The Confessionals - 627: Decoding Bigfoot

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

In Episode 627: Decoding Bigfoot, we talk with researcher Matt Pruitt, focusing on his book "The Phenomenal Sasquatch: Seeking the Natural Origins of a Cultural Icon." Pruitt offers a fascinating blend of scientific investigation and cultural understanding in his work, analyzing the intersection of fact and folklore surrounding Sasquatch. He then recounts his dedicated efforts in collecting detailed reports about a red-haired Sasquatch, tracing its migration, and compiling eyewitness testimonies. The discussion expands to cover various aspects of bigfoot research, including their physical traits, historical evidence, and personal encounters. Pruitt's insights from both his field research and his book provide a rich, multi-dimensional view of the Sasquatch phenomenon. Matt PruittBook: The Phenomenal Sasquatch: Seeking The Natural Origins of a Cultural Icon Website: mattpruittonline.comThe Confessionals Members App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZBecome a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinWatch The Shape of Shadows: https://www.merkel.media/stream-nowWatch Expedition Dogman: https://bit.ly/3CE6Kg0AFFILIATESPrepare with Valley Food Storage: https://alnk.to/2uG55AOGet your Nephilim Blaster 2000: https://alnk.to/9mnHak1Bluecosmo Satellite phones: https://alnk.to/e769EipSee Bigfoot with Sionyx night vision: https://alnk.to/bEhxr3FEmergency medical with My Medic: https://alnk.to/dpr6QM4Black Beard Fire Starters: https://alnk.to/4BFcIbeEcoFlow Power Generators: https://alnk.to/flvpAQwGoDark Faraday Bags: https://alnk.to/5jke3rkEMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase!SPONSORSFACTOR MEALS: factormeals.com/confessionals50SIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsHello Fresh: hellofresh.com/confessionalsfree Promo Code: "confessionalsfree" for FREE BREAKFAST FOR LIFE!!!CONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterMAILING ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelOUTRO MUSICJoel Thomas - Bigfoot ft. Tony MerkelYouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

Merkel Media This was all circulating around the base that a giant had been killed but no one was supposed to talk about it I saw three long, bony fingers reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear.

When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. And this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen. And he starts running. and firing at this giant. With a giant move, he's got a spear in one hand,

and he's running really fast. It spears, Dan, holds them up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated. And I look over, and there are two. Because I know I'm seeing a monster. Welcome to the show, everybody,

listening to The Confessionals podcast. I'm your host, Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. If you have a crazy, wild experience, you want to share with me on the show and tickle my ear? Go ahead and contact me. My email address is contact at the confessionalspodcast.com.

That's contact at the confessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website, theconfessionalspodcast.com, hit the contact section, and you can reach me that way as well. Either way works for me, just get a hold of me. While you're on the confessionalspodcast.com, shoot us an email and just tell us how amazing the website looks. The developer that made that is amazing, and let me tell you who it is. His name's Scott Walker from the Freaky Deaky Podcast. So if any of you guys listening right now, and I know there's a lot of you, that I look going to have a revamp on your website or have your website built, go ahead and contact Scott Walker

at the Freaky Deaky Podcast. He will hook you up like he hooked me up. The website looks awesome, and it's all because of his artistic eye. Speaking of Artistic Eye, though, go ahead and check out Merkel Media Films because that is a group collaboration of artistic eyes, where we went out to hunt Dogman in Kentucky for Expedition Dogman. And we also went looking for Skim Walkers, UFOs. We found all the above, kind of, for the shape of shadows, where we went to Space Wolf Research, which butts up against Skimwalker Ranch, and we went out there looking for the mysterious and the mysterious found us. So those are two documentaries available on Merkel.comedia. Go ahead and hit stream now, and you can watch it on demand.

And last but not least, friends, go ahead and check out Valley Food Storage. It is preparedness season. Every election year is preparedness season in my book. I mean, every time the elections come around, everybody starts getting panic. and everybody wants to start building underground bunkers like, Zuck, I don't know what's going on, but if you guys want to get yourself prepared with food, go ahead and check out Valley Food Storage.

Link in the description of this episode underneath the affiliates. All right, today we have Matt coming on the show, and Matt is also known as Matt Pruitt, author of The Phenomenal Sasquatch, Seeking the Natural Origins of a Cultural icon. Matt and I have been friends for a while now. Him and I come at the topic very differently, but we had a delightful conversation,

and you're going to get to check it out right now. All right, today we have Matt Pruitt on the show. Matt, how are you, sir? I'm very good. Thanks so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this conversation a lot. It's been a long time coming. It's been a long time coming.

I mean, you and I think the first time we talked was when I was on Cliff and Bobo show, Bigfoot and Beyond. And afterwards, you and I talked about, you know, techie crap, you know, because you are the producer of that show. And that was my first introduction to you. Little did I know you were a world-renowned Bigfoot researcher. I know you ate that title, right? But yeah, man.

So you and I actually, I think, met face-to-face this past year at the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Conference. We actually met briefly at the 2017 Ohio Bigfoot Conference. Is that right? Yes, because I was there. That was the first time I met you, but it was real brief. You know, there's so many people at those things. Yeah. You know, I was sort of...

Were you a speaker? No, I was not a speaker there. I was just hanging out with friends. And that was the second, I think, Ohio conference I'd ever attended. So that was technically the first time. But yeah, the first real, like, face-to-face was definitely the Smoky Mountain one. I remember 2017 when I remember going to it because I had just started the podcast and not even a year old. And I remember showing up.

And this one guy walked up to, I don't know who it is, don't remember. But he was just like, I really enjoy your podcast. And I was just like, you know who I am? I was like, well, that's kind of cool. But I do remember having, we went to that bar underneath the hotel there. And there's a whole table of people. And we were all talking. And it's a Bigfoot conference.

It's 2017, mind you. The landscape of Bigfoot has changed a ton since then. And I remember sitting at a table and I was working out this. this new idea of Nephilim that I had. And I had just started hearing and learning about the Nephlin about a year prior. And I was starting to come out of this, like, I'm already at my bigfoot closet, but I'm starting coming out of this like bigfoot woo woo nephalum closet. And I was just like, listen, I'm just going to lay it on this table with all these big foot people to see what happens. And like, people were listening to me. And I was like, they're looking at me.

But I think they're looking at me crazy. The train's already rolling. Let's just keep this thing going. And that's what I remember from that conference. which, you know, speaking of, I just brought up a topic that maybe we can kind of kick off with just getting it out there, I guess. You and I kind of talked about this briefly before we hit record about how you and I come from different perspectives. And I don't know your perspective completely. You know, you're an individual. That's one thing that I hate is that people, they think they know me based off of my show. There's a lot more to Tony than just the confessionals. But based off of what I know of you, I would say that you and I, if somebody had a third party had to define us, they would define me as your woo-woo. And they would define Matt as a biological physical side of Bigfoot. I assume that's accurate if it's not, feel free to disagree. But I want to highlight the fact that we do have different perspectives. And,

And we often talk about, I think in general, but on the show as well, about how within these communities, there's so much clashing. There's so much arguing. People can't agree on what Bigfoot is or this creature or that creature. And, you know, like, they scoff at each other like they're toothless idiots when they say one thing. And in reality, like, the world outside of those topics, look at everybody like that. Like, oh, you're just toothless idiots.

Like, look at you. You believe in a monster that's walking around the woods. It's like, what are you talking about? So I just think it's interesting and encouraging that you and I, we've had dinner together. We've had good conversations. And though we might differ on perspectives, we can have good conversation to the point that I consider you a friend. And I think that we can have this conversation for the people to listen to.

