Blurry Creatures - EP: 9 Bigfoot Tracks with Dr. Jeff & Sean Meldrum

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

Dr. Jeff Meldrum is perhaps the most recognizable name and face in space and science of Bigfoot. A professor at Idaho State, Meldrum has been a pioneer in the science of footprint casting and analyzation in the study of Bigfoot. He, and his son Sean, join Blurry Creatures to unpack the long and lonely journey of bringing science to the cryptid space and their challenges with skeptics and naysayers in this hot-button and controversial realm of study. Sean gives us an intimate look behind the curtain at the oddities surrounding his dad's work and legacy. We explore the skepticism, the pushback from academia, and of course--those random midnight phone calls from fans equating Bigfoot to a time-traveling, interdimensional being. [e-mail] www.blurrycreatures.com www.instagram.com/blurrycreatures www.facebook.com/blurrycreatures www.twitter.com/blurrycreatures Music Kyle Monroe: www.tinytaperoom.com Aaron Green: https://www.instagram.com/aaronkgreen/ Outro Song: TimeCop1983: www.timecop1983.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So if you want to do what we did, you can get a free jumpstart trial bag for your dog today. Just cover the shipping. Go to Rough Greens.com and use discount code blurry. That's RUFFF greens.com discount code blurry. Rough Greens makes any dog food better. Welcome to Blurry Creatures. This episode is going to be fun. We have Luke the Bigfoot scientist, Dr. Jeff Meldrum on the show today. If you have ever watched any Bigfoot documentary, you're going to see Dr. Jeff Meldrum on that Bigfoot documentary. He's been on everything.

I think he was on Joe Rogan's second episode, actually. Did he do psychedelics together? I'm going to ask Jeff when it gets on. Do you guys do DMT and fly out of outer space? Yeah, no, he's a big deal. He made Joe Rogan what he is today. And that's what's going to happen to our podcast. Do you think he's getting at 100 mil from Spotify?

Yeah. Yeah, that was my idea. Like, if we bring Jeff Meldrum on a plurier creatures, soon we're going to be getting $100 million deal from Spotify. No, I'm just thinking we're going on Joe Rogan. You're doing the DMT, and I'm going to be here. And we'll just have to think of the safe word. There's no way I can do that.

But Jeff Meldrum is like, got all the science. He's a professor at Idaho State. It doesn't get any more scientific than what he's doing. Let's really preface the show, though, Nate. Like, one of the things we're doing with this particular show, I think is a lot different than a lot of these, previous interviews with Jeff, Jeff Meldrum, is that we're bringing his son on as well.

So this is going to be a family affair. We like to say it's a family show. I like to make it accessible for everybody. And I think we're going to have a fun little angle with and talking about the family affair when it comes to the elephant in the room who may or may not be Bigfoot. Let's get this going.

All right. So welcome to the show, Jeff Meldrum and son. Jeff, you're quite literally put the track in track record. Speaking of your track record, you're an anthropologist, biologist at Idaho State University. You travel around the globe looking at castings and evidence for Bigfoot. You wrote a book called Sasquatch, Legend Meets Science, which explores the scientific evidence and tribal people's accounts and knowledge of the subject. You published two field guides, one focusing on Sasquatch and the other on Relic Hominoids around the world, which has already come up a lot on our show already, the little people, so they say. You also are editor-in-chief of a scientific journal, the relict hominoid, which is in that space, too,

where you try to get scientists and other people to research, share their research, and create a platform for the discussion. But, Sean, your son's also in this show, and Sean, you're the more elusive guest on this episode. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Because I'm sure the Bigfoot people know your dad real well. But yeah, we'd like to hear about yourself, and then we can hop into this episode, and go wherever it takes us. Oh, well, we maybe should have started with me because I'm not as fantastic.

But I currently reside in Boise, Idaho. I've lived here for two years. I grew up in Pocatello with my father. I have two children. I think thanks to my dad, I'm an avid outdoorsman. I don't know what else you want to know about me. Well, I just want to introduce you. I didn't want to leave you out.

And I want you to be a big part of this conversation because when I was thinking about this, here's a little story about myself. I played music professionally for about 10 years, and one thing I learned right away is that some bands have crazy fans. And if there's anything I know about the Bigfoot community, I thought, man, I bet you, Jeff, you're like the rock star of the Bigfoot world. And I'm sure, I was like, I bet you his son has some crazy stories about his dad. And I just thought this could be a fun episode where we could talk more about the beast in the room, the metaphorical beast of the Bigfoot community, the skeptics versus the science. There's just so many things we could talk about,

but I thought it would be good to bring you on this episode, Sean, and kind of have this discussion about what's the fans like in the Bigfoot community? And I'm sure you've got some wild stories already. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, growing up and hearing some of the stuff from my dad, like, oh, I think the funnest one that I, and he can shed more light on this because he's actually talked to him. I just heard it from him.

But the gentleman who would call in the middle of the night. and it was really in the middle of the night. It was about 2 o'clock. And I'm pretty sure my dad would answer the phone. I don't know. Correct me if I'm wrong. But the guy that would talk about Bigfoot being an intradimensional time traveler made out of pure titanium.

Is this ringing a bell dad? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You were just on the phone with him yesterday, right? No, no, he's passed. He's passed. Yeah. Yeah, I don't need a phone.

I don't need a phone, right? He just tune into him. He, no, this was, he was a very colorful character by the name of Eric Bechjord. He was one of these type of people who just did not live a normal life. And I honestly think he was insomniac. I don't think he had a sense of what time it was when he would just compulsively pick up the phone and give me a call. And that one time when it was about two o'clock, my wife hands me, the phone and I'd say and I just very politely and gently said Eric do you realize what time it is? And I don't think he did because he goes oh oh so sorry so sorry and he hung up and he after that he never called me at home he only called me in my office he was very very courteous you know but he was a he was a strange he had some strange ideas and was quite um

controversial as a result of that. But, you know, I, in some people's minds, I have some strange ideas. So I'm always sympathetic to those people who do, as long as they're at least somewhat sensible about it. Yeah, I mean, so one of my band's last big tours who did with Hanson of all bands. And the Hanson brothers have some crazy stories of their fans. And their fans, I think, of all the bands we toured with, have the most rabid fan base. some girls went to every show. It was a 40 date tour, and they were at every show.

And I can only imagine you're at Bigfoot conferences, and you've got people coming up to you, wanting your autograph, telling you their stories, and I thought, if he's experienced anything that I have, it's probably crazy. And there's some stories there. I mean, the Bigfoot community has embraced you fully. You've been on so many documentaries that I've seen,

and you seem to not turn away. You embrace the community, and I think that's a good thing, Because you're trying to bring some sense to it all and not make it so crazy. Well, you overstated a little bit because it's not with unanimity that I'm embraced by the Bigfoot community. Because there are very differing opinions and different ideas. And so I've been pegged as adhering to certain ideas, some justifiably and some not. But it is funny how the. the fandom, how that manifests itself.

There was one. We were up in, down at Thanksgiving Point in Utah, and I was actually, I was pushing my father-in-law in his wheelchair. We were going out to see the, the Tulip Festival. But out of the blue,

this woman beside me suddenly recognized me. And she just, she was just beside herself with, with, excitement about it. But the funniest point, well, at that point, my wife just gently nudged me away from the wheelchair and said, you can catch up. And off she went, off she went to leave me there. And I tried to make it brief. But the funniest thing, she says, oh, she says, I'm such a fan. She said, you, you are just so special. She said, you know, if I were to walk in a room and

Tom Cruise was there and you were there, I'd come and talk to you. And I said, oh, Tom Cruise. Cruz. And she goes, she says, oh, if the Lord Jesus Christ was standing there, and I said, all right. Let's let's speak about this. Exactly. It gets really weird. Like, people, they feel like they know you. They come up to you. They're shaking and they're like trying to get, you know, your autograph. I've seen so many weird experiences like that. And it's just kind of like, okay. There was the guy who walked up to my table and he was a little bit, seemed to be a little bit annoyed that I didn't immediately recognize him

and he says to me very seriously well we are friends on Facebook oh man I gotta ask Sean so growing up with all with you know with your dad and what he's done and do you decide not to follow your dad into the family business

of Bigfoot was it was there a reason or it wasn't your cup of tea or I got your Well, biology wasn't my strong suit in high school. Yeah, that was actually kind of, that's kind of it. I didn't, the subject matter didn't really appeal to me.

