Stuff You Should Know - How Bigfoot Works

Episode Date: January 2, 2013

For centuries North American tribes have told stories of a hairy wild giant in the wilderness, and once Europeans arrived they claimed to see it, too. Chuck and Josh examine the claims of believers and the rebuttals of skeptics in this evenhanded episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast drying solution, especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Chuck. Before we get started, let's plug our Brooklyn thing. Our live event, guys, we are throwing a premiere party for the TV show slash

Stuff You Should Know Variety show at the Bell House in lovely Gowanus, Brooklyn, New York, 149 Seventh Street. This is January 8th, and this has tickets. We're covering our cost on this one, and tickets are $10. You can go to thebellhouseny.com or just google that junk. Yeah. And go to the Bell House, find us on the calendar January 8th, show starts at 730. I'm sorry, doors at 730. Yeah. Show at 8. Yeah. And we got special guests, like comedians and music. John Hodgman's going to be there. Other comedians doing their stand up. Lucy Wainwright Roach is going to play. Singing with her pretty dang voice. Right. So we're going to have a nice little blowout. Agreed.

At the Bell House. Come celebrate with us. It'll be a fun, festive occasion. Yeah, we love the Bell House, and we love our fans up there. And I'm sorry, guys, if we haven't come to your town yet, we would love to. Trust us. And maybe we will. Yeah, so there. Okay, so now on to the show. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And that makes this stuff you should know the podcast. Right. Is that a wookie? That is me messing with Sasquatch. It sounded more like Frankenstein from Seret Live.

I remember that. I love that. Frankenstein, Tonto and Tarzan. The classic skit. Have you seen the commercials messing with Sasquatch? Yeah, Jack Link's. It's pretty funny. Yeah, all of them are. It's one of my favorite spots, actually. Well, it contradicts eyewitness reports that paint Bigfoot is kind of a benign, shy creature. Yeah. Now, as far as Jack Link's is concerned, he goes aggro when you when you mess with them, I guess is what it is. So I have an actual intro for this one. All right, let's hear it. We're talking Bigfoot. And very recently,

there was some enormous, huge news. And we should probably preface this one. If you are a skeptic, don't worry, we're going to give your side of this too. But we have found over the years that it's very respectful to give voice to both sides. We try to. Yeah. And we're not insulting you by speaking the other person's side. We'll express your side as well. And when we do that, we're not insulting the other side. Yeah. And at the end of the day, it's about Bigfoot. So let's not get so worked up. Calm down. You know, it's all just fun. There's a self-professed veterinarian with 27 years experience, including forensics named Dr.

Melba Ketchum. Melba S. Ketchum. And she supposedly, she claims, got her hands on some samples of Bigfoot hair and has been testing it, running genetic tests on it. And recently announced and wrote a paper that's under peer review as it stands now that she managed to isolate three separate nuclear DNA. Okay. That came from three separate groups. So one is the nuclear DNA. Remember, so you have nuclear DNA is the mixture of the mothers and the fathers DNA. Okay. mitochondrial DNA is strictly from the mother. Okay. So the researcher found that the nuclear DNA came from a human, Bigfoot, which is a hybrid of the human and this third species, a non-human species, doesn't know what it is yet. But supposedly that's what this hair sample showed.

Really? Then this is just now, right? Yeah. I believe they made this announcement like in late November, early December, which is now under peer review. It is under peer review. That doesn't mean that it's going to pass peer review, but she submitted the paper for peer review. Now, she said that the mitochondrial DNA in the sample was human, which means that this third thing, Bigfoot, is the product of a female woman and a this non-human species, the mystery species, reproducing and forming Bigfoot. And she says that she isolated it to about 15,000 years ago. Wow. Now, anybody who's followed Dr. Ketchum's career can poke holes all in this. There was apparently, I read an early draft of the paper that she said this third species was an angel.