So that said, you come from a physical side. Have I correct in saying that? Yeah, I mean, I would say that what I'm trying to do. do is look at this mystery and look at it through a perspective that says, like, well, how can, can we explain any of this based on what we already know to be true, like without invoking the unknown, the unusual, the extraordinary, et cetera. And if we can address a lot of those mysteries with the known, then that's probably, you know, a hypothesis is essentially a story. You know, it has a narrative structure that serves to provide an explanation for an observed phenomena or to

answer a question. So if you can come up with a hypothesis, or a story based on these known elements that answers a lot of those questions, that's probably the closest to the truth or the correct one. So I'm not denying the existence of something like the woo or high strangeness or anything, but I would say like what I'm doing is trying to look at the Sasquatch phenomenon and say, like, well, is there a biological explanation for this that covers a lot of these bases? And in my perspective, there is. Now, is that sufficient?

Well, no, because we still don't know that these things exist, you know, as a society, as humanity, this is still an open question. And so I have about as much proof of my perspective as every other person has for their perspective on this. But to your point, I mean, those subtle differences between us are what's interesting and are the basis of conversation. And so it is so frustrating that people want to seek out those differences and use them to separate and to shut down conversation. And it's like, look, man, you're always going to have differences. If you said, well, if you're trying to have like a musical retreat with your friends, it's like, okay, well, I love rock and roll.

And so I'm going to get all my rock and roll friends together. We're going to leave the country music and hip hop fans at home. And you get 20 of your rock and roll friends out, you know, for a trip. They're going to divide into two groups of like Beatles fans and Stones fans, which is the greatest, like, the originator of modern rock and roll, you know. Rather than be together, you know, they'll quickly fractionate. Within your Beatles group, like, oh, we don't need those stones people. We know we're right.

They're going to break into like, well, who was the greater songwriter, John Leonard or Paul McCart? And so it's like, no matter how small the group is, you're going to have these divisions. Even if they agree on 99% of the subject matter, they'll find that 1%. Yeah. It's like either that 1% can be the genesis of a brilliant conversation in which we both learn something new, or we can let that 1% keep us apart, which is really a very, ridiculous. So I'm glad that you have that perspective too, because I do think the differences are what's so interesting, you know. Yeah. No, absolutely. And then once upon a time,

Tony used to walk around the woods looking for Bigfoot on weekends when he wasn't driving truck. And I thought people that said, Bigfoot's an interdimensional being that comes through portals on a Wednesday. I'm like, you're all crazy. You're stupid. And this thing is just a physical creature running around the woods. And then I just changed over the years, you know? And I do think it's still physical, but I'm like, I think it can be interdimensional too. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you have a bona fide encounter with Bigfoot? I think I know the answer, but I just wanted to ask you. I mean, I've had encounters that were consistent with what other people describe. And so I don't know how to reconcile them any other way other than a Sasquatch encounter. But none of those were a clear

visual. And to me, that's the big differentiator between like, I'm 99.9% sure that I've, encountered a Sasquatch, and I'm 100% sure. Because a lot of these things happened at night, although several were during the daytime, but just due to like distance

or thick foliage or vegetation obstructing the view, I couldn't see the thing. So there is part of me that's like highly frustrated by not having seen one despite 20 something years of trying, although I think I could have

during a couple of those instances if I had like zigged instead of zagged, essentially in some of those cases. So I'm fairly certain I've had Sasquatch encounters. And again, there are a handful over 20 years, because I've done really intensive field research in the Southern Appalachans for a long time, still do in, you know, the inner mountain west. I live in the Pacific Northwest for three years, you know,

just all over the country, British Columbia, Northern California, all kinds of places. And so over hundreds and hundreds of nights, there's been a small handful. But in terms of like, the big be bellowing moaning howls, I've heard that many times all over the country, 11 times to be exactly because I had to go back through my notes and count them all up to the book. So some animal makes that sound, and it's certainly not a bear and doesn't seem to be a canid or a person, you know, I've had rocks thrown at me or experience like projectiles in context that I could pretty well rule out that there were any other humans around. And so once again, it's like, well, bears aren't throwing rocks and deer aren't hurtling objects, you know? And so something with, that's got some dexterity that has this capability.

And so all that to say, like, without seeing one, it's really hard, I feel like that would be the ultimate sort of, like, nosis, you know, in terms of like the sense of, to borrow a term from, like, gnosticism, like, direct experience of that direct knowledge. So I'm convinced of a lot of things. But I think seeing one would be like, because, you know, I've interviewed so many hundreds and hundreds of witnesses, like, probably over. 2,000 witnesses at this point, since 2002 is when I started interviewing witnesses. And so I've talked to, as you have, you talk to so many people who are like, I don't care

what you think. I know they exist. I know what I saw. And like, I want that, you know, I want that sense of like, I know. And I'm convinced, but I don't know. And so it's very frustrating. And so I empathize with those people who are like, I don't care who believes me. I know. I'm like, I kind of wish I had that. I also feel like maybe if I had seen one, my first encounter was in 1999. I was 17. We weren't trying to have an encounter. I didn't even think Sasquatch is real. I didn't even think about Sasquatches at that point of time. But I wonder if I had seen one that night and not just heard these sounds. Maybe I wouldn't have even done all this. Because part of the drive for me is like, I want the answer. And like, if I had started with the answer, I probably wouldn't have the question.

I'd be like, oh, yeah, those things are real. I saw one myself, and I would just go about other things that I'm interested in. So maybe there's kind of a blessing and not totally knowing yet. But as I also lay out in the book, like, you know, to the skeptical side, you know, when you read over and over again the skeptical arguments laid out by like social scientists or sometimes like cultural anthropologists or folklorists or people that study people, essentially will say, oh, well, the Sasquatch is just, you know, a desire. It's a wish fulfillment.

It's an imagination. If it was a wish fulfillment, I would have seen like a thousand of them by now because no one has wished to see one harder than I have over and over again. So I know that's a long-winded answer to your question. I'm convinced that I've encountered them several times across the country over 20 years, but I can't sit here and say, like, I know because I've seen it. It was right there. No, I love long-winded answers because with my ADHD brain,

it allows me like 10 different paths to take with that answer alone, which is perfect. But no, I agree with a lot of the stuff you said. I've never seen Sasquatch. I've had experiences with Sasquatch, but I've never seen it. And I believe Sasquatch is real, but I can't say I know it's real because I never saw it, right? And even if I did see it, what am I seeing? I can say I know I saw something, but what is that something that I saw beyond that? I can't even tell you I know until, say it's physical, we have a body and you can dissect it and

look at it and scientifically understand its makeup. And it's so it's a very hard thing to navigate. I've been dealing with it for my entire life, you know, and about the wishful thinking of stuff. I mean, I have maybe I'll even bring it up on this interview. I don't know. I recently have had some experiences out in the woods that I never. ever could have thought I'd have. And it's, it's, it's just really bizarre. But to attribute it to Bigfoot or dogman or any other thing, I believe would be sidestepping the issue and phenomenon itself as to what I experienced, which is really just an interesting thing. So we brought up the book several times now. Why don't we, before we get too far off talking about things,

and not ever bring up the book itself, let people know about your book, where they can get it, and what it's generally about. Certainly. So, after doing this for so long, I was very fortunate that a lot of people said, oh, you should write a book,

which is not necessarily like my go-to instinct, because, you know, obviously producing a podcast, but, you know, I've been a guest on a lot of podcasts. I'm just a talker. Like, I live in a world of conversation and dialogue is where I like to exist because it's dynamic and it flows. And so given your background, we can have a certain kind of conversation versus like if someone new stepped into the room and they're like, I don't know anything about any of this.