I mean, I love going outside. Are you a believer? Do you believe? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're fully in. So it's because sometimes, you know, the father's son. Although, that's not recorded, right? No, we do.

It's, yeah, we don't know. Yeah. Okay, good. No, I mean, I love it. If you got to embrace it, like, you know, if there's enough evidence and there's nothing wrong. with owning that belief but sometimes you know like with a lot of my friends they're their dad's politics their son policy they're the opposite and I didn't know I thought maybe is because Bigfoot can be a family thing like my wife likes to sit down and watch the documentaries with me

and I've had some friends text me like say my wife will not talk about Bigfoot if she if I bring it up she will walk out of the room and I'm like whoa right so do you guys talk about Bigfoot around Christmas dinner that's what everyone wants to know right yeah I mean, yeah, it definitely comes up. We all are like really, our family gets along surprisingly well compared to most, I think. Like, I always brag about how me and my brothers are, I don't think we've ever had an argument that caused any kind of rift that lasted more than a day. We all get along really well. That's unusual.

That's good to hear, because I can relate in some ways, man. And like I have a couple famous brothers that do, you know, they both play, played the NFL. One still does play the NFL. And it's interesting. Like, I think the parallels I'm listening to this is like, you know, do we talk about football around the Christmas? And honestly, like, after a while we didn't. Like, it just became like, it was, I don't know.

It was just like a more interesting to talk about other things at some point. But I got crazy fan stories as well, man. Like just people interrupting your dinner and, you know, I don't know how it is for you, Jeff. But, like, in some ways it's crazy how just you being maybe in the public. look, I, just the expectation people have for you. You know what I mean? Like in some ways you owe them something or you owe them their two minutes or you owe them, both my brothers, the most part, have been very gracious about it.

But at some point it does wear on you. I know that for sure. I have a lot of athlete friends that some aren't, well, Jay Cutler, for example, Jay's not the nicest dude ever if you ever interrupt him when he's at lunch or dinner. You don't want to do that. He's got a reputation for a reason. Yeah, it is. I mean, some people have certain expectations and so on.

I mean, just kind of a case in point, I've always completely avoided politics with, and on my Facebook page isn't my personal Facebook page so much as it is just a bulletin board for me to kind of keep the Bigfoot community apprised of things that are happening or things that I find interesting. And the other night, I posted something that was political. And oh, my goodness, you know, I've been, I've been eliminated from the will and a number of, you got canceled. Disowned by a number of people. Wow. Yeah, with the kids, it was always interesting because, you know, the kids were always very

involved in athletics. And with six boys, you can imagine we had to be sometimes in five or six places at the same time on a Saturday morning. And so weekends when I was home and not out in the field, say, during the summer months, some of the summer months were, you know, were always consumed by soccer and lacrosse and such. And so we didn't have those, a lot of those weekend, routine weekend outings to go big footing. But when we were out, I mean, the kids were always very keen on identifying footprints and so forth. I remember this time, and I think it was Sean, in fact. I think I know this story. We, down in Ogden, in Utah. Maybe. There was a gentleman who

contacted me, and there had actually been a report up here near Pocatello in Blackfoot on the reservation lands, and some footprints were cast, and I was aware of that happening. I was aware of that happening and tracked down some eventually tracked down some newspaper coverage of it. But out of the blue, before that happened, out of the blue, I get a phone call from a fellow down in Utah and he has footprint casts from this event. So we decided to make a day trip, went down to Ogden and drove through the mountains and had the boys with all and they were outside playing as this gentleman escorted me downstairs. And he was showing me his hunting trophies and all his gun cases and he was telling me hunting stories he'd hunted bear

from Alaska to New Mexico and yada yada yada and out come the footprint casts and he sets them on the ottoman and they were obviously bare and I was very gently trying to draw this realization out of him rather than just blatantly say it well Sean I think it was was impatient and was tired of what was going on upstairs with the kids running around the yard. He comes bopping down, walks right up to the ottoman and said, Dad, I thought we came here to look at Bigfoot track. Why are you looking at Bear Tracks? And this man just turned about seven shades of scarlet,

this, you know, seven or eight-year-old just really showed him up. He hands me to cast and he says, here, just take him. You can use him in the collection. That's amazing. Sometimes it feels like when you get that phone bill It's like the crash site document You can't read it There's a bunch of numbers

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New customer offer for first three months only, then full-priced plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mintmobile for details. That's funny because my kids, I have two boys. I have a six-year-old and a four-year-old. And already my six-year-old goes, Dad, are you doing your Bigfoot show? and I'm like, I don't know if my kid's going to want to go bigfooting with me, so you have the luxury of that.

Yeah, it's funny. Like when you go out, you have all these experiences. And it's a cool father-son thing to do together, take your kids out, look for Bigfoot. Do you find people bring you other weird cast? You're talking about these beer prints, other weird cryptid creatures that supposedly exist? Do you get all that of their stuff too, or is it just in the Bigfoot? Yeah, mostly Bigfoot. I mean, not too much.

I've done a couple of interviews, like there was one where they claimed they had a chupacopatra footprint and a cast of that footprint, which they were bringing for me to look at. So in preparation, I simply spread out on the tabletop, you know, different philids and canids from cougar to bobcat to coyote to wolf to domestic dog and it made a really great visual because I just took this cast of the of the quote unquote chupac opera and went slowly along this line you know going ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding domestic dog just as clear as it's just a dog they didn't appreciate the sound effect I think they cut that out Sean, like when you've been out in the woods,

either with your dad or doing it on your own, have you ever found any footprints on your own? And what's that feeling like if you have, or if you haven't, have you been there when they've been found? No, we, I don't think, no, I don't think we've ever been on a trip or outdoors and found casts. Although we always, like my dad said,

we always brought the casting materials. But I think the best thing that we ever cast was an impression of somebody's backside that we found in the mud. Dad, do you still have that in your collection or do you finally get fit of it? Oh, I have an actual one, a real one. A real backside? Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, a real backside, a real big foot backside.

Yep, a butt talk says for stump. Is it the NSFW collection that we don't, doesn't come out? It actually is quite interesting because the fellow who found it and cast it quite expertly, in fact, I mean, to the point that you can actually see hair striations down across the cheeks and backs of these very broad thighs. But, you know, he goes, I don't know if it goes this way or this way. And I looked at it and I said, well, that's the tailbone, right? You can see the tailbone. you could actually see a sphincter just as plain as dead.

And these very muscular cheeks, you know, and holding what we call in anatomy, the natal cleft open. So the cheeks are spread just a little bit and these big, broad, hairy thighs. But, I mean, to see the hair striations that come down across the cheeks and then the bare skin in the cleft and the very hairy thigh. I mean, it was impressive. But what Sean was talking about, we did.

This is awesome. We found an imprint in the snow and mud on a hike just up here locally. And the kids were joking because it did look just exactly like someone had sat down. Something had sat down there. And so I remember that evening was actually on the 4th of July. And we were up on the hilltop to watch the county fireworks at the fairgrounds, which you could see from our hilltop. And the kids were telling one of the little neighbor boys.

about what they had found. And at the top of his lungs, he goes, you found big butt? And then he wouldn't stop saying that. So you threw this cast away? You still have the butt cast, I hope, right? Oh, yeah, the one I described, I certainly have. The one that Sean remembers, we didn't actually,

I don't think we actually made a cast or a cast of the imprint. Okay. That could be wrong. I thought we did. I don't have it in my collection. So this is really, I mean, you have the only known cast of Bigfoot's Anast. I mean, you just never know what you're going to learn on it. Yes, that's probably true.

Bigfoot, bud. Yeah, you have over 300 of the castings of the foot, right? That's right. And those listening, you have the picture of Patty on your wall in your office behind you right now. So I just got to say, you're the real deal. Jeff, you have those casts, right, of Patty? I have some of them, yeah, not the originals, but replicas. Are those like locked in a case somewhere with like a guard protecting them 24-7?