And the people, skeptics love beating up on people like this, but my hand is off to her for, first of all, undergoing this. Sure. Using the scientific method to root out the unexplained. That's extremely fortian in nature, and I love that stuff. Yeah. And then, secondly, to put it up for peer review and to face that kind of criticism. One of the big problems is she isn't saying like, where this sample, how she knows this is a sample of Bigfoot's DNA. She didn't say where she got it? Not that I could find. And I actually saw in one article that she's not saying where it came from. So there's a lot of holes in it. But if you wanted big current Bigfoot news, that's about as big as it gets. That's right. Not quite as current as our own

law officer here in Georgia. Was that last year or the year before? The one up in North Georgia? Yeah, man. With this freezer? Yeah. I didn't follow that very closely. I'm going to go ahead and say that I really want to believe in Bigfoot or not want to believe. I want to, I want there to be a Bigfoot. I don't think there is. That means you want to believe in Bigfoot. But I still want to, I want to believe it's out there because it's just, it would be so cool. And whenever, when I saw that story, the sheriff, and I think he's a sheriff or deputy in North Georgia, it was a hoax, of course, but he said he had a body in a freezer. And they showed pictures of this. It was a gorilla suit, right? That's what it ended up being. And it had guts,

had like animal entrails, but it looked like initially like, oh man, that looks like a dead Bigfoot. And then you look closer and it's like a suit that you can get online. I wish I had that kind of time to do stuff like that. Yeah, apparently. To perpetrate a hoax. Apparently they were trying to drum up potential business for leading Bigfoot tours in North Georgia. That's a sound way to do it. Until you get found out and then ultimately either retire or get fired as a law enforcement officer. It could still work. Oh, well, okay. He lost his day job is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, you can't do stuff like that if you're a cop. You can't pull a hoax? No, you can't pull a hoax and try and snow people for money. That's not, that's not legal. I don't know that it is illegal

to, uh, to snow people for money to promise them something that's not true and charge for it. This guy says that he called it fraud. No, it's a hoax. There's a big difference between fraud and a hoax. If you had the business, it would be fraud. No, that would be like if he promised that you were going to see Bigfoot, not a Bigfoot tour, but he said you're going to see Bigfoot on this tour and then you could get them for fraud. I think you would still be fraud if he founded that business and advertised it on a false premise, which is I found this thing. Look at it. Yeah, I see your point. Yeah, he's a jerk. That's what I say. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show

you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that and I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion, and I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts in big names

in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. We'll listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about Bigfoot. This guy up in North George is pretty far from the only person to pull a declared Bigfoot hoax. What keeps this thing going is that there's some stuff out there that's considered this body of evidence of Bigfoot's existence that hasn't been definitively debunked or proven. Right. Yeah. One of the other things that I think people who are believers in Bigfoot, like the ones that are out there like looking for Bigfoot

and believe in Bigfoot, one of the things that keeps them going also is this correlation between Bigfoot sightings among people of European descent and Bigfoot legends of Native American tribes long before the Europeans ever got here. And if you look at the names that these different tribes have and take a step back, you're like, wow, these tribes were all over the place. Some were in the Pacific Northwest. Some were in Florida. Some were in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. And all of them have this weird, tall, giant, hairy man legend that they have a name for, even though they're geographically scattered all over the place. And it's possible that all of these different legends share a single common ancestor that is further back,

maybe located on the steps of Eurasia. Yeah. But it's also kind of noteworthy that they all have different legends for it. Sure. The Himalayas even, the Yeti, the imominable snowman in Asia. Very popular. Apparently you hear that one more than you see it. Yeah. Which I didn't know. But we should call this thing Sasquatch because that is the most common name they use nowadays. And even though some of the names from Native American tribes, Wendigo, Ye Yeo. That is great. Oma, Rugeru, and Boks is some of the names that this has gone by in Native American lore. But Sasquatch, Sasquatch comes from, I have no idea how to pronounce that. It looks like Sasquatch. That word and another word from that area around British Columbia