And so we would have to change. Okay, well, how do we educate this person from the ground up in five minutes so they can catch up to where we're at in this conversation? Whereas when you write a book, it's like you don't have all those advantages of, you know, speaking directly to a person and getting feedback from them and then being in. able to modify the way you're speaking to bring them up to speed or to learn from them. It's like you have to say it one way for all readers of any experience level, expertise level, whatever, for all time, like forever, which is really hard because you have that whole

decision tree of like, well, how do you say this thing? Well, there's a million ways to say it. And it's like if you ask yourself, like, was there a better way to say it? The answer is infinitely yes because it depends on who that is. So I felt like it was kind of a worthy challenge like, all right, well, how can I take, again, like what I consider me my particular perspectives on this subject, which are obviously informed by so many of the people that came before me. So it's not necessarily like original all of it, although I do think that there's quite a bit of originality per chapter, but it's still like I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, so to speak, of other people. But can I put all that into a written form that I think is representative of my

perspective and that would be helpful to other people, you know, if they were interested. And so it took about three years. It's 100,000 words, about 300 pages. And so I'm very happy with it, very proud of it. It's been very well received, which is just mind-blowing. I'm very grateful for. So it is available on Amazon.com that's in print format or in digital format. And then I self-signed copies through Cliff Berrickman's North American Bigfoot Center website too, because obviously, I travel a lot, especially I'm in the field as much as possible. So I don't really have the infrastructure to like fulfill orders and, you know, manage transactions and handle shipment.

So the only place to get them signed is through cliffs unless you catch me at an event or something like that. But as an overview, you know, to really simplify the work like that, it's like, well, first I try to make the proposition like, okay, well, the phenomenon exists. And we can bicker all day long about like, well, what's the phenomenon made of, how we define it. You know, we play language games, but it's like, well, look, people have claims that they've observed things like this and claims that they've experienced things of this nature. And so there's this one big component of this observed phenomenon is the fact that it seems to have some effect, some influence on observers, according to their testimonies. And then

you have this body of evidence, whether it's trace evidence like footprints, handprints, partial body impressions or physical evidence like hair samples or even environmental evidence like damaged or manipulated vegetation or even, you know, damage or manipulated man-made items, structures, you know, where they interact with or purportedly interact with homes, cabins, etc. Or even multimedia evidence like vocalization recordings, pieces of video or film or photographs, etc. So I would say that, well, because this phenomenon apparently has some influence on observers and has some effect on the environment, we could say that the Sasquatch phenomenon itself exists. Now, what could be responsible for it? Because at the very bottom, there has to be something generated at the end of the day. Now, either, because it seems to describe an animal, like you could make that inference, you know, that, well, what is it that people describe? Well, it's, you know, covered in hair. Okay, well, that's a clue. it's some kind of mammal because mammals are covered in hair. It has the females have mammary glands,

which is another defining characteristic of a mammal. They don't have tails. They don't have big point of years. They don't have recurved claws. So you take all these things and you would infer like, well, it's some sort of mammal based on the features. It seems to be something ape-like, whether something closely related to humans or related to these other apes,

etc. So either something like this exists, that there is a living, animal species that fits that description that, you know, has feet that are shaped like these tracks that we find, or if no such thing like that exists, then it has to be something restricted to the observer, i.e. something in the internal world. You know, in the simplest terms, you could say it's something external, biological, or something internal, psychological, whether people wanted to see that as like spiritual, metaphysical, et cetera. And so really,

I think for the skeptical side of this divide for the last 70 years, the argument has always been like, well, hey, there's no body. So the simplest answer is that this is all just the product of the human mind. This is misidentifications, it's lies, its hoaxes, it's wishful thinking, it's delusion, it's hallucination. And what I'm trying to do with this book is to go through the history of claims, the history of evidence, the totality of all of it. And actually, show that actually in my estimation, the simpler argument is that there is a living animal species, although they're rare, they're widespread. These are smart animals that probably live long lives that occupy very large home ranges and they're very mobile in those home ranges. And because of

their lifestyle, they're very difficult to observe, to pursue, to predict. And so I'm trying to make the argument every step along the journey of examining the whole phenomenon that actually the living biological argument is more parsimonious. It's a simpler explanation than to think that this is all just somehow the product of the human mind. And I think especially that even I'm trying to account for a lot of the beliefs that are associated with like mystical claims or supernatural claims and things of that nature without discounting the reality of something like high strangeness or woo as people say. To say that like, well, Those things can still be associated with the Sasquatch in terms of people's interpretive

schemas of the world, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Sasquatch itself is a supernatural creature. And I use examples from, you know, the, I'd see like the pre-Western discovery histories of things like bears, tigers, gorillas, other analogous animals that have accumulated the same sort of motifs and mystical abilities in these belief systems, et cetera, to, to make those cases. So really, I'm trying to argue forward that, hey, we don't know what the answer is yet. But when people say like, oh, well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, it's like, well, I don't think that this is an extraordinary claim because we know that apes exist.

And so what's one more ape? You know? Right. And if there's something from the fossil record, which they might be associated with these Asian apes, either the genera endipithecus or giganticus or some genus that's not been discovered yet or some species that's not been discovered yet associated with those, then we're not even adding one more ape to the roster. We're just keeping one around for 80,000 years or so longer than it was thought to have been.

And so to me, it's like, that's not an extraordinary claim. To me, it's extraordinary to think that there's something within the human mind that produces this sort of image, you know, the Sasquatch, let's say. And that manifests itself, because I know that people will bicker over some of these definitions, but it's like, if it is a product of the human mind, let's say, which is what most skeptics or cynics would argue,

you'd have to say, okay, well, then now we have two options, just to make it as simple as possible. It's either voluntary or involuntary. So if it's voluntary, then like every single claim is voluntarily produced, meaning it's a lie. It's invented from nothing. Well, it's easy for someone today to lie because they have at their disposal the internet and thousands of Sasquatch claims or stories or images in terms of artistic representations

or documentaries, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's like, well, they have all the tools necessary to construct a convincing lie. That gets less and less likely as you go further back in time. And especially when you get to a time where, you know, gorillas hadn't even been discovered yet, where it's like people are somehow describing a hypothetical animal in detail that has all these physiological characteristics, morphological characteristics, and then behavioral and ecological characteristics that all turn out to be, accurate representations of living apes at a time before the Western world even knew that such things existed or even understood them at all. So it's like, how likely is that? It's pretty

unlikely. So you take the voluntary thing off the table. It's involuntary. It's something that's like an instinct, you know. Now it's hypothetical because you can't see instincts. You know, you can observe behaviors from which you can infer instincts. And so if people say, well, there is no such Sasquatch, therefore it has to be the product of the human mind. It's like, all right, well, let's try to infer, like, where did this instinct come from? Like, how is it that these people so accurately, involuntarily imagine the same thing? Because when you think of all the things you could imagine, it's amazing what people don't imagine. Like, where are the purple Sasquatches or the two-headed ones or the four-armed ones or the ones with wings or the ones with just like one eye in the

center of their head, like of the host of things people could imagine, they don't. And especially when you look at behaviors, it's like they're mundane. Like, you know, the vast majority of Saspwage reports are really boring. It's like, you know, they saw the person, the person saw them and they both went opposite directions as fast as they could, or just crossed the road, or someone's driving by and the thing just stood there and turned its head as the cord. I mean, they're not like, you know, these imaginative, like, mythological, journeys like where you're harrowing, you know, hell and back. Yeah.