The moon landing tapes and all that stuff? No, no, actually there's one set of originals is curated at the China Flats Willow Creek Museum in Willow Creek, California. Wow. And some of the very high quality, high definition molds that Grover Krantz made, Dr. Grover Krantz made of the originals are now accessioned at the Smithsonian in the Department of Anthropology. What? And the original pair that were cast by Roger Patterson on the day of the filming are still in the possession of his wife, his widow who survives him. And yeah, I've seen photos of those and hoping for the opportunity at some time in the future to make good high quality casts, replica casts of those. They actually, those two and the additional tan that were cast by Bob Titmus constitute the what we call the ipnotaxon, the type specimen of footprints for the Sasquatch.

and the differential diagnosis and description of the distinguishing characteristics that set this species apart are based on that as the type specimen and all other materials then are referred to that. So you have 12 tracks? You have 12 tracks from that event? 12, 12 tracks, yeah. And a few have popped up in addition. Because other people on their own hearing about the event went out there. and some of the Bluff Creek Film Site tracks have popped up, largely due to the notoriety of Cliff Berrickman from Finding Bigfoot.

The town hall meetings that they held down there brought a lot of people out of kind of out of the woodwork, and some of them produced footprint cast that they had made themselves. So a couple of additional ones have been added to that. Yeah, so in your mind, I mean, obviously the skeptics think that's a, you know, Half people still think that's a guy in a monkey suit. I know. Yeah, I know. It's, here we are 50 years later and more than 50. And it still is, is deemed controversial.

It's, you know, to really understand and appreciate it, I mean, not only do you have to have some sense of anatomy and locomotor adaptation of primates and early hominids, but you also have to know that the historic, context, like so many things, the historical context of the events that influenced the way they were perceived and interpreted. And back in 1967, anthropologists were kind of stuck in the notion that human evolution transpired as just a linear single-file march towards humanity and that there were no other collateral species because there could, you know, the ecology tells us that there can be only one species in a given niche, right? And so we fill the bipedal, brainy tool using hominid niche,

and so we just can't share it with anyone else. So not only in 1967, they couldn't even acknowledge the possibility that such a thing existed. And so in their minds, it had to be fake. So they had to look for reasons, you know, as to why it was fake. Funny how that colored the interpretations as a result. One of my favorite examples, Dr. John Napier was a primatologist at Smithsonian. At the time the film was brought to be seen by U.S. scientists for the first time. And of those who viewed it, he was probably the more open-minded individual than most.

But still, I mean, so much so that five years later he published a seminal book on the subject, one of the few books by a bona fide PhD scientist and especially a primatologist. But when it came to the film, he was unable to accept it, although he acknowledged he couldn't put his finger precisely on the reason why he had to reject it. But except perhaps that when he looked at it, he said from the waist up, it looks essentially like an ape. But from the waist down, it looks like a human with these long legs. He said it was just inconceivable that such a hybrid, such a combination, a chimera existed in nature. So it had to be fake.

Well, just a few years later, the skeleton of Lucy, Australopithecus aphyrinsus, was discovered. Our first real glimpse of a more complete australopithicine skeleton. And how is it described in the press? Isn't this interesting? From the waist up, it looks like a chimpanzee from the waist down. it looks like a human. So, you know, what if Napier had waited just four or five years before he published his book? That was the lynch pin for him, that unexpected combination of traits.

And yet now we understand that's exactly what early hominins looked like. And yet in 1967, they didn't know that. You kind of hint at something that I think is always the conversation when it involves Bigfoot. It isn't really about Bigfoot. It's about just all this bias that you have about any subject that you bring in. And people say that scientists, they operate with this unbiased, in this unbiased fashion. And I'm like, no, they don't. They bring their beliefs into it.

Can you talk about that just like what you're up against? Because it doesn't matter, it seems like it doesn't matter how much data you have. You could have hair, scat, mountains of data. And one of my questions to add on to that is if we were talking about any other animal, If you had all this data on like a marsupial, would science recognize this with how much evidence you have instead of a big foot, you know? Well, yeah, the sort of paradigm that I described, even though it has been subsequently overturned, we now know that human evolution is a very bushy tree with lots of terminal branches. and many of those branches have persisted until much more recently than would have been acknowledged 50 years ago as even a possibility. And so although there's been a shift, we still have the generation from the time when that paradigm, the single species hypothesis or paradigm it was called when that prevailed, it still casts a shadow.

And so you get people who are still my age say that say things like there was a colleague of mine who said we had been invited. Another co-author and I had been invited to write kind of a state of the science of Sasquatch for the California Academy of Science publication, their official publication, which we provided for them a very good, I thought, a very good synopsis. It was rejected because of the opinion of the scientific advisory board. And when I pressed for a justification for that or a rationale, basically all that she was willing to provide was they can't exist, therefore they don't exist. And it doesn't matter what evidence they think they have. And I thinking, man, that's a scientific approach to a subject or to a question, hardly. Well, this is the argument I've made to a lot of my friends.

You know, I went to school. I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and a lot of my friends went on to grad school. And they think I'm crazy for doing a Bigfoot podcast. Like, what do you do it? And I'm just like, I'm just trying to have normal conversations. And I think there's a lot of science there. I think when you use science back at academia, you're using, you know, you're, in a way, you're using what they want you to use, but it's still not enough.

Yeah. Why the skepticism? Like I said, if it's any other animal, would they have acknowledged the existence of the species? Right. Well, science is historically and traditionally extremely conservative, and that for the most part, has served it well, although it has heaped up roadblocks to certain revelations and discoveries and so forth.

It's kind of a you strive for a balancing act between, between that open-mindedness and who was it Sagan, Sagan that said, or Schumer, I'm not sure which one. Yeah, it's great to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brain falls out, basically. Which is kind of a silly statement for someone like that to make, but nevertheless, you know, your comment about some marsupular or whatever. I think the only difference that I see as a rationale is that, You know, when there's the discovery of a new species of a well-understood or well-established group of organisms, so there's, you know, one new marsupial to add to the litany. But we're dealing here with something that is rather extraordinary.

I mean, I think it's becoming less so in light of the ongoing revelations of paleoanthropy. anthropology, you know, new fossil species is added to that bushy tree almost every year lately, it seems. It's almost an annual event to announce the discovery of a new fossil hominin. And so given the plethora and given the recency, a lot has been done, has been said about homonelotti that has gotten a lot of attention because it was a surprise when they finally nailed down the estimated age, it was only a few hundred thousand years old. These creatures were around when Homo sapiens did appear. So, I mean, just to add on that, we've had several guests on the show. We had one guy that had 700 newspaper documented accounts of giants being dug up in North

America. And he had some with dwarves, like 30, 40 dwarves buried. It's like the Lord of the Rings. The more we keep doing this, all of our guests have talked about the little people. And do you find that that's not too far-fetched? Well, sure. You know, in the discovery of the Hobbit, homo-fluoresiensis, you know, which also evokes that Lord of the Rings world with all these different,

different beings coexisting, the discovery of that diminutive hominin that presumably went extinct, ostensibly went extinct a mere 50,000 years ago. And yet even the discoverers, you know, the very conservative anthropology, is that they are acknowledged that, well, the local people have been telling us these stories of little hairy people up in the mountains all along, but they're just mythological, of course.

Or are they, you know? And so, you know, there are accounts of these little people all across Southeast Asia in an area where it may be, at least the fossil record now suggests, that some of these Australopithecine types, perhaps, may have persisted. until very recent, if not contemporary times. And so, yeah, I think it's, I think it's, you know, it's like in the face of so much evidence, you know, now that this paradigm has been turned on its head and the notion that there have been other non-sapien hominins living alongside us until very, very recently.