were similar enough. The 1920s white school teacher named J.W. Burns coined the term Sasquatch. Sure. And it's basically, it's the umbrella term for any big foot like man. Right. So, we should, even though the sightings have varied in their description over the years, there are a few hallmarks that pop up. One is that this is a tall beast between 7 and 15 feet. Yeah. Which is, that's. 15 feet is enormous. Yeah. I haven't. Most of the ones I've heard of between like 7 and 8 feet. Have you seen Trollhunter? I saw that recently actually. That first troll that they watch the guy zap and turn his tone. That thing was about 15 feet tall. That's huge. Yeah. That was a pretty good movie. I'd buy 10 feet. No way. 15 feet. No way. Yeah.

Did you like that movie? Oh, Trollhunter was excellent. Yeah. I kind of got, it kind of wore on me toward the end. I thought it was a little long, but it was pretty cool. Yeah. The imagination that it used was just beautiful. Totally. Agreed. Get Trollhunter people. It walks on two legs. That's a big one. Was that bipedal? Is that what they say? Mm-hmm. It's upright and has a loping gait. You see that elf, right? The movie Elf. Yeah. The one shot where they mimic the famous 16 millimeter film. Oh, yeah. Where it shows Will Ferrell in Central Park and they like have that from frame 352 of the 16 millimeter film. It's pretty funny. So Will Ferrell's doing sex? Yeah. It says like, you know, this strange elf was seen wandering through Central Park and they

mimic that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it's Will Ferrell. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It was very good. Yeah. Long reddish fur. That's a big one. Reddish brown. That's, and that's really interesting that it's, that Sasquatch is typically described as having long reddish brown fur. Yeah. That's a really specific thing for everybody to report. And again, it's possible that like people have heard other reports and said, you know, that's what they're expecting to see. Sure. Or that's what they're reporting because that's what Sasquatch has. But it's still, it's significant. You said that the Yeti was more heard than seen. Yeah. Bigfoot's usually more seen than heard. But when Bigfoot is heard, he makes gurgling noises, howling noises, noises that sound totally alien to the people

reporting it. Yeah. I've heard weird noises in the woods camping all my life. And I've never thought, oh, that's a Bigfoot. I just think that's just something, some animal making a strange sound that I've never heard. Right. Because you live in the city. That's right. Supposedly this Sasquatch also has sort of a man like face and reports from either being really, really, really smelly to not smelling at all. Oh yeah. That's not in this article. I forgot about how smelly Bigfoot's supposed to be. Yeah, supposedly. I've heard that many times. They're also supposedly very wary of people, but also at the same time, intensely curious about us. And a lot of people who have made eyewitness reports say that they weren't scared, which is weird. Yeah, most people say that

like I didn't feel threatened. Right. And that kind of jibes with most Native Americans legends about Bigfoot that it's a benign creature. And often it has intellect and it's given spiritual powers in Native American lore. So it wasn't something to be afraid of. Right. Sasquatch is your friend. Yeah. They usually are by themselves, but there have been reports of several of these Sasquatches hanging out together and chatting. Yeah. But for the most part, they're usually alone, right? Yeah. So you put all this together and you've got like a pretty good, common, it's like the AKC breed for Sasquatch. These are its characteristics. I love it. Okay. If you take this at face value, which you should. Sure. If you're a skeptic,

you should always look at things at face value, not just immediately dismiss it or poo poo it. Yeah. Try to get to the bottom of it. And that's what we're about to do now. The first question is could a creature that matches this description possibly exist? Yeah. And it's important when considering this to point out that we have never, despite all the sightings and little still shots and film clips and audio clips, there's never been any conclusive evidence. They've never found bones, but that's huge or anything like that. A lot of footprints and stuff like that. Yeah. So moving forward, could this exist? Perhaps in the Gigantopithecus. Right. Because that's a creature that actually did exist at some point. And it says here in the article that the Gigantopithecus,