They're just these boring animal encounters where it's just kind of, it's just there. And the person happens to be there for a split second as they're passing through. And that's that. And so to me, it's just unbelievable to think that that's a more likely explanation. Because the other thing, you know, not to go down too deep a rabbit hole of the entire book, but you would think, okay, well, instincts, the way that you can determine instinct, Again, is you observe behaviors and you infer instincts. And so if you look at a continuum of behaviors, you can do this for like any animal population,

including humans, is that you have behaviors that are environmentally stable, meaning that no matter where you are in this animal's distribution, these same behaviors occur. And then you go into things that are like environmentally labile. And so they're really dependent on the environment. And so you can look at things on that continuum and you can determine almost like nature versus nurture, which things are more learned behaviors and which things are more ingrained. So you look at something like the Sasquatch and you try to say, well, that's just an instinct. That's an involuntary production of the human mind, some element of the human psyche.

It's like, well, then wouldn't we expect that to be environmentally stable, like more universal cross-culturally to some degree, but it's not. Because this particular form, what people describe, obviously, you know, in a nutshell, is much larger than a person. They're usually described as like seven and a half to eight feet tall. Let's say on average for the big males and females are like six and a half feet tall when people, you know, you average out what people describe. Disproportionately broad shoulders, you know, no visible constriction at the neck, disproportionately long arms, like that particular form,

is really restricted to North America and then across parts of Asia down through Australia, you know, if there's something to the YOW. people don't claim to see things of that nature, and they haven't in the Carpathians, in Scandinavia, in Bavaria. You know, there's in Korea, for example, which is part of Asia. It's very interesting that they're not reported there or in like Fiji. There's plenty of places in the world. So if people want to argue like, well, this is some universal part of the human mind, it's like,

well, then why aren't they seen everywhere that people occur? Oh, well, it's environment dependent. It has to be triggered in forested mountains. Okay, well, then why don't people see them? There's no reports of Sasquatch is on Codiac Island. Now, Codiac Island is home to the largest bears in the world, which is again another argument of like, oh, people are just misidentifying bears.

Okay, well, there's brown bears in the Carpathians. There's no history of Sasquatch claims there or animals that fit the description of the Sasquatch, nor is there in Codiac Island. And so they seem to be restricted to certain places, which is really remarkable. And it's the case that like, oh, well, maybe it's a cultural thing. It's the American psyche. Well, American tourists go to Europe all the time.

Why don't Americans go in those forests and see Sasquatches or in other in Japan? They don't do that. But if you read a lot of reports and interview a lot of witnesses, you find that European tourists come to America and see Sasquatches. or Japanese tourists come to North America and see SaaS watches. So it's like, to me, every way that you look at it, it just seems more likely that there's something external going on and not just within the human mind. Now, spoiler alert, all of these things can be true.

Like, yes, we do have these sort of involuntary instincts to interpret things certain ways. And of course, people do lie. So there are some voluntary fabrications. but at the end of the day, like, what's at the bottom? What's responsible for it? So I know that's a really long-witted answer to your question about the book, but now I'm ranting. No, it's good. I mean, that's what you're here for.

So thank you for the long answer and keep them coming. I think you're presenting a very good, convincing, well-thought-out argument for the existence of these things. And what you just did, and this is a 30,000-foot view of the book is you laid out why it's more ridiculous to believe that this just isn't real than saying, okay, there's something to this. What is it? We don't know.

But to say it's just not real is just more so lack of education on somebody's part. They clearly haven't looked into it. Yeah, people should want to know what's going on. I mean, that's what I want to know. And if there is just some psychological thing, and just to back to that. track a quick second. I know on this sort of like worldwide phenomenon scale, people might take issue with the fact that, you know, I'm restricting the Sasquots to a certain thing. Now, if we talk about the greater category of Wild Men or Mystery Apes, let's say, well, then yeah, in other parts

of the world, you know, obviously in parts of Southeast Asia, have these little diminutive prominence that people describe. That would be more like the Arang Pindex, the Ibu Gogo, and that's more Indonesia or even certain parts of the southeast mainland. there. And then as you get further to the west into Mongolia or in the interior of something, like the Hindu Kush, you know, the Afghanistan, Pakistan border or over into the Caucasus, you have this more manlike form, which is, you know, about human size, five and a half, six feet tall at the most, very much built like a person, very thin and grassile like humans are, still hair covered. Those are not Sasquatches. And so one of the rebuttals I keep getting

to this biological argument versus the psychological one is when I say, like, well, the Sasquatch is not a global phenomenon. They'll say, well, what about the Almas and the Almosti and the Orang Pindek? And it's like, those aren't the same thing. And I know it seems like apples and oranges, but to me, it's the difference of saying, like, big cats are a worldwide phenomenon. Tigers are not a worldwide phenomenon? You know, are there big cats in the Americas? Yes, we've got the Cougar. You know, we've got the Jaguar. are there big cats in Africa, yes, and into Asia, et cetera. But you can differentiate between these forms based on the physical evidence and what people

describe. And so, like, can we go find old folkloric tales that have some kind of a wild man character, you know, like a faun or a satyr or a centaur or whatever and something analogous, you know, a boogeyman in certain parts of the world? Yes, of course. And so people go, well, that will negate your argument. It's like, no. In North America, we have a very long, unbroken timeline of claims, a history of claims,

observation and counterclaims, and then physical evidence, or at least the claims of evidence to some degree. People were describing tracks a long time before we had cameras to photograph them, and people were photographing them before people were casting them and having these plaster representations. And so that's what I mean. It's like, first of all, these reports don't occur again in the Carpathians or these other parts of the world where it's like, well, they have brown bears and elk and wolves and these other animals. So why wouldn't these things be there? And they are just as heavily visited by people and people don't claim that. And someone might say, oh, there's this old folklore tale, like this one particular fable or origin story that has this character that could be

seen as a sort of wild man. It's like, that's very different than saying like, here is a history of claims and evidence that span centuries. That doesn't exist in these other places. And so it really is remarkable to me that, I mean, that's part of what I was trying to do with the book is that hopefully someone, whether they're a devoted student of the subject or not, but especially someone who's new to it, could read this and say, like, I had no idea that there was so much to this subject. Like, there has to be something going on, even if it's some collection of all the above, like biological, psychological, and interplay between the two. But to me, it's like, it's just, I don't know how someone could dismiss the possibility that, like, no, these things are real living animals,

because we had them in our near history. In that way, if you look at the Asian ape line, again, that produced endopithecus and giganticus, especially giganticus because it was contemporaneous with the genus Homo for over two million years. It's like the Sasquatch phenomenon has already happened once, just the other day on the other side of the pond. And so the only question for me is like, what is it still happening now? Like, did any of these things get into North America

because we know they were in Asia? And are they still around today? If either of those two questions is yes, then boom, there's your Sasquatch, you know? Yeah. So sorry to derail there. No, you're good.

You're good. You're describing and laying out a very convincing argument for their existence, which I appreciate a lot. With you talking about this stuff, it kind of popped in my head. And I don't even know, because this isn't a well-thought-out thought, it just popped in my head. I don't even know if this would be an argument for or against or in the middle. But have you come across the idea and pondered the idea when it comes to the intercal? connectiveness, consciousness level of a human being and how, you know, people, if people want to make the argument that Bigfoot's not real, it's just a construct of the imagination, and it's like

some kind of like hive mind type thing amongst humans. And you were talking about how it's not, it's not consistent throughout the whole world, which is a great argument for that. The other side of that would be, what if there is some kind of quantum type of connection amongst humans, when it comes to this thing. I can't speak highly intelligent about quantum level physics and stuff, but I know that they'll say things like if there's an atom in New Jersey and there's another atom in California, they're connected on a quantum level and simultaneously will do the exact same thing.