I mean, you know, when I say, people are amazed when I rattle off, you know, there's evidence of Neanderthals at least about 20 to 30. If not, there's one site that has been suggested preliminary, only 10,000 years old. There's Homo-Hidalbergensis in East Asia, 20,000 years. The Hobbit, Homo Floresiens, is only 50,000. We've got remains of Homo erectus in some of the islands of Southeast Asia, like Java, perhaps as young as 25 to 75,000 years ago, and so on and so on. I mean, there's a half a dozen. If you stepped into a time machine and went back just 20 to 30,000 years for sure, you could possibly bump into any one of a half a dozen different upright bipedal hominins.

And it's, you know, so given that and an understanding and considering that, on the one hand and on the other, seeing this mountain of evidence that you talk about, the footprints, the hair, the sightings, the vocalizations, all of these things. Why should we, I mean, it's not like that stuff is in a vacuum anymore. It has a context. It has a cubicle to give it rational significance. And, you know, I don't expect science to recognize on the basis of that evidence alone. I mean, traditionally, it's required a type specimen in the form of a body.

or a diagnostic piece of a body, or maybe this might be a good test case, a novel DNA sequence. That's never, there's no precedent for that for recognizing a new species on that basis alone. Well, Sean, you were telling me a little bit about like kind of being in Boise and dealing with some skeptics and people kind of getting feisty with you. Can you talk a bill about that? Because I want to bring you back into this conversation, like what you're... Yeah, I had a question. I wanted to add on to that, Sean, before you answer that as well. I just was thinking about the experience.

Like, so there's not too many people who probably from growing up from a kid, from a kid's age, had not only an expert, but the belief that, like, Bigfoot's real. So you grew up being like, oh, yeah, this is a real thing. Like, your dad is the expert, right? Like, a lot of us, or is-ish, you know what I mean? A lot of it. To me, I think about, like, Nate and I, like, grew up in the church, right? So you always, at some point, that gets challenged. Right.

Like, you get to high school or whatever, right? And that gets challenged. And so you've, it's got to be a unique experience, man. Like just because I think for us, at least for me, I don't know where Nate's at with this, but like with the Bigfoot thing, it's been a process of just looking into it. But when you grow up in that, I don't think a lot of people had that experience. Oh, yeah. Well, I think what happened with me is anytime a skeptic would approach me or address it,

I'd be like, well, I just don't think you know as much as I do or have been exposed to as much as I do. And so, and this is even before the internet carried as much ease as it does now. But I would encourage people to go onto certain websites that would help them discover more. Or I always, I probably, well, I probably sell more of my dad's books than most bookstores. But it just comes from me saying, you know, you don't have the same material that I grew up with. I had the Bigfoot Encyclopedia right next to me, and I would come home and ask questions, and then I'd go back to my friends or the skeptic, and I'd deliver information. And then I think that's how I curtailed a lot of heated discussions or really negative skeptics.

But, no, it's kind of fun. Like, I always liked, I think most of me and my brothers growing up in a family of educators, my mother's a teacher, my dad's a teacher. We all are kind of teachers and we enjoy sharing information. So I think that helped too. People started to look at me as much as of a wealth of knowledge as they would, like my dad, the professor. Well, it's a very unique blend of what you guys have because you're totally embracing academia

but at the same time you're super open-minded and you create a riff. I'm sure you probably, when you're walking to class, Jeff, you like talking to the philosophy professors a little bit more than some of the other guys because, you know, you like to, you're dealing with the idea of beliefs, right? And people just, they shut down. Like you've said on a couple of podcasts, listen to, people have this irrational, just visceral at you like, no, like, you know, like almost anger, it sounded like you were describing. Share some stories about just the instant negativity you're getting back on this. Because I think that's fascinating that people are so close-minded that they'll just almost get angry at you, you know. Right. Well, it's, it has changed a lot. It's mellowed a lot here on the campus. And, well, I don't know if it has, if I can say how broadly that extends, but some of my more vocal antagonists are no longer here at the university. And then some of the tag alongs without the instigator are, are just ambivalent now. But yeah, there have been some. very, you know, nasty tit for tats. I mean, so much so that at one point, the university president during a general faculty meeting without mentioning any specific names, admonish the faculty to exhibit tolerance and respect for one another's research. He encouraged faculty not to say negative things about their colleagues in print, you know, or in the paper and press.

And I happened to be out of town that week, but it reported back to me that it was quite clear to everyone in the room exactly who they were talking about. Yeah. There was one particular individual. He still is around. He's kind of given up on it though, but he writes a local column and now, well, now he doesn't have a column. He just has, well, he has a column on the, on the opinion, page on Sundays now, but he's got an opinion about everything. And I was his kind of whipping boy for a long time. Bigfoot was, Bigfoot just epitomized all things that were silly and in his mind and irrational. And so there was always just an off the cuff or a tongue-in-cheek comment or illusion to my work. One week, I guess the news cycle was pretty slow and Easter was coming up

And so his column was entitled Bigfoot and the Easter Bunny. And he basically, his thesis was I would be as justified researching and investigating the existence of the Easter Bunny as I am as an academic looking for Sasquatch. And then to cap it off, somebody, he was an instructor in the physics department. It wasn't even regular faculty. He was an instructor. Somebody in the physics department brought in one of those lawn statues of Sasquatch that you used to see in the Sky Mall magazines catalog. And I don't know if it's still there, but for years, it was in the physics office, the Bigfoot holding an Easter basket. They balanced an Easter bag over its arm with, you know, full of plastic Easter eggs.

I guess as an homage to me. You got some trolls. You know, it was, it, it degraded to that sophomoric level of expression. Wow. Now I think, you know, they, I, you know, I hope that I've been successful at maintaining a level of professionalism and, you know, a standard of objectivity in my treatment of the subject. Do you think you would have been fired if, if you were a younger professor or didn't have. job security? Yeah, I was naive enough and idealistic enough, I guess, naive more than idealistic maybe, but that I jumped in the deep end of the pool even before I had tenure. Wow. And tenure was a

bumpy, bruising, bloodying process, and I had to fight tooth and claw. And it also delayed my promotion to full professor. Right. And became a very unseemly process that involved, you know, formal grievances against particular faculty and so forth because of misconduct. And so thankfully, those things are hopefully now in the past, at least they feel like they're in the past. Yeah, it's, it has brought a lot of positive publicity for those that will recognize it,

They don't get their own insecure, where their insecurities on their sleeve. They recognize that it has brought a lot of attention. And I've had many an instance where, you know, where someone encourages their child to come to ISU because I am at ISU. Not necessarily to study with me, but there must be an atmosphere of open-mindedness. Now, the opposite really strikes a nerve when there was a period when there was an AP report, right when my book came out. And an AP reporter came over from Boise to do a story. And he was a young, ambitious guy. You know, the story was supposed to be a serious professor writes a serious book about a subject that's rarely taken very seriously.

And instead, he sniffed out what he thought was a much more salacious story. that would get him on the wires. And that was, you know, this weird Dr. Meldrum. The way the story opened, I mean, just to set the tone, it went something like, yeah, Dr. Meldrum, something of a hulking figure himself, lurking in his dimly lit lab, shunned by students and faculty alike as he crosses the campus.

You know, it was that kind of, what that kind of? Sean, could you talk a little bit more about some of the heat your dad's taken? I was a member of a local club at the in Pocatello. And there was a gentleman from the physics department, actually. Most of the club was very intrigued by Bigfoot. I think dad knows exactly what I'm talking. I'm not going to say anything else about him.

But he, yeah, anytime that would be brought up, he would always, I could see him kind of puff up. And there was only one instance that he really kind of got. into it, not necessarily with me, but he was sitting at the table next to me and he was just talking about the nature of it. And I could, he did it. I don't know if it was intentional, but he did it. He was sitting less than eight feet away from me. So, I mean, he's social distance from me, but it wasn't, he, he wasn't out of here shot. And, and the sad part was, was the club actually asked my dad to speak.

And my dad came and spoke. And the entire club and guests, because everybody invited their friends, were there except for him. So it was pretty obvious. But yeah, it's... I got to ask, though, like both you guys here, like, in your opinion, I have a theory on this, but like, in your opinion, why do you think there's this topic and this Bigfoot elicit such an emotional or strong response from people?

more so than you would think like other Nate kind of covered a bit of it like other areas of science but it really this is like such a hot button for some people why do you why do you guys think that is yeah I think it's because it gets lumped in with a lot of other things like you know you see it paired right next to Loch Ness and and other things like Chupacabra but I think another piece is the kind of the religious aspect of it so Pocatello sits right up next to a tribe. And my dad's become very kind of buddy with them and they're willing to talk.

