Dude, thanks, thanks Jimmy. We hope you're
Speaker 1: having a good week too, and we're glad your friend
Speaker 1: turned out. Okay, geez, can you imagine tested for meth?
Speaker 1: It's like elaine? Yeah, testing positive for poppy seed bagel yeah,
Speaker 1: opium yeah, or puppy see more heroin? Yeah, good stuff opium? Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good one man. What that signild? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: I have one. If you are a skeptic and a
Speaker 1: believer in bigfoot, we want to hear from you. Um.
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know, and you can send us a good
Speaker 1: old fashioned email to stuff podcast How Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
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