which is the largest primate in the fossil record, lived between one and nine million years ago. Actually, I saw an article that had updated that to about 100,000 years ago, which meant that humans in Gigantopithecus lived side by side. Have you seen this thing? I have. Looks like a big foot. You know? Yeah. And like, oh, well, I guess if someone saw that in the woods, I would think it was a Sasquatch. Right. It lived in Southeast Asia. Yeah. Or in Central Asia. And it's a relative of the orangutan. Yeah. Big time. So looks a lot like one. Yeah. This is all extremely interesting stuff in case you didn't know, because orangutans for starters have reddish hair, reddish orange hair. Yeah. So that's one connection to Gigantopithecus. Yeah. They got the long arms like that. Yeah.

They walked upright about 10 feet tall. Yeah. Usually about 1200 pounds. And if since orangutans are the closest modern relative of Gigantopithecus, it makes sense to kind of look at them, look at their behavior. Does it match big foot stuff? Yeah. They have teeth similar to humans. So that could account a little bit for the manlike look that people often talk about. Make occasionally will make a loud howling calls. Yeah. That sound odd to other orangutans. Another thing that kind of separates them too, aside from being Asian, whereas most primates are African, is that they tend to live solitary lives. Yeah. So they don't aggregate in groups. They live by themselves mostly. Okay. So chalk one up for the big foot enthusiast. Yeah. Again.

They're like, okay, well, that's it. Gigantopithecus. They live a long time. And because they are widely dispersed, they may not even see other orangutans for many long stretches. Right. So of course, they may not see a human either. Exactly. And if they're intellectual or if they have intellect, as people who believe in big foot like to point out, they would be able to successfully hide from humans, probably. Sure. Especially if their habitat was the woods and the mountains. Yeah. And so you put all that together that they have a long lifespan, meaning there's not a lot of them dying frequently. Yeah. They live, they're spread out population wise. Yep. And they tend to live in remote geographic regions. That if you add all that up,

that's a pretty good reason why you wouldn't have found any bones. Yes, because bones can decay in the wild like that between five and 10 years. And the author of this, was this the Grabster? This is Tom Harris. Tom Harris. He's good. He is good. He points out that people have never gone on big foot bone hunting expeditions. So like people aren't looking for these things. So they may not have found them. Well, yeah, there is a guy actually who's looking for big foot. He's an Idaho State Anthropology professor and he has, he's crowdsourcing a blimp. Yeah. To hunt for big foot with thermal imaging cameras and stuff like that. And he's 300k. And if you're interested in it, you can, you can check out that. I thought it was, but he's got his own website called Falcon

Project. And that's what he's trying to do with it. So there is at least one person trying to do a rigorous scientific hunt for big foot. But I mean, there's all kinds of groups looking. Right. Yeah. There's even a show on Animal Planet, one of our Discovery Channel stations, one of our, I would call it a sister station, but we're not a station. One of our colleagues. And it's what's it called? Finding big foot? Yeah. And these people are out there hunting big foot. And I've even watched bits of it because I just think it's cool and interesting. And it's kind of a fun little show. So I recommend it. And we weren't even asked to plug that. I'm just plugging it. You know, do you have a possible link between the orangutan?

Yeah. Right. And big foot. And that link might be a gigantipithecus. Right. Question is still remaining. How did gigantipithecus get here? Well, we walked over the, was it the land bridge? Yeah. Bearing land bridge? Yes. Yeah, just like we did. Sure. Well, not you and me, but you know. Well, that's one theory. But the big problem here, Chuck, is that absence of proof doesn't prove anything. The fact that we haven't found bones, even though you can explain it, we still haven't found any bones. It doesn't mean that something exists. And that's a, it's a big problem in this debate. You can also point to, though, very happily, the celacanth. Right. The celacanth was thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago. It's a fish. Thought to have gone extinct

in the late Cretaceous period. And then they found it swimming off the coast of Africa in 1938. So you can point to that and say it's entirely possible that gigantipithecus survived somehow, and we just didn't know. Yeah. And scientists are, they'll point out that there are all kinds of creatures that are still undiscovered, but most of them are sea creatures. And that makes sense, too, because we don't spend very much time under the sea. No, we don't. Whereas, you know, we spend a decent amount of time in the woods. Yeah. Okay. So if you're skeptic, everything we just said probably made the hair on the back of your neck bristle in irritation. And here's why. Because like we said, the absence of proof doesn't prove anything.