And I used to work for a company that was inclusive for the tribe to join. It was a financial institution. And I'd hear about it a lot. And you'd get mixed reviews where you don't talk about it. And then I'd get lots of people who are like, oh, yeah, we love your dad. He's the best when it comes to talking about the respect and the sanctity of this mystical creature. And so that kind of, I think, drives that side of it for sure. I think it's such a hot button because it is so close to us as humans, right? It's, it's something that's very,

very close to. Jeff was kind of touched on it before. Like it's some people don't want to address that, that there could be some parallel or, you know, another branch of a hominid. And that thought alone elicits like a very visceral response from people that, They don't want to open their mind of that. Or admit that your, you know, 10th great-grandfather was a different species possibly. I think my room, I think one of my roommates. Yeah. Yeah, I've actually had a couple of people who were very explicit in expressing that concern was that or that if it were recognized, then it would

prove evolution and they perceived evolution as a threat to their religious belief. And so, yeah, there is that. It's usually more subliminal, I think, than that. But some people, yeah, think that. I think that somehow it reiterates that this is a missing link, you know, and that it indicates that we evolved from something else. and we're not specially created and they see it as a

as a threat to that position. But my, I mean, that's, like I said, I think that either it's more subliminal or implicit that it doesn't manifest itself as much as in the intellectual circles in academia, it's basically,

you know, well, it's a combination. It's, part. Some of it is, as Sean said, it's out of ignorance. And that goes for my own colleagues, you know, who adopt an opinion without consulting the primary data. And that's a problem. So, but it also is, it's been so stigmatized as being, quote, pseudoscience, you know. there are these career ideological skeptics, you know, the Michael Shermers, the Benjamin Radford's, the Carl Sagan's, who, you know, if you read The Demon Haunted World, you know, it was a very, very popular and very influential book, and it was a great book, except, in my opinion,

he lost some credibility in some standing, in my view, because he just simply lumped all these phenomena together, regardless of any discretion or discernment about the difference between the evidence for Sasquatch, a biological entity, and parapsychology, you know. That's why it's a little bit problematic for me when I, when, you know, we talked about the lack of homogeneity and unanimity across the Bigfoot community, because there are, there's a a very distinctive rift that has developed here of late between what are labeled the woo, those who attribute paranormal explanations to Sasquatch, and those that are the flesh and bludders, the biological entities.

Something that we've kind of dug up in this podcast already is just this idea. I think that ancient humans weren't this close-minded about. things. Like, I feel like we live in a time where we're the most closed-minded we've ever been as a species. I think so, yeah. Part of me wonders if, as we've gotten to this age of science, where everything's so black and white, I mean, is there anything in this space that's hard for you to believe? Because with any belief, there are things that you struggle with. Are there anything in this space that you struggle with yourself? In this, the Bigfoot space, we're talking about? Yeah. You know, I, there are occasions when, you know, on a, a moment,

moment of reflection where you think, man, are we ever going to get to the bottom of this? I really don't doubt. I mean, any time a little doubt comes in lights on my head, I'm immediately reminded of the remarkable evidence that I have experienced firsthand or that I've examined, that I have assembled and collected and analyzed. And, you know, people ask me, what's the best evidence? And, you know, we keep coming back to the footprints from my perspective. The subtleties of detail, of anatomy, and biomechanics.

Yeah, I heard you say something really good about this. You said there's only a few people in the world that could fake these footprints. Yeah, yeah. To incorporate the level of subtlety of anatomical detail, and to even anticipate and think, because many of these footpoints, footprints, as we've said of the Patterson-Gimland film, I mean, they span half a century now, at least. And yet this remarkably distinct, these are not just enlarged facsimiles of a human foot. They are the foot of a heavy bipedal hominoid.

And they show all the distinctions that now in hindsight, we would understandably expect. But a lot of that biomechanics, especially the biomechanics of human locomotion in 1967, really was in its infancy. I mean, especially in academia. I mean, there was perhaps a little more advances on the fore in orthopedics, in medicine, in rehabilitation professions. But, you know, the understanding of something like the mid-tarsal break that I've talked about. And now people banty it about as if it's just a common, common everyday term. But when I was talking about it, there probably were only about a half a dozen to a dozen anthropologists who could give you a rational explanation of what the mid-tarsal break was in its functional significance. And you can prove that because of the cast of Patty where you literally have seen the video of the footprint.

You have the footprint. You know it's not one foot walking in the other. Oh, right. Like a knuckle walking or something. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. And it's been reiterated by dozens and dozens of other examples. And it's been further substantiated by other lines of evidence like the half tracks where when they run, they're up on the just the four part of the foot, not just the ball like in

the human with our arched foot. Yeah. Furthermore, by examples of pathology where like the remarkable cripple foot, which itself is controversial, but when viewed from this perspective of the differences that you see in the foot manifest in this deformity are perfectly aligned, correlate perfectly with the distinctions of the normal foot anatomy that characterize the Sasquatch foot. Jeff, what was the turning point for you? If you look back of the history and the evidence you've collected, at what point where you're like, this is this is it i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm in on on what i've seen yeah well i think you know i was

kind of fortunate that the uh it wasn't the first contact uh from an academic you know as an academic it was actually kind of the second but but it was uh coming up face to face being being taken out and shown a long line of footprints 35 45 45 clear footprints in the mud no ambiguity they were either hoaxed or they were real And I can remember just literally the hair standing on my neck as the, you know, the significance of these footprints and the details I was looking at sank in. My gosh, you know, it was like I compare it to that M&M's commercial where Santa Claus comes in or the two M&Ms come in and catch Santa in front of the tree. And Santa, they do exist, you know, and vice versa. Where was this when you...

That was in southeastern Washington, just outside of Walla Walla. So up against the Blue Mountains there that... Was this in 96? This was 96, yeah. A lot of good onions up there. Yeah, they're great onions up there, yeah. What about... A lot of people ask, you know, with this, what about the supernatural stuff that kind of comes

in this space? I know that science, you know, it's not going to touch that. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I would, you know, cite that common phrase. You never say never, never say never, but a couple of distinctions. One is I sort of draw the line with my own involvement at that which I can objectively evaluate. And, you know, I've gone out. I've welcomed the opportunity to have subjective personal experiences with such phenomenon.

but every time I'm a participant, nothing happens. Nothing observable. So to go out and see an orb, or to witness a portal materialized. You haven't been abducted yet. I haven't been, at least not to my knowledge. I do have this back here. Oh, man.

Well, Bigfoot kind of gets into that weird space where people say they see the glowing eye. eyes. And we do have examples in the world of like animals like cuttlefish where they can totally change their appearance. And you think, and some people say Bigfoot does. They cloak. Well, yeah. I've heard you, I bet you've heard all of it. All the world. Sure. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there was a great, there was a great screenplay too. I was asked to read and comment on where they had incorporated something like that. The Bigfoot could actually. change their appearance by a similar sort of chromatophore mechanism and just blend in, you know, like predator. I was about to say that. Sounds like predator. Yeah.

Anyway, yeah. Is that out of the realm of science, though? Could that happen? Well, it's not out of the realm of possibility. If you can point to another example in the animal kingdom of something that utilizes that kind of adaptation. then it's possible. But then comes the second half.

The other side of the coin is, is it probable? So when we look at the adaptive radiation of primates, which includes us, and, you know, what examples are there of anything that even remotely? I mean, why is it that this interdimensional, this supposed interdimensional time traveler, shape shifter, all those looks like a bipedal hominid. You know? Yeah, exactly. And doesn't pick up after himself in the woods, you know?