And could there be, and you probably don't even have an answer for this, but it's just like one of those things to think it out loud, could there be some kind of quantum level connection amongst certain humans, that allowed for this mental, do I dare call it a disorder? Like some kind of mental thing where they're connected and they're actually having the same experience. I don't know. The idea of quantum physics is well beyond my comprehension. And what I do understand confuses the heck out of me.

And I just figured I'd bring it up there because I just popped up in my head when you were talking. Yeah, I don't understand anything within the quantum. realm whatsoever. I don't think we understand very much about consciousness itself. I mean, I think once again, like we can observe the behaviors of our psyche or of what seems to be our consciousness, and we can make inferences, but we can't, you know, that's one of the great unknowns. And so I certainly am not qualified to weigh in on those things, but they're interesting. You know, I'm somewhat familiar with the concept of entanglement, but man, I don't understand quantum physics or any of that step, quantum mechanics at all. But what I would say is like,

another argument for it really being something in the external world to me is like when you travel around so much and you investigate so many cases and reports, especially within given places, like one of the things that's always fascinated me with these sort of flaps that occur in places and times. Like there's one that comes to mind that I referenced briefly in the book that happened in Georgia, where it seemed like, now maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and telling the story this way, but I'll just tell it chronologically. So essentially, we had received a report where a man and a woman that he lived with, I think she was his girlfriend. I don't think they were married, but she might as well have been his wife. They'd lived together. They were a couple for a long

time. Unfortunately, he's passed away since then, but they had, you know, this crazy night at their home where it's a pretty interesting story, so I'll condense it quickly, but he was at home. He had little small dogs in his backyard. This is a big giant dude. It was kind of funny because he was a real sweetheart of a guy, and he loved these little dogs, but he was a bouncer and a construction worker, just big gnarly tough dude. I mean, he's probably like 6'4 or something, big massive dude. But he had these little dogs that he loved, you know.

And little dogs are in his backyard with a little small dog fence, you know, like four feet tall maybe. And he went outside at night to call them in. And while he was calling him, he could hear something walking around the edge of his fence. And he thought that it was a person. And he had this little shed just inside of his fence that he just kept like a bunch of his tools and things like that in. And so he thought in his mind, like, oh, there's kids. They're trying to break into my tool shed and steal stuff. So he's like yelling at this thing. I can hear you out there, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, making threats. And it starts growling at him. And he's like, oh, these smart-ass kids are trying to scare me on my own property. And it's funny because

this guy was in his underwear. He's and it's like tidy witties, you know. So he goes back in his house, gets his sidearm, comes back in the yard, starts yelling again and it growls again. And he fires a few rounds into the ground, you know, just warning shots. And the thing screamed and charged him. And he said it just sounded like it was just smashing everything in its path. And this dude was mortified, just terrified, ran back inside. at this point his girlfriend's like wide away because she's heard this scream just outside the wind. She's like, what the hell was that? And he's like, I don't know what that was.

I thought it was kids, yada yada. And so they laid inside and it was stomping around the edge of the yard like thrashing stuff and tearing stuff up. So eventually when the sun came up, they went outside to like survey the damage and they could see all these broken limbs and branches and things of that nature. were sort of following this path of destruction. And then they both heard a sound as they're following this down into this wooded area. I mean, it's pretty thick there. They look up and he saw, he only caught a glimpse of it, what seemed to be its back. But he said it was up in the air, vertical, but it was like a three by three square foot patch of cinnamon brown fur moving away through the foliage, like this big huge back.

But he didn't get to see, you know, like the arms of the head or anything. and it just freaked him out. And that's when he called, and myself and some people visited the property. We saw the sign and the impressions and things like that. Because he was like, man, you know, this thing was still there. You know, he said, I've never had an animal run towards gunfire. Like, this thing was pissed off.

And it didn't leave. It was still there in the morning, you know, and he's like, am I in danger? And so around this time, you know, we're putting together this sort of investigation, this report that's going to be published online. And then these other calls are coming in from these people that, you know, later investigation, we find out don't know each other at all.

They have no connections who are seeing, you know, roughly the same time within like a week and a half, two week period, roughly the same height and the same cinnamon red sort of cinnamon brown colored individual that when you plot these sides, like it's following this waterway and it's just running into homes. And the interesting thing is like this waterway and a lot of these homes were recent additions. You know, they're just built up in the last five, eight years if memory serves correctly. And so, you know, if you had gone through that area a decade or 15 years ago, you would have just been following a waterway through heavily forested area.

So it's sort of newer development. And so you would think, well, if it's strictly psychological somehow or something in the inner world, like, what are the odds that all these people would be having the same inner experience around the same time following like a certain trajectory? And they're imagining whether voluntarily or involuntary what seems to be the same individual. Because it's not like someone saw a black one and someone saw a gray one and someone saw a red one and someone saw a blonde one. And like they all saw what seemed to be like this big reddish male.

And in almost every encounter, it was fairly confrontational. Like it wasn't aggressive. Because, I mean, this guy yelled at it and it growled back. And he made some loud sounds at it, you know, shooting shots in the ground and it made some loud sounds back. You know, it was pretty confrontational, but it's not like it tried to rip the guy's arms off. There was another siding by an individual who was driving with his family, his wife and his kids. They were coming back from dinner in town and saw, you know, standing in the road this big reddish, you know, seven and a half, eight-foot. tall, whatever, this Sasquatch that just stood there in the road and the guy stopped his car.

I'm trying to remember what his background was. He was a military guy and we had interviewed him and got a lot of his sort of accomplishments and credentials. I think he had gone through sniper school. It might have been at Fort Benning, but I could be wrong about that because it's been a number of years. But anyway, like he had completed sniper school. So when when someone like that tells you like, oh, it was this many yards away, you know that they're pretty accurate, you know. So he described it And this thing just stood there in the road, stared them down to the point that he backed his car up

And they went back the way they came to go find another way home Because he was like, I wasn't going to roll another inch closer to this thing Even though it was like 30 or 40 yards away If I'm remembering correctly, it just wouldn't move. Like it was not afraid of this car And the guy was like,

I'm not driving anywhere closer to it. And then there was another encounter, you know, not too far away at the edge of the swamp. same description, same individual. And so there's flaps like that throughout the history of Sasquatchery. You know, like now that you're in Tennessee, I don't know if you read much about like the Flintville Monster, kind of South Tennessee, close to the Alabama border,

that section of like the Southern Cumberland Plateau, descriptions of what seem to be the same individual. And very often when you read a lot of these, they seem to be like lone males who are moving through territory that they don't seem to be too familiar with. because it's not like they're maintaining like the path of, you know, being the most hidden or the most sort of. Disversive.

Exactly. It's like they're just following a waterway and like running into people here and there and like, where do I go? Where do I go? Until they find their way into some larger forested area, which we now know, like, well, many other animals live that kind of lifestyle as young males strike out and they have to sort of establish their own territories of their own home ranges.

Of course they're going to spend some time going through. unfamiliar territory and that's what will lead to a lot of people seeing them. And then you can see in the pre-discovery history of guerrillas, I mean, in George Schaller's book, the Mountain Gorilla Behavior and Ecology, I think is the subtitle, but he had conducted the first field studies of observational field studies of mountain gorillas. And he had found that in trying to piece together this sort of pre-discovery history of these things and like what is it that we know about them before these observational studies? Well, first of all, it was thought that they were solitary, which we know guerrillas aren't solitary.