Sure. And it's entirely possible that all of this evidence, this body of evidence, is just basically a bunch of independent hoaxers. Yeah. Fooling a bunch of people over time. Yeah. Or innocent mistaken identity. They're not all hoaxers. Some people have perhaps gotten confused about things. Sure. Said, boy, that mangy bear doesn't look right. That's standing up on its back legs, too. Yeah. Or the recent photo, there was that still image captured at night. And that's what they said it was. It was a mangy bear. But that thing was kind of weird looking. I think I saw that one. Yeah. It was like a night image shot. And it was on, it was on four leg or four, you know, I don't know if their arms or what. And it, you know, it looked odd, but they, you know,

they explained it away as a mangy bear. Sure. But yeah, lots of hoaxes over the years. Yeah. And if you go into the woods and you're even the least bit familiar with any kind of bigfoot lore and you see something that's that possibly fits it, you may be the victim of wishful thinking or being impressionable or what have you. Yeah. That's a, that's a pretty good accusation, a skeptic and level against somebody who reports a bigfoot sighting. Sure. And the first and easiest way to hoax someone to pull a hoax on someone is the old fake footprint. Yeah. Not too hard to do. You make a fake foot, you wear it on your feet and you perhaps run along in the woods, maybe lope, maybe leap to make the footsteps, you know, the gate. Correct. Right. And then you make a plaster

mold of it. The problem with these is there's been so many over the years that it's like clear that there are hoaxes because this one has two toes, this one has claws, this one has eight toes and you know, people aren't getting together on these and making them consistent. Yeah. Probably the most contentious bit of bigfoot evidence was that 16 millimeter film you mentioned that was made in 1967 by a guy named Roger Patterson. Yeah, the Patterson Gimlin film. And it's from Bluff Creek, California and basically it shows bigfoot walking across basically a clearing into the woods and bigfoot is aware that he's being watched and he turns and looks at the camera like you said, well, Farrell didn't help. And I remember years ago

like watching this and when I was back in my time life books phase, sure, like, I'll believe anything, just tell me. Yeah. And they were saying that one of the reasons that this thing was so convincing that it was bigfoot was that when he looked over his shoulder, rather than looking with just his head, just turning his head, bigfoot turns his whole shoulder and torso. Yeah. Along with this head, which is something that a primate would likely do and nonhuman primate, I should say. Yeah, or someone in an Apesuit wearing shoulder pads. Possibly. That's another possibility too. They also point out that bigfoot's walking with his knees bent in this. That's another sure sign of primate. Whereas I did that today, by the way. Is it hard? Well,

it's not the easiest thing. But what it makes you do is sort of lope along with a kind of a funny gate, a loping gate. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's something that bigfoot enthusiasts point to is that this thing was walking with knees bent. And I didn't realize this until I read this in the article, but humans lock their knees with each step. Yeah, we don't walk with our knees bent. Yeah. And then also the lastly, that the creatures fur is clearly rippling like the skin beneath this rippling and like some costume, some Apesuit isn't going to do that on its own. Yeah. Put all this together. And if you're a bigfoot believer, this is irrefutable evidence that there is such thing as bigfoot. If you're skeptic, you can shoot a hole in all of those, can't you? Sure. Since this

film came out in 1967, it's been like the most reviewed and made fun of or backed piece of evidence ever for bigfoot or Sasquatch. And Roger Patterson, it turns out, was making trying to make a movie about bigfoot. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So he wasn't just some guy out there that happened to have a camera. Yeah. He was trying to put together a film. Since this has come out, there have been in various people. One guy came out and said, you know what? I made the suit for him. He paid me a thousand bucks to make him the suit. Well, the guy who supposedly did make the suit is never admitted to. Well, now there's a bunch of guys. That's not the same guy. There's chambers and then there's this other dude. They aren't the same people. That's why it's kind of hinky,

