Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Bigfoot Works

Episode Date: October 10, 2020

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 from the SYSK archives. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this week's SYSK Selects, I've chosen how Bigfoot works. We released it on the very first day of the very heady year of 2013,

and we explore both sides of the issue, the very possibility that Bigfoot might exist. Although, here's a spoiler, we conclude it probably doesn't, but we don't poo-poo the whole idea, because it is possible. So just listen with open ears, open mind, and open heart. Enjoy. Welcome to Step You Should Know,

a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. ["How Stuff Works"] 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. Ah! Right, is that a wookie?

That is me messing with Sasquatch. It sounded more like Frankenstein from Serent Live. I remember that, I love that. Frankenstein, Tonto, and Tarzan. Tarzan, 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 iWitness reports that Bigfoot is kind of a benign, shy creature. Not as far as Jack Link's is concerned. He goes aggro 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. Like, if you are a skeptic, don't worry. We're gonna give your side to 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. No. 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, this is 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. Okay.

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? And 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 gonna 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 this non-human species, 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 people, skeptics love beating up on people like this, but my hand is off to her for, first of all, undergoing this, using the scientific method to root out the unexplained.

That's extremely 40 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 the 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 his freezer. I didn't follow that very closely. I'm gonna go ahead and say that I really wanna believe in Bigfoot or not wanna believe. I want to, I want there to be a Bigfoot. I don't think there is.

That means you wanna believe in Bigfoot. But I still wanna, I wanna 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 was a sheriff or deputy in North Georgia, it was a hoax of course, but he said he had a body and a freezer and they showed pictures of this,

what, you know what I mean? It was a gorilla suit, right? That's what it ended up being. And it had guts, it 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.

No, no, that's certainly. You're a enforcement officer. You 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 legal. I don't know that it is illegal to snow people for money, to promise them something that's not true and charge for it. This guy says, I think he called it fraud. No, it's a hoax. There's a big difference between fraud and hoax. If he 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 gonna see Bigfoot on this tour and then you could get him for fraud. I think he 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 is what I say. Let's talk about Bigfoot. This guy up in North Georgia 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 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 North Eastern 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. But it's also kind of noteworthy that they all have different legends for it.

Sure, the Himalayas even, the Yeti, the illominable 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 was great. Oma, Rugeru, and Boks is some of the names that this has gone by in Native American lore. But Sasquatch, Shashquatch comes from, I have no idea how to pronounce that. It looks like Sasquatch.

That word and another word from the area around British Columbia were similar enough that the 1920s white school teacher named J.W. Burns coined the term Sasquatch. Sure. To basically, that's the umbrella term for any big foot like man. Right.

So we should, even though these 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 seven 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 seven and eight feet. Have you seen a troll, Hunter? I saw that recently, actually. That first troll that they watched the guy zap and turn into stone. 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, Troll Hunter was excellent. Yeah, I kind of got, it kind of wore on me toward the end. Thought it was a little long, but it was pretty cool.

Yeah, the imagination that it used was just beautiful. Totally, agreed. Get Troll Hunter 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. Have you seen that elf, right? The movie Elf? Yeah. The one shot where they mimic the famous 16 millimeter film where it shows Will Ferrell in Central Park. And they have that from frame 352 of the 16 millimeter film. It's pretty funny.

So Will Ferrell's doing that? Yeah, it says the strange elf was seen wandering through Central Park and they mimic that exact shot. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. But it's Will Ferrell. Sure, yeah. That's very good. And then long reddish fur.

That's a big one. Reddish brown. And that's really interesting that Sasquatch is typically described as having long reddish brown fur. That's a really specific thing for everybody to report. And again, it's possible that people have heard other reports and said, 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 significant. It's still significant. It's still significant. It's still significant. It's still significant. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher

and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point. But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back

and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back

to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart

radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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 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 a pretty good, common.

It's like the AKC breed for Sasquatch. These are its characteristics. I love it. OK. 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. That's huge. Or anything like that. A lot of footprints and stuff like that. 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 was 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 Bigfoot. Yeah. 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 and Central Asia. And it's a relative of the orangutan. Yeah, big time. 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. So that's one connection to Gigantopithecus.

Yeah, they got the long arms like that. Yeah, they walked upright about 10 feet tall, usually about 1,200 pounds. And since orangutans are the closest modern relative of Gigantopithecus, it makes sense to kind of look at their behavior. Does it match Bigfoot stuff? Yeah, they have teeth similar to humans,

so that could account a little bit for the man-like look that people often talk about. Occasionally, we'll make loud howling calls 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. So they don't aggregate in groups.

They live by themselves, mostly. OK, so chalk one up for the Bigfoot enthusiast again. They're like, OK, well, that's it. It's Gigantopithecus. They live a long time, and because they are widely dispersed, they may not even see other orangutans for many long stretches.