They live in family groups, you know, sometimes these big, large troops. But the reason it was thought that they were solitary is like most sightings were of lone males that would come hang around the edge of these human habitation areas. And Shalor basically surmised and laid out a case in this book, that what had happened is that as human progress reached into these areas, and they would establish these, essentially industry, so mining camps, logging camps, mining and logging operations, things of that nature, they would cut down all this forest that would basically reduce gorilla habitat and it would run away the guerrillas. And so then as the young males grew up into adulthood, and they had to sort of strike out on their own to establish

their own places, their own home ranges and territories, although guerrillas aren't really territorial. That's neither here or there, but they had to establish their ranges. They would return back to the places where they grew up, essentially, and there they would find these encampments. And so, that

was most people's experience with mountain gorillas would be, like, one big lone male hanging out at the edge of a logging camp or a mining camp or the edge of crops or cultivated food sources, skulking around and generally like staring the hell out of people. It's like, well, you look at the history of Sasquatch reports and like the same thing is

pretty well true that like most of the history of Sasquotry is like lone males and being seen at the edge of like, you know, rural agricultural homesteads and farms at the edge of these towns, et cetera. And very often you'd think, well, maybe there's something of that nature going on and that when these lone males do have to move around, that's when they make the most errors, because they're inserting themselves into unfamiliar territory. They don't know where the safe havens are. They don't know how to avoid areas of human ingress or egress, etgress, et cetera. And so all of those factors, to me, it's like more and more and more stack up that there's something biological

living going on rather than just psychological. Because again, you would think that if it was something internal, whether or not something that's perceived internally, let's say, like whether it is some kind of quantum entanglement or something out there in the ether, but not physical, something that has to be interpreted. Like, it's just amazing that it still follows all these rules and trends and norms that we can find in the biology and the ecology of hates, you know, it's just, there's something going on, you know. Yeah.

No, that's fascinating. Absolutely. That's fascinating. When you were talking about the flaps of that one instance with the red fur Sasquatch, and I'll just say it was a Sasquatch, I think we all know it was. So one, I want to get, what was it like for you during that time? As somebody who's a researcher trying to find truth of the matter, what did it feel like during that stretch of time where you're getting these reports and you're connecting dots? and it's like, this is amazing.

Like, like, this is a once in a lifetime scenario. This doesn't happen all the time. It's kind of, I always use the example for myself is, and it's changed since then, but the first time I ever heard a Bigfoot out in the woods, I was stunned, thought I'd never experienced that again. And when I found out the microphone on our camera was broken and we didn't catch it on audio, I was depressed. I was like, that's never going to happen for me.

me again. And so, like, in that moment, like, you're having these reports coming in. Like, I would be going berserk. I'd be like, this is incredible. What did it feel like for you? And then I kind of want to dive into the fur color itself. Have you ever either thought about this or come across it through descriptions where it seems like maybe the different types of colors that these things are kind of play into how they act? Because, I personally heard that red fur Sasquatch tend to be more aggressive. I don't know if you've ever heard that, but I interested in all that, but I just laid out. Absolutely.

I'm glad you asked both those questions because I was going to write more about the hair color in the book. So I'm glad we get to talk about that here. To the first question, the reason I smile and laugh as you're asking that is like, I was so naive and stupid that, no, I didn't appreciate like, oh my God, this is a once in a life. time thing. I thought like, oh, this happens all the time, you know, like, because I started this when I was really young. So when I started interviewing witnesses, I was 20. And when I really started going out in the field, it was about 22. And by the time I joined the BFRO was taking a lot of reports, you know, I was, I think, a year would, I would just barely 25, 24 turning 25, you know.

And so it's sort of like the other thing too, like when I was young, you know, I, I, I, I, played in a major label band, which was a huge deal to me because it was one of my favorite bands that I got to join. But like, at the same time, part of me thought like, oh, of course, like this is just what happens, you know? Like, we're always going to be together. We're always going to play these big shows to these big crowds. We're always going to have a record deal. We're always going to have these opportunities, you know. It's only when you get older and you look back and you're like, it's a miracle that any of that ever happened and that it stayed together for five seconds, let alone for, you know, five minutes or whatever the case may be.

So I look back at a lot of these Saskwatch related cases or opportunities that I was fortunate enough to be a part of that I either got lucky or stumbled into or just like dumb luck, right place, right time. And I just want to like kick myself for thinking like, oh yeah, I'll get reports like this all the time. Like this is just the way life is now. Blah, blah, blah, blah. So at the time, I didn't fully appreciate it. Now, I've always really valued witnesses and hearing people's experiences and being there, you know, I mean, there's really something transformative about, as you know, like talking to people. I mean, it's because it's what you do, you know, no matter how much of, you know, a skeptic or a cynic you can be about a certain thing, you know, in the privacy of like your own head, let's say, when you start talking with people about their experiences when they're convincing.

Because, you know, we'll never know, like, do they believe what they're saying? Are they lying to me? Are they convinced? Are they delusional? Are they being on? I don't know. All I can do is use my best judgment. And like, man, when you hear a compelling story that your judgment tells you is probably true,

like, it's transformative. There's many times where I've been like ready to throw in the towel on the whole thing. And then I encounter the right witness at the right time. And I'm just like, they're real, you know? And I'm ready to like go after it all again. So I really appreciated it at that time. But no, I didn't have a full. recognition of like how cool that was to be. And I probably should have had more urgency about like,

well, maybe it's around now. I mean, a lot of the times when we were getting those stories, it was like, there there, there was there, there's smoke on the horizon. And by the time you get there, the fires out, and smokes on the next horizon now. And so you're always chasing ghosts, so to speak. But no, I would love to go back in time. And, you know, hindsight being 2020, like, oh, I wish I could have done this differently or that differently or something like that. But in terms of the hair color, you know, it's really interesting. One of the things that I've just seen as a sort of trend over all the reports, there's things that just emerge over many years as you, you know, read everything and interview witnesses and move around the country is that it seems to be the case

that the smaller the individual is or the thinner, you know, in terms of mass, let's say, not just height, but height and mass, they tend to be more jet black. And then as they grow larger, not just vertically, but also in mass, they trend towards lighter colors where, you know, you could say juveniles are almost always, you know, basically without exception described as jet black up until about like, let's say, like, subadult. And then as they become adults, they trend towards like brown to, you know, maybe a dark red to a lighter red to blonde. and then typically the largest individuals, again, in height and mass, very often are described as gray, like either dark gray, charcoal gray or slate gray up to sort of a light gray like a cottontail rabbit or something like that. And so I always thought, well, maybe that's partially just age, just pigmentation loss due to age in the same way that, you know, we gray as we age or something like that. But then I found some interesting literature about coloration, not only of like pellage, like hair,

in mammals, but also plumage and birds. And I can't remember, because I didn't fully flesh it out in the book and it felt too tangential, but I would love to revisit it at some point, but that, you know, animals that are selected for certain environments, especially as you go further away from the equator into colder areas, when you're small, it's more advantageous to be dark because you're living in colder environments and so you need to absorb and retain as much of the heat of the sun as you can. But then as you get larger, you know, larger animals experience gigantothermy. And so their heat is internally regulated. And then as mass increases, you know, the mass increases like exponentially

it's not a linear one-to-one increase with surface area. So the bigger an animal is, it's got less surface area for internal mass. And so I thought, oh, well, it probably would be advantageous when they're small to be jet black. And that way, you know, they can survive a lot of these very cold winter times. But then you look at places that have a lot of reports that I've spent time like Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, where it's like, can you imagine being 1,200 pounds, 8 feet tall and jet black in the summer of those places? No, thank you.