But why do you think we can't catch him then? Like, because that's what a lot of people say. It's like, how can we, we know all the other primates. We can get close to them. Well, it's the combination I think of their elusivity and rarity. This is one thing that people don't give sufficient acknowledgement to if they, you know, those who, who allow for the possibility that such a creature exists. You know, without going into all the logical sequence of clues and inferences and iterations

and extrapolations that I've used to arrive at this, these creatures, you know, there's about 200 black bear for every one Sasquatch. So on the state of Idaho, we've got about 35,000 black bear, and they're pretty elusive and hard to find, hard to see. Don't they call them ghost bears? Exactly. Yeah. Well, the ghost bears, that refers specifically to the supposed persistence of grizzly bears in southern Colorado. But there was a book about black bears in Idaho, and they were called the shadows in the forest, suggesting how,

elusive they actually are. But the point being for every, so for 35,000 Black Bear in Idaho, we've got maybe 150, 200 Sasquatch by my guesstimation. And it's a little bit better than a guestimation, but that's a rough ballpark. And that when you add that up across the western United States and Canada, that provides sufficient, I think, to sustain a population. And yet, you combine that with their rarity, their longevity, their higher intelligence, their far-ranging behaviors, we've got evidence that would suggest that, you know, they may have a home range depending on the topography and the habitat and so forth, on the order of about a thousand square miles. You know, there's, there are bear that will make a living in 20 square miles, literally, never leave that size of

an area. You know, there's a lot of variation in that, obviously, and depending. on gender and age and so forth. With all your expertise, do you think, and with primates, could they be up in the trees? Are they adapted to go way up in the trees or underground? Because obviously, they're strong. Right. Well, the limiting factors would be, one, their size, and two, the structure of the forest canopy. You know, there's not a lot to attract you up into a conifer as opposed to a fig tree

and tropical forest in the tropical latitudes. Most of the most, and this is, I think, why Sasquatch are as big as they are. I mean, if they did need resources up in the trees, they would not have attained the giant size that they have. But that's part of that, of the strategy of that size is the ability to use less productive, less nutritious foodstuffs in order to,

survive, especially through a winter in a temperate forest. But in a temperate forest, most of the sugars and starches are at the ground level or subterranean, you know, roots and tubers and berries, the old roots and berries. And then they are almost certainly omnivorous. And so taking an elk fawn or a deer has been reported by many a witness, in fact. Sean, do you remember when your dad told you believed in Bigfoot? Oh, it was a long time that he would just, he wouldn't actually come out and say it. And people would ask me, does your dad believe? And I would say, well, he's a, he's a researcher. So I don't think he's allowed to say whether he believes or not. Because then his evidence, whatever he presents, might be attributed to his beliefs. Or, you know, like you discussed early on,

that scientists don't. They often allow their biases to slip into their research. And so I think it's a constant battle to prove that you're not. So when people ask him that, I think for a long time, he struggled. And even I would say the same thing, you know, me or my dad and sound cool. Well, yeah. And I religiously, pardon that word, religiously avoid using the word, belief because of the connotation of a position of faith.

I mean, it has a very frequently, very routinely, you know, a journalist will ask me. So you believe, you know, incredulously, you believe in Bigfoot and I'll set them back on their heels by saying no. And pause, leave a pregnant pause there for it to sink in and then say, when you ask that, when you use that term in a colloquial sense, you mean, have I accepted something? something in the absence of evidence. And I say, no, I'm convinced by the evidence that I have studied. I have reached a point where I'm absolutely convinced, as much as I can be short of having

a specimen right in front of me, and I qualify it by that. But no, it's not a matter of belief. That's a pejorative skeptics, the ideological skeptics that I've talked about, call you know, Sasquatch enthusiasts, those who have given all objectivity away, true believers. So, you know, I had a colleague in my department say, not to my face, but someone else shared it with me. Oh, he believes. So he's no longer objective. He's not doing any real scientific. Well, it's like, isn't it like saying like I believe in deer or I believe in dogs? Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying there. It's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of to me.

meaning actually in some ways in your research to say because I mean you wouldn't say you believe in deer I've seen deer right I mean so if you I've seen the evidence of deer I see my dog poop in the back girl at the time without seeing my dog I know around you know yeah so it almost feels like you have to go through a pilgrimage in your life to be able to do science so to speak oh yeah right like what are the things that happened in your life to be able to accept this stuff like for me it took a long time through just listening to podcasts about Bigfoot before, your mind slowly evolves to accept these things. What's the pilgrimage you took mentally to be able to look at those casts and not just go, someone hoax those things? Yeah. To step past that, to not have that giant wall of skepticism knock you back. Right.

The sequence. Well, I compare it to fishing in a way. I enjoy fishing, but I'm not a good fisherman, because if I don't catch, at least as a youngster in my earlier days, I guess, if I don't catch something right off the bat, I lose interest very quickly and have to go find something else to occupy myself with. But if I catch a fish in that first five minutes, I can sit there not catching anything the rest of the day and be absolutely dedicated to the effort.

And so stroke of good fortune, I guess, or not, they ought to have. as Sean, if it is or not. My first exposure was a big fish. I mean, looking at those absolutely pristine 15-inch footprints in the mud strung out there across that hillside. Like I said, that reaction, there was an intellectual, but there was also an emotional reaction. Such much you walked by here last night. But if you put 10 of your colleague friends in there, in that space where you were? Yeah. Could they look at those tracks and see what you saw?

Well, if they had the, if they had the understanding of what they were looking at and didn't, and weren't just simply weighing the question, does this suggest Bigfoot or not? In other words, I mean, I was focused in on the pressure ridges, the tension cracks,

the toe slips and dragouts, the comet tails, the half tracks, you know, all the the subtlety. It was like a piece of artwork for you. Like a Picasso. Yeah, in a way. It's like a piece of artwork. You're talking about the first time you saw a woman at the beach and the sun silhouetting on her.

You know, there's something to be said about that comment, though, because, you know, I'm a very visual learner and teacher. Yeah. And I think based on experiences with other colleagues who look at something and don't see what I see, you know. Yeah. I mean, we all are that way a little bit. But I'm a very qualitative investigator. And, you know, I've given seminars in my department where there's a lot of, you know, quantitative ecologists. and if they can't put it on a bivariate plot,

they don't know what to do with it. And even what's on the bivariate plot, there was one fellow in particular. I had to laugh. I literally had to suppress a laugh. This is one of the guys that was one of my more vocal antagonists. And he's giving a presentation. He shows this one plot.

He says, I have no idea what it means. But there's the data. And I'm thinking, well, what? You know, and yet when I give this anatomical treatise on the, on the evolution of the human foot and the significance, you know, the footprints fossilized and extend, they go, oh, you know, it's all just quantitative. I said, well, you put too much stock in qualitative. If I put a square and a circle of the same width or diameter up there, and you quantify that with two measurements, right? height and breadth. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between those two things. But without a pair of calipers, I can look at that and describe to you.

This one is a circle. This one is a square. I mean, that sounds trite, but that's kind of what it boils down to sometimes. You know, one of my complaints about some of my colleagues, some of my younger colleagues who have made quite a splash in the foot morphology literature, is that they don't understand the mechanics of footprints. They've never, they don't, at least there's no evidence that they've ever spent a day at the beach, just watching people walk and examining their footprints over and over and over again.

Funny you mentioned that. I still have my cast of my foot that you took on the beach. Yeah, look at that. Here's a story. Here's a story of how that kind of thing happened. my ex-wife, my former wife and I were sitting watching a movie. And she hates it when I tell this story, but it's okay now. I don't have to have permission.

She has a foot that, and Sean can tell you about this trait too, because most of the boys have it as well. She has very nimble toes that she can bend under her foot so that her foot looks almost like a fist. The toes are bent under so far. I cannot even come close to doing that. Her toes aren't exceptionally long, and her sole pad actually comes up almost to the first interphalangeal joint right there. So when seen from below, her toes look actually rather short and stubby.

You wouldn't think they were so flexible. The story was that we're sitting there at the couch, and I'm on the floor. She's on the couch with her leg over my shoulder because I'm giving her one of my famous foot massages. And the movie, I don't remember what movie we were watching, but I was losing interest in it. And my mind started to wander, and I was thinking about footprints. One of the characteristics of some Sasquatch tracks is they have this unusual sort of crease across the ball of the foot. It's been described as split ball.