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 Bigfoot like to point out, they would be able to successfully hide from humans, probably, especially if their habitat was the woods and the mountains. And so you put all that together,

that they have a long lifespan, meaning there's not a lot of them dying frequently. They live, they're spread out population-wise, and they tend to live in remote geographic regions. 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 a good one, too. He is good. He points out that people have never gone on Bigfoot bone hunting expeditions. So 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 Bigfoot. He's an Idaho State anthropology professor, and he's crowdsourcing blimp to hunt for Bigfoot with thermal imaging cameras and stuff like that. And he's 300K. And if you're interested in it, 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 Bigfoot. 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 Bigfoot? Yeah. And these people are out there hunting Bigfoot. 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. Good going. So you have a possible link between the orangutan, and Bigfoot, and that link might be Gigantipithecus. Question is still remaining. How did Gigantipithecus get here?

Well, we walked over the, was it the land bridge? Yeah. Baring land bridge? Yes. Yeah, just like we did. Sure. Not you and me, but you know. Well, that's one theory.

But the big problem here, Chuck, is the 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. And it doesn't mean that something exists. And that's a big problem in this debate. You can also point to, though, very happily, the celacanth.

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, 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 we spend a decent amount of time in the woods. OK, so if you're a 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 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. It'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 four leg, or four, I don't know if they're arms or what. And it looked odd, but 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 big foot lore, and you see something that possibly fits it, you may be the victim of wishful thinking or being impressionable or what have you. That's a pretty good accusation, a skeptic in level against somebody who reports a big foot 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, 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 clear that there are hoaxes because this one has two toes, this one has claws, this one has eight toes, and people aren't getting together on these and making them consistent. Yeah, probably the most contentious bit

of big foot 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 big foot walking across, basically a clearing into the woods, and big foot is aware that he's being watched,

and he turns and looks at the camera, like you said, Will Ferrell didn't know. Yeah. And I remember years ago watching this, and when I was back in my time life books phase. Sure. Like, I'll believe anything, just tell me. Yeah, yeah.

And they were saying that one of the reasons that this thing was so convincing that it was big foot, was that when he looked over his shoulder, rather than looking with just his head, just turning his head, big foot turns his whole shoulder and torso along with his head, which is something that a primate would likely do. And non-human primate, I should say.

Or someone in an Apesuit. Wearing shoulder pads. Possibly, that's another possibility too. They also point out that big foot's walking with his knees bent in this, that's another sure sign of primate, whereas- I did that today, by the way.

Did you, 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 gait. A loping gait? Yeah. Yeah. That's something that big foot 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. We don't walk with our knees bent. And then also the lastly, that the creature's fur is clearly rippling, like the skin beneath is rippling, and like some costume, some Apesuit,

isn't gonna do that on its own. Yeah. So you put all this together, and if you're a big foot believer, this is irrefutable evidence that there is such thing as big foot. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to, hey dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart

radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has

been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends, and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and

curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a skeptic, you can shoot a hole in all of those, can't you? Sure. Since this film came out in 1967, it's been the most reviewed and made fun of or backed piece of evidence ever for Bigfoot or Sasquatch. And Roger Patterson, it turns out, was 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. He was trying to put together a film. Since this has come out, there have been various people. One guy came out and said, you know what? I made the suit for him.

He paid me $1,000 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. Right. 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 an ape suit. There's a water bag underneath that's making the skin ripple. And that's a guy. That's a man. Right. I watch it again today, like five times.

Yeah, me too. It's really neat. Yeah, 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 in 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. If it was anything, it 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? What's the harm?

Unless someone's 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. 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 by now and proven it. Like, you just can't say that. The Pacific Northwest is so vast that an animal could probably hide if there was only a few of them left from people, you know? But on the other hand, you also can't say it exists because of these hoaxes and these sounds. And you need some sort of scientific evidence. Agreed.

Bones would help. You do need that unless you're just enjoying thinking about it. Yeah. Another thing you can enjoy that's kind of related is watching the Mystery Science Theater 3,000 of the Legend of Boggy Creek 2. I haven't seen that one. It's arguably the best episode that I've recorded.

Oh, my god, it's hilarious. Strong statement. But it's related. It's based on a Bigfoot-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 the sense of adventure is seemingly lost these days. There's nothing new to discover. And god, if we could just discover a Bigfoot, 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. 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 at how stuff works. There's an adorable picture of a baby orangutan in this article. So if 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 Listen Your Mail. 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, North 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. They're 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 feared 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 are 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 had 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 would expect, they shut down the house. The twins moved out. The cleaning crew with hazmat suits moved in. The twin with the issue ceased to have hallucinations involuntarily, he says. I don't know why I felt the need to point that out. And he came back to his old self. Just wanted to share that.

He'll be having a great week. Someday I hope to visit the studio in Atlanta and meet Jerry. Yeah, 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 OK. Jeez, can you imagine?

You tested for meth. It's like Elaine testing positive for poppy seed bagel. Yeah, opium? Yeah, or poppy seed margarine. Or heroin. Yeah, good stuff. That was a great opium. Yeah, that's a good one, man.

What, that sign film? 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 S-Y-S-K Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know. And you can send us a good old-fashioned email, too.

Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the podcast. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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