So it seems like maybe it is as they get older and especially not just taller, but larger, as there's more internal mass and more heat generated internally, that it's, would be more beneficial to be a lighter color in some of those environments that experience like brutal summer heats. And so that seems to be a pretty stable trend across not only the North American Sasquatch, but also the Asian counterparts. Two, people describe the same thing. And like many things, I felt like I had found something just totally remarkable, you know, Eureka sort of moment. And then I was rereading for the millionth time, Ivan Sanderson's A Bonable Snowman, Legend Come to Life, 1961, and he made that same observation

in 1961. And so I was like, well, shit. It's not that new to me. But I do think that there's something going on there. Because, again, you would think if it was entirely psychological or imaginary, trends like that just shouldn't happen. There should be eight and a half foot tall ones that are jet black, and there should be little three foot tall, four foot tall, dual.

juveniles that are stark white or gray. It just doesn't seem to be the case. Now, of course, you have the occasional outlier, but the ends of the distribution are like, well, those could be errors or they could be fabrications. But when you look at the curve, like the mean, like they follow those trends pretty strictly. And so that's yet another thing that you would think if this is totally psychological or imaginary, how is it that all these people would just somehow imagine the right size

paired with the right sort of coloration of hair at the right stage of life for that to equate to what you would expect in a living animal population unless maybe what they saw was some member of a living animal population. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So with the topics of Bigfoot, Yeti, Yowie, all these different creatures that people see throughout the entire world. You kind of hit on this a little bit earlier, but maybe just maybe clarification. I don't know.

Do you feel like, let's, I don't want to talk about Arang Pendek because it's visually different in size. But at least from what I understand, Yeti and Yowie seem to be more similar to Bigfoot Sasquatch here in America's. Do you think that they're the same thing

different location or do you think they're literally like something completely different, but just like in the sense of big cat, not all the same thing, but they're all big cat category? I mean, I think if there's anything biological to those mysteries, that you'd have to think that they're either the same genus, maybe the same genus in species or maybe even the same subspecies of the same species. Because when you look at the descriptions of the Sasquatch, not just physiological, but behavioral descriptions, like, what are they seen eating? How do they respond in certain context to human intrusion, let's say, or how are they seen interacting with other animals, maybe that they're preying on or, et cetera? Again, like environmentally stable

sort of behaviors from which you can infer instinct, you would see that, like, there's, there's some that are lesser understood, like the Chechnya of Siberia, but then you get into China with Yehren. There's a tremendous amount of it from. You know, a long history of claims and encounters and physical evidence, you know, tracks that are very, like, indistinguishable from Sasquatch tracks, even with the midfoot flexibility, the indication of, you know, a metatarsal hinge or mid-tarsal break. Jeff Meldum's got some great images of tracks that were cast by a game warden at a huge reserve. I think it was Shenanja in central China that you would have sworn were cast in North America. I mean, they look size, shape. I mean, big massive tracks and the mid-tarsal break is in exactly the same place with the same features.

Then you move into like Bhutan, the Megoy, which in some places that, you know, Yeti has about the categorical distinction as the word creature because Yeti means that thing there. So if people were to say like, well, what's a Yeti? It's like saying, well, what's a creature? Well, a cougar is a creature and a bear is a creature and a human is a creature. And so that term gets used in parts of Asia and especially like the Himalias to describe like bear-like animals and these seemingly quadrupedal ape-like animals and then these upright ape-like Sasquatch sort of animals. So I do think that there is something to the Sasquatch variant of the Yeti. Like I said, in Bhutan they call it the Migwa.

You get into the Magalia region of India. You have the Manday Barung down into the, you know, Johor Peninsula of Malaysia. you have the orang-mawas. There's even these fascinating legends from Sumba Island in Indonesia. There's something they call the Mili Manga, which, again, is like eight feet tall, tends to have, like, very long arms mix. They all make these whistling sounds.

You know, they all hurl stones. They all apparently have, like, reflective eyes. They all produce, you know, wood striking sounds. And so, and it's going down to the Yowie as well. And so they have these sort of history. again, of claims and encounters. Some of them have more evidence than others, but it does seem like, man, if you look at that type,

you know, Sanderson broke these down into like these four types. And that form of mystery AP called the Neo-Giants. And so, you know, the Sasquatch, the Yerin, the Yowie, these sorts of things. And you look at that distribution of like, trying to reverse the map in my mind here, but like Australia up through, you know, Southeast Asia across what would have been Beringia down into North America. It's like they have this nice sort of pan-Pacific distribution, which again is in keeping with something biological.

And I do think that there's probably something to that. And then you look at the fossil sites of endopithecus and giganticus and you map those. And it's like, oh, well, that's kind of weird that they all correlate with the exception of North America and Australia. But, you know, there are gigano jaws that were found in Java that are, you know, Thailand, northern Vietnam, parts of China, Indipithecus, the precursor to giganticus is the Potwar plateau of Pakistan, the Swalic Hills of India, and so they have this same distribution. And then of course, you know, if we look at the O'Rang Pindek and the Ibu go-go,

it's like, oh, we have homo-fluoresiensis, these little small hominids. And then we go over to these other places like, again, parts of Mongolia or the Caucasus where the manlike forms, you know, the Almast, the Almasty, the Barmenu, oh, we have Neanderthals and Denisovans. So isn't it weird that like every mystery ape has its corresponding fossil ape and that the descriptions of the mystery apes are around for centuries before we dug up any of these fossils to confirm that, oh, actually such a thing existed. The only exception is North America, that we don't have large ape fossils in North America that have been found yet. But man, I hope. hope that guy with the Alaska Boneyard listens to your podcast and that he finds something.

You know what I mean? Yes. Because wouldn't that be remarkable? So, all right. Talk to me about Alaskan Boneyard because you're talking to me like I know about it. I don't know about the Alaskan Boneyard. Oh, yeah. There's a gentleman who, to make a long story short, he essentially, I think he was a gold and

oil guy and he bought a huge mining property in Alaska that, you know, was formerly mined for primarily gold and had found that like through the previous gold mining efforts of the early 20th century, they had uncovered tons and tons of bones. But because they weren't looking for bones, they're looking for gold, they would just ship these things off to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. And some of those are still being kept there. And a lot of them were dumped into the to the river there in New York. Wow. And so just gotten rid of for some reason. So anyway, guess after this guy had finished completing a lot of his work in gold mining, they found this section of his property that's only like, it's like less than two acres.

It's an exposed muck bank, you know, where there's essentially, I guess it's permafrost. But, you know, what they'll do is they'll take water from the flowing creek and they'll blast it away at this bank and blow away the sediment and find whatever's there. and in this one like two acre spot, I think he has something like a quarter of a million bones. I mean, they're not even fossils. They're preserved bones because no, fossilization is like bones are replaced with minerals and these other,

they're basically turned into stone for lack of a better term. These are not fossils. These are preserved bones. I think he has something like, I don't want to be hyperbolic, but I'm pretty sure they have something like 10,000-something mammoths represented, individual mammoths,

not just individual bones, like the bones of 10,000 individual mammoths. That's wild. Short-faced bears, cave lions, a whole host of animals. In a two-acre area? Yes. Wow. You've got to find.