And there's been several different attempts to explain what it might be or what the adaptation might signify. Well, I'm sitting there with my wife's foot, and suddenly I thought to myself, you know, I've never seen the soul of her foot when her toes are bent down. And so I bent her foot down and lo and behold right across the ball of her foot pops up this crease, a flexion crease, right at the joint. And it was very prominent on her because her sole pad extends up, you know, under the toes and between the toes to a greater degree. just as our fingers are webbed so that when we flex our our knuckles, that crease pops up. And that's, there was the answer. If you go and look at your baby birth certificate, that is, your birth certificate, if you've got an inked footprint, what you'll find, and this is why I was casting the

kid's feet, you'll find that there's a crease right across the ball of your foot. We're all born with one. It only fills in as we begin to walk and crawl and so forth. And the sole pad continues to grow and the connective tissue fills in. Sean, have you ever been out with your dad and he complimented a woman on her feet? Wow, beautiful feet. I just picture you guys at the beach and your dad is following you around as you're walking. No, looking into your footprints.

He does. He says, can you run 20 yards down the beach? beach and then he starts looking at our pictures or our feet footprints and that happened in fact so my foot is actually in my dad's book Sasquatch legend read science I could tell you the page I was actually just looking for it but uh I've I've jokingly because I used to go I went to Comic Con twice with my dad and helped himself told somebody while trying to convince him to buy my dad's book that my foot was in there and so he actually had me sign his book and my dad

so that he could give both of our signatures. Did you sign the footprint? I didn't sign the cast, no. Oh no, I mean like in the book. Is your picture? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. I signed it for him. It's not in every book. Maybe we should make that happen, but I don't think it's in every book. There we go. It sounds like a second level perk, right?

I'll sign my foot in there. Extra $5. It goes to... We'll see that on that trip, I think it was. you Sean I took Sean up on a little camping trip we went up to reservoir that I knew had a big expansive sandbar at the one end and that's what we did we camped on the beach and then and then all day I would have I'd have him run down to the beach and back or I'd have him run in a circle to the left or a circle to the right and and jump and and then I took photographs and made casts represented a cast of his footprints and

Some people go fishing with their dads and others go running through the sandbars. I mean, I have to ask, you know, with all this evidence and all this love, I mean, you have like pure love for this subject. And is it heartbreaking to think that you will go the rest of your life and maybe never see one of these beasts? Is the goal to see one? You said that very delicately. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I know. I'm reaching that point, you know, the, the, white gray hair is accumulated now to the point that I'm experiencing some of those same emotions that I'm sure my predecessors like Dr. Krantz did where you know I hope to see this resolved you know I I try to get out in the woods to do field work in the summer months when I can and and hope to continue doing that in one form or another in the future but you Yeah, I would, I certainly hope. And I'm certainly not, I'm not ready to throw in the towel.

Well, I mean, if you ever retired, I mean, you can go out, do it full time. Sure. Well, yeah, there's that. You probably up your chances at that point, right? Yeah. I feel like you're going to have your Harry and Henderson's moment where it's going to come out. You're going to have a real intimate moment. He's going to give you a hug.

Yeah, there you go. Get a station wagon. You just grab up. Tossil your hair a little. Yeah. Hey, one question I had, I just, I know we're winding down here. question I had too about about the body thing. I know we're going back to that and about actually finding it. Jeff, do you think, do you think there's a, those theories out there about Bigfoot

actually burying their dead? Do you think that that's something that is likely, unlikely? It may just be a dumb question, but. No, no, it's not, it's not a dumb question at all. And I, and I certainly wouldn't profess to know for certain one way or the other. My, my sense is that it's probably unlikely simply because all the evidence seems to point to these creatures being very solitary when sightings or footprints are found, it's of single individuals or what we take to be females with dependent offspring still in tow. We've got little footprints. That's something people don't realize. We have, you know, the smallest footprint I have is about three and a half inches. And it's remarkable looking, but all the way on up to, you know, the longest I've got.

That's about 19 inches that's credible. And so I think when an animal in that kind of a social structure gets old and decrepit, I mean, it's possible that they then call and attract others to their assistance. Maybe that's, you know, that's not beyond the realm of possibility. Does any other animal bury it's dead? Is there any? There's not. No.

That buries there. In fact, even our own lineage, you know, there's a lot. a lot of controversy about even the, quote, Neanderthal burials, whether they were intentional burials or just caveans, basically, you know, or pushing so much garbage into the crevice and covering it with dirt so it didn't smell during the winter months and that kind of thing. But I think it much more likely that, as most animals do, they just secrete themselves off to some nook or cranny. I mean, it's kind of like you think back to the old legends of the elephant graveyard where they thought there was some mystical place where the elephants all went to die.

And if you could find that, you would be rich with all the ivory you could collect. When in reality, all it was was the elephants would go off somewhere out of the way. They would die. And then if you've ever seen one of those time-lapse videos of an elephant carcass. And within two weeks, I mean, it's gone. There's not even a grease spot. because everything gets carted off and eaten or chewed up and knot up and and and where Sasquatch presumably resides in these wet coniferous forests the soils are

notoriously acidic plus in the Pacific Northwest there's a lot of volcanism and so that adds to the acid of the soil bone just does not fare well in acidic conditions like that and so anything that's exposed to the elements that isn't chewed up by the squirrels and marmots and and porcupines very quickly deteriorate. So you don't find bones very often out in the woods. I have to ask one last question. What's the weirdest story that you heard that you thought could be true about Sasquatch?

Ooh, let's see. The weirdest. It just stuck with you. Yeah. Well. I've heard a few. They stuck with me. Yeah.

I mean, the ones that I would place any possible credibility. And I guess the one that kind of jumps to mind is, one of the classic stories, the Ostman tale of being carted off in his sleeping bag by a Sasquatch and unceremoniously dumped on the ground in the presence of what seemed to be a unit, a social unit, whether it was a nuclear family or just an interloping male and a female with her offspring. Oh, interloping. It's a bit of a scandal. Well, it could have.

I mean, what of the thoughts was, you know, it was like, you know, you treat your lovey-dovey to dinner before the fun start. So maybe Osman was the dinner. Right. Look what I brought you. I mean, obviously, he was harassing Austin for two or three days. So he wasn't hanging out with the female in her offspring. Yeah. And then he carried Osman all night long.

So he had to cover probably 20, 25, 30 miles that night. And so he wasn't in the neighborhood. And men don't do that without purpose. Married men don't know. Well, I mean, my point is just simply the people look at that and here's mom and daddy bear, mama bear and baby bear. It probably was not a nuclear family. It still fits the notion that I think the evidence overwhelmingly points.

do that they're largely solitary in their behavior. But males and females do, I mean, given the apparent age of the two offspring that were described, they were kind of teenage male and female individuals. They clearly were weaned. And so perhaps the female was receptive to some male company again. Orangotans, for example, they only get pregnant about every six or seven years. And so there's quite a birth interval in these large-bodied apes. And Sasquatches, we're kind of the exception. We've evolved back the other direction to where,

you know, we can pop one out while the other one's still hatched. What about you, Sean? Same question. And then we can wrap it up. Oh, I, um, the stories that I would hear about Native American babies who developed who were colicky or sick I can't remember where this story came from it's probably been handed around a couple

times and obviously Sasquatch was drawn to it and I can imagine it vividly because I remember watching a Yeti movie with my dad where these big hands creep under the tent

and grab the rifles and break them? You remember the movie, Dad? Yeah. That still, it gives me chills to this day. But them telling the story of this, this Sasquatch. And I'm pretty sure a Native American resident of the tribe that told me the story. And they reached under the tent and grabbed this baby and just scooped it off and ran away. And so all they saw was these hands.

And that gives me the chills to this day. But yeah. Here's a funny extension of that story. And I'll be delicate because the tribes are, they don't like this aspect discussed too much. But I was one of my grandchildren, not Wade that poked his head in, but his older sister arranged for me to speak

at her kindergarten class. And so I brought a big box with all these skulls and foot skeleton models and footprint casts and all kinds of things. And we're past these around. The kids were just mesmerized. It was great. But then the teacher's aide, she starts asking me questions and got me kind of distracted. And I'm answering. And one of her questions was, are they dangerous?