because multiple people have claimed to made the suit. This one guy says that he was the guy in the suit. But his suit story didn't match up with the guy who claimed he made the suit. It didn't match up with his suit story. But then people said, you know what? Patterson could have altered that original suit to match the guy who said he was in the suit. Then there's chambers, who other people say made the suit, but he says he didn't make the suit. Well, it's a longstanding Hollywood rumor that actually John Landis, the director of American Werewolf in London, came out and said, yeah, this is true. When he was a young pup, he was working at one of the studios and he became friends with John Chambers, who did the ape suits for Planet of the Apes,

which came out right around that time, right? I think so. And he had heard that Chambers had done this and he befriended Chambers and said, yes, it's true. This is John Chambers and Chambers has never taken credit for it. He's never come out and said, yeah, I did it. But if you ask the average special effects guy or makeup guy these days, if you show them that they're like, yes, this is ape suit. There's a water bag underneath that's making the skin ripple. And I like that's a guy that's a man. Right. I'll watch it again today like five times. Yeah, me too. It's really neat. Yes, it's kind of fun. I mean, just the detail they went into like the crooked legs, the bent knees. Yeah, the shaky cam like it looked like someone scared and discovering

something. Yeah, it's perfect. If it's a fraud, it is perfect because think about it. The thing was shot in 1967. It's 2013 and people are still debating whether or not it's authentic. Oh, yeah. And it's gone through lots of rigorous testing by people that study whether or not the film was tampered. And they have determined that nothing was tampered post shooting. Right. If it was anything that was a dude in an ape suit and they really went out there in the woods and shot it. Sure. But like I said, this is all just kind of fun to me. People get so worked up over this. I don't get it. You know, we'll still harm unless someone's like defrauding people out of money. You know, there are people who dedicate their careers to this. There's a woman named

Kathy Moskowitz Strain. And she is a forest archaeologist for the US Forestry Service, who basically became an anthropologist and an archaeologist so that she could hunt for Bigfoot. Yeah. And she's very respected even among skeptics who counter all of her arguments. But she is very much searching for Bigfoot and has been for many years. And she believes or just wants to get to the bottom of it. She believes that there's a Bigfoot, that there's another species out there, some primate species that is what we call Sasquatch or Bigfoot. Yeah. The arguments against like, to me, if you can't say something like, well, somebody would have definitely seen it like by now and proven it. Like you just can't say that. Like the Pacific

Northwest is so vast that an animal could probably hide if there was only a few of them left. Sure. From people, you know? Yeah. But on the other hand, you also like can't say it exists because of this. These hoaxes and these sounds and like you need some sort of like scientific evidence. Agreed. Bones. Bones would help. You do need that unless you're just enjoying thinking about it. Yeah. Another thing you can enjoy is kind of related is watching the Mystery Science Theater 3000 of the Legend of Boggy Creek 2. I haven't seen that one. It's arguably the best episode that I've recorded. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. It's hilarious. Strong statement. But it's related. It's based on a big foot like creature. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Tom points out too that the reason

people want to believe in stuff like this is the same reason some people want to believe in aliens that like the sense of adventure is seemingly lost these days. There's nothing new to discover. And God, if we could just discover a big foot, that would be so huge and so monumental. And I get that. That's probably why I want to believe, you know? Yeah. It would rock the world of science. Oh, it totally would. But then we'd put it in a zoo. Yeah. Poke it with electricity. War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just

have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion. And I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic

upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts in big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions, and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We humans. Yeah. All right, well, let's see, if you want to learn more about Bigfoot, you can type that word into the search bar, how stuff works. There's an adorable picture of a baby