He's on Instagram. And he's been on Joe Rogan's podcast twice, and this story is just fascinating. And so he posts everything he finds. And I'm always like, man, I hope he finds the skull of one of these things. Now, to give the story some. some plausible deniability is that, you know, there's some gray area when it comes to finding human or human-like or human-relative remains as to like, oh, well, at what point can someone, like the, at what point can the government intervene and say, this is now an archaeological site

and we get to control this site now? You know, it's sort of like if you're going to build a home and they do an archaeological survey and they find, you know, a grave under your home, you know, from times past, you know, where there was like early settlers or an indigenous people like, you can't just, things have to, there's a process. You can't just like, oh,

I'll just keep building my home here. You know what I mean? And so he's made some statements like on Joe Rogan because Joe Rogan was like, well, have you ever found human bones? I mean, you have all these other animals there. And he was like, no, and I don't think we ever will. It's really telling it's like, no matter what they find, are they going to disclose that? Because that's the point where there can be some sort of intervention

and they might lose control of it. But you've got to look into that. I mean, he's gotten so many. And there's so many analogs to the Sasquatch mystery, which is kind of why I enjoy it because the pushback he gets from experts is so hilarious because, like, for example, they found, there's a host of animals that have not been found elsewhere. not been found elsewhere in Alaska, I mean, that he's got these perfectly preserved bones.

And it's like, hey, found this, reaches out to like relevant experts. What do you think? And they're like, oh, well, that can't be. Why not? Oh, because they didn't live there. He's like, well, why don't you think they lived there? Oh, because we've never found bones from there. He's like, yeah, but it's right here.

Here and it. Oh, well, that can't be because we've never found bones from there. And so he said that he's ended up saying, like when experts say like, oh, well, they didn't live there. And he's like, well, they sure as hell died here because here it is. You know? And we see the same thing in Sasquottery, which is like that circular logic from the, a lot of the sort of establishment community or scientific community, academic community, whatever,

which is that whole like, I don't need to take this seriously because there is no evidence. It's like, okay, well, what would make you take it seriously? Oh, well, I'd need to see evidence. Okay, well, will you look at this evidence? I don't need to see that because there is no evidence. Okay, what would make you change your mind? Oh, well, I'd need to see evidence. This whole circular thing.

And so I've got some sympathy for the Alaska Boneyard guy. But, you know, if he found a skull, you know, it would change some, or even a tooth, you know, because a lot of the gigano fossils are just single teeth. And the reason that is, you know, a lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about giganticus. And so I guess to be clear, like, I'm not saying that Sasquatch is giganticus blacky. You know, if you have a clade, which is like a group of organisms that evolve from a common ancestor, so we know that there was this clade of large apes that existed in Asia that is kind of referred to as like a sister clade of the orangutan line. And a clade

will produce a number of genera and a genus will produce a number of species. And so right now, within this giant Asian ape clade. We know of about two genera, three if you count one called meganthropus, but there's endipithecus, which we only know by one species called giganteus, and then later you have giganticapithecus, which we only know by one species,

giganticinopithecus Blackie. And these things were around for a very long time. Indipithecus is like 8.6 million years ago, and Gigantipithecus Blackie, the youngest fossils, the youngest bones from a cave called Langtran in northern Vietnam are like 80 to 100,000 years old. So these things live for a very long time over a massive portion of Asia. And yet, in total, we only have a few jaws and a couple thousand teeth.

And the reason that is that they were consumed, their bones were consumed by many things, as things are in the environments. And so it just so happened that in a lot of places they live, they co-occurred with porcupines. and porcupines are dinning animals, and they will drag bones into their dins to consume them later. And it just so happens that the four part of the mandible of giganticus and the teeth enamel is so thick, it just can't be chewed through by a small animal like a porcupine. So they would eat away through everything else, other bones, finger bones, parts of the cranium, etc.

And all that would be left with these jaws and teeth. And because they would make these dins and these karst openings, which is like, you know, sink holes, caves, fissures, things created by water accretion, and usually in limestone, that stuff preserves bone. And so you have these two factors that there's karst topography, and then you have these accumulating agents in the form of porcupines bringing these bones into places that would preserve them. And so there's not karst all over Asia, and there's not porcupines all over Asia. So we actually don't know how widespread these big apes were. There might have been a lot more them because there would have been probably more genera and more species within each genus.

And then we don't know what their geography would have been like because as far as we can tell right now, like if it weren't for these porcupines, we would have no clue that these things ever lived and walked here, even though they were alongside our ancestors and early humans for a long time. And so it could be the case that they did make it in North America and we just haven't found fossils yet because we don't have those where we haven't found preserved bones yet because we don't have those key ingredients everywhere. We don't always have

carst topography all over the country. We don't have, you know, accumulating agents bringing things in everywhere. Believe me, like where we live here in Tennessee, you know, there's a ton of karst here, especially the Cumberland Plateau. You know, we've got this massive cave system. Yeah. You're really close to

one of the, it's like a Miocene era fossil site, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe it's place. Maybe it's all the way through, but there's a place called the gray fossil site, kind of near Knoxville there. Yeah. Yeah, they've got a, like the red panda used to extend all the way into East Tennessee. You know, you're familiar with a little red panda in Asia. Yeah. So there's red panda fossils from right down the road from you. I had no idea. Yeah, like fossil, I think horses and camels and all kinds of crazy things from this one, essentially like a sinkhole

there in East Tennessee. And so it would be great if we could find the bones of whatever these things are, but I think the guy in Alaska might be one of our best bets, but who knows if you would reveal it because it might have some implication. The skeptical part of me thinks that I don't even, I could predict, you could guarantee

that even if we found something, I think even if it was as recent as 250 years old, if you found a skull or a bone or a jaw, that the community, the establishment, you know, not to use a conspiratorial term.

Do it. The scientific community would go, well, I guess that's it. They must have made it over here. And it looks like they hung on to dear life until about 250 years ago. There's no reason to think that they're around now. They'll only alter their model the minimal necessary amount to accommodate whatever new discovery. So even if someone found a bone or tooth here, if it wasn't from yesterday, I still don't

think we're going to have the official acknowledgement. But it would, it moved the ball a lot further down the field for sure. This is all so fascinating. The Alaskan bone yard. So I guess I'll start there. By the way, I did I had no idea about this, this situation here in Knoxville. I'm going to look into that for sure. Just another reason why I love East Tennessee. This place is a magical place. I absolutely love it. But you brought up that this is really interesting. As you were talking, you mentioned about how the scientific community is like, well, they didn't live there. So it can't be, right? But they're here now, right?

What's interesting about that is the fact that he, if maybe I misheard you, but he was, he's gathering or somebody there was gathering bones and shipping them to New York, a science place in New York, right? And then they're dumping them, a museum in New York. Sorry. And then they're dumping them into the river. A million years from now could have. be that somebody discovers things that didn't live there and they're like, how the heck did it get here? And could it be something similar? Where in our past, for whatever reason, this was a dumping site of dead bodies that they were just taking whatever, just dumping it there.

It also sounds like the elephant graveyard that they talk about, I think, in Africa where they travel to a specific location to die. Yeah, that's definitely an interesting proposition. it seems like some, you know, whether it's in keeping with like a theory, like the younger, driest impact, like some sort of a cataclysmic thing that rapidly melted glaciers and caused these catastrophic floods that would just deposit a lot of animals into one place. Because it is crazy when you see this guy's videos of this tiny spot where he's finding these, you know, hundreds of thousands of bones of all sorts of different creatures that, you know, certainly didn't live on top of each other.

They just all somehow washed or were deposited into this place. Then it's