And I said, well, you know, most, almost all of, with very few exceptions, and those exceptions involve the humans shooting at the Sasquatch. the encounters are very innocuous. I mean, they're downright boring, in fact, except for the sensation of running into a nine-foot-tall hairy biped, hairy giant. But then I slipped over and I said, but you know, it's interesting that the local tribes have traditions, and one of their names translates to the eater of children. And it goes back to this story that Sean was referring to, where during a very cold winter, this big hairy arm came in and snatched the crying baby out from under the tepee.

And then I suddenly realized where I was. And you could hear a pin drop. And all these little faces are looking up at me. They eat children. And so very deftly, the teacher, yeah, I know, the teacher very deftly swooped in and she says, oh, but these are just native stories. These are like fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, you know. And I go, yeah, that's right.

A week later, I got a stack of thank you notes from the class. And a sizable number of them said, thank you, Dr. Meldrum. I learned that Sasquatch eat children. So thankfully no parents called me. There will be about 15 kids growing up with that notion. Never going camping, ever. Never going camping ever. I mean, we haven't gotten to that too much on our podcast yet,

but there is a lot of the missing 4-1-1 stuff that, you know, Sasquatch could be involved in that. And I think parents should know that they shouldn't probably let their kids run around unassisted in the woods. Well, sure. Well, sure. I mean, there's 200 times more chance they'll get snatched by a bear than a Sasquash. But nevertheless, you need to show respect for the wildlife.

that's for sure yeah well we appreciate you guys coming on the show dropping some stories you know everything from bigfoot butt cheeks to yeah with the hair with the hair striations i just thinking yeah something about i played football with some guys who had some hairstations would have would have fit the mold no pun intended look at that way plenty yeah plenty of dad jokes we were going to we we were we joked about you know saying like as many trying to pepper in as many dad jokes and foot jokes as we could. Or you are just like foot ponds.

You know, to backtrack a little bit here. No. Yeah. So is there any place you point people, Jeff, to like a website or anywhere to like, to get involved of what you're doing? Well, not specifically. I don't have a web page devoted to this topic per se. Or some books or anything.

Yeah, certainly I would encourage people to hold of the book or the field guide. It's an excellent place to start. There are others out there that are informative as well, but that really is, I think, is a great starting point for most people. And especially it's grounded. It'll give you a good solid treatment of the subject from a biological, anthropological perspective. And check out the relic hominoid inquiry that you're. mentioned, it's a open access journal. It's a little more heady because that they are academically directed journal articles, but there's a lot of great information and they're profuse. The nice thing about

being online, no page charges, and so they're profusely illustrated with, you know, color figures in many cases. And so it's a great place to kind of get additional perspective. well I appreciate that I appreciate you guys coming on and we hope we really hope and we'll be thinking about you that you'll get to see your Sasquatch one day and maybe one of these days when Luke and I are out out there if this show gets big enough we love to we've already been invited on several Bigfoot journeys

with alleged very high rates of success so yeah if we find out this is real I mean that they're not this is real The numbers are real. We may have to extend some invites. Also, if you guys end up in Tennessee, coffee, beer, I have a nice whiskey collection. We'd love to see you guys if you're down this way.

And I know, Idaho State, too. I didn't need to address this. Idaho State, Benny the Bangle, like home of Jared Allen, Merrill Hodge, Marvin, you guys have a great illustrious. I'm a football guy, football history. Also home of Jeff Meldrum. So, there you go.

Great to have you guys. And if you come to the lab, I can guarantee you a footprint cast sighting. Oh, I can't wait. I've got a size 14. I want to see how I measure up. Oh, wow. Well, I'll have to make a mold of your foot. There we go.

I'm ready. It's going to be ugly, man. I got some, I got some. I've been stepped on. Hairstriations on your foot. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not going to promise a massage. No. I appreciate that.

It's a mold. I may try to sit down in a mold, too, and see how I measure up as well. There you go. Oh, guys, we totally appreciate it. Sean, thanks so much. This has been a treat. This has been fun. We appreciate it, guys.

I know it's a little bit crazy thinking, what are these guys up to? Why do they want both of us on this show? So we appreciate the open-mindedness. Oh, I think it's great. Hey, we've had several, we've had several overtures from production companies to possibly do a, you know, a documentary series with me and the boys or iterations of the boys. but it's just, you know, it's the logistics of it, even if the idea falls on favorable ears with the uppity ups, but the higher ups,

the logistics of it are just kind of insurmountable. But it would be fun. I think it would probably make a lot of guys that can't grow beers very insecure too, so there may be some backlash. It's true. I love it. All right, guys.

Thanks so much. You bet. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Take care. Bye. Bye.

So that was it. That was the Bigfoot scientist, the rock star of the Bigfoot world, when in terms of the data, the footprints, you name it. And we got him to open up and have some, you know, share a side of himself that we hope you've never heard on a Bigfoot show before. Because, you know, right away, we have a lot of people who've listened to Jeff Meldrum on several things, from documentaries to podcasts. We try to go for something different on this show.

Get people to share. their stories where they come from how they get how they get there why they believe what they not even believe in as we learned in this episode right just just where they move past belief into a understanding so to speak of this of this this creature and or creatures as we're learning yeah i'm with you i think it's fascinating to to parse out the academic side from from the human side really and and get a full picture of you know of these experts i think i think we got a lot of lot of that with yeah I guess so guys like brian forster and fritz zimmerman and being able to really get you know get the human look at these at these guys that are our top flight researchers in the things

that they research whether it be burial mounds or the paraca skulls or in jeff meldrum's case you know all of the foot morphology evidence for for bigfoot for saskwatch and to get to see the side of you know growing up in in a family like that i just think the entire the entire picture sure is fascinating and you know I think there's been enough cut and dry um academic discussions with Jeff you I've seen them like before I ever like you know what forever watched finding Bigfoot or got into this topic uh to the level that I guess we are now I knew his face from seeing him in in you know encrypted shows on Discover channel history channel I mean he's been everywhere so really cool to have like one of the big dogs maybe the goat when it comes to

Bigfoot come on the show and just break it down for us it was awesome just break it down for us about his journey and I think it's fascinating to find that turning point

for when the light the switch and the light bulb turned on for him it's not what you expect but it is what you expect right for a guy that's you know into bio mechanics

and foot morphology and footprints and all the things that he's into to be sitting in of what would be his Mona Lisa in a sense. It's what you expect, but also not what you expect, right? I mean, it's super interesting.

Yeah. I loved it. It was cool. And it's funny to, like, you know, to have real conversations with people you've listened to for years. It's always fun to kind of have an idea. Like, this person seems cool. This person seems down to earth.

And then have an idea in your head. Like, let's bring his son on, have a family affair. And it goes so well and be what you kind of envisioned. That was just really special and really cool. And we hope you guys enjoy. this episode once again if you listen to the show you like it please go and review it right now on it tuitons that's really helpful um give it five stars leave a review and just share us on instagram or facebook just say hey i'm loving this show put a you know logo of us or whatever tag us at blurry

creatures on anything just help us get the word out that really helps us grow this show and get more guests on and really bring these stories to life because that's what we're all about is chasing a different aspect of the characters behind these creatures. No, yeah, but leave us a review. This is something that takes two seconds out of your day. We read them all. You don't even have to leave us any comment. Go on there and leave us a review.

It really helps us get the word out. And, you know, you've got to, in these arenas and mediums, you've got to play the game. And it really helps us grow what we're doing here. Listen, tell Nate he's great because Nate is great. And he really loves to hear it. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I thrive on the juice.

You got to give him that juice. I had fun. Give him that juice, guys. That was cool, man. Where do we go from here, man? He's the legend. He's the top dog. So what do we do now? See, we start another podcast about like knitting or something. I think we've got to shut it down. Yeah. Yeah, this is it. We're done, guys.

No, we're not. Well, anyway, thanks for listening to the show. We appreciate it. I'm Nate. And I'm Luke, and Nate once went on tour with the band Hanson. See you next time.