orangutan in this article. So you want to check that out. That's B-I-G-F-O-O-T. And it'll bring that up. And since I said search bar, it's time for Listener Mail. Josh, before we do Listener Mail, you should quickly plug our TV show. Yes, Stuff You Should Know, television show. We call it that because it's based on our lives as podcasters, Stuff You Should Know podcasters. I played Josh, you played Chuck. Yeah, we were going to change that around. I was going to play you, but it just didn't work out. We tried. Yeah. Yeah. But this is a show about our lives and here in the office, and it's fun. Good stuff. Yeah, our fictional lives. Yeah, we should point that out. We're not giving away our real lives. But we recreated our office, we hired actors, and but it's still just

you and me doing our thing, among them. Yeah. And it's on Saturday night, January 19th, the premieres. 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. That's right, two episodes back to back after Idyta Broad Series 3 premiere. Yeah. And if you don't have TV, you can buy these on iTunes the day after the show comes out. You can buy each episode one at a time. That's right. And if you are used to Josh and Chuck's short form video content, fear not, that'll still always be around as well. You can go to sciencechannel.com, revision3, the number three dot com, and always howstuffworks.com to find some good Josh and Chuck video content as well. That's right. Yeah. And the podcast isn't going anywhere, by the way. People ask us that. We're still doing the podcast. Yeah, we are.

I don't care if this thing is the hugest hit ever. We're still going to be the podcast. For sure. Yeah. Thanks for saying that, Chuck. Sure. Okay. So stuff you should know the television show, January 19th, that's Saturday, 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, after the Series 3, Season 3 premiere of Idyta Broad, starting at nine. We'll see you then. All right. Listen to me, Elton. Yeah. I'm going to call this, I don't even remember what this was. Oh, meth showers. Josh, Chuck, and Jerry, a.k.a. L. Chuck Tran. My name is Jimmy Griffith from Lenore, South Carolina, or Lin-Wa, I'm not sure you pronounce that. I'm originally born in Brazil, a relatively young listener, and after listening to how meth works, reminded me of a story from my college days.

I used to know these identical twin brothers that went to Appalachian State. With me, you know, it goes on at school. Yeah, they beat Michigan. A bunch of hippies, bunch of party kids. Sure. Had friends that went there. At one time, one of them was having unexplained hallucinations, see what I mean? And other weird psychological issues. The twin with hallucinations appeared that he might have schizophrenia, but that did not make sense since his identical twin did not share the symptoms. As I understand, if one had the disorder, the other would also have it since they're identical. I'm not sure if that's true. It's probably like a percentage, but I don't think it's automatic. After dealing with this issue for a little while,

the twin with hallucinations decided to see a doctor, and after running a few blood tests, tested positive for meth. This made no sense since he'd never used meth. After a few questions about the daily routine, they found out that most of what they did was similar, except one of the twins preferred to take baths, the one suffering hallucinations, and the other preferred showers. This led to further investigation of the rental house they lived in. They found out there was a high concentration of meth on the bathtub, on the porcelain of the bathtubs, which indicated whoever lived there previously made meth in the bathtub. As you'd expect, they shut down the house. The twins moved out. The cleaning crew with

hazmat suits moved in. The twin with the issues ceased to have hallucinations involuntarily, he says. I don't know why I need to point that out. And he came back to his old self. I just wanted to share that. Hope you're having a great week. Someday I hope to visit the studio in Atlanta and meet Jerry. And that is Jimmy Griffith from North Carolina, originally from Brazil. Dude, thanks Jimmy. We hope you're having a good week too. And we're glad your friend turned out okay. Jeez. Can you imagine? You tested for meth. It's like a lane. Yeah. Testing positive for poppy seed bagel. Yeah, opium. Yeah, or poppy seed marijuana. Yeah. Good stuff. That was very good. Opium. Yeah, that's a good one, man. What, that sign film? Yeah. Yeah. I have one.

If you are a skeptic and a believer in Bigfoot, we want to hear from you. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. It's ready. Are you? The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being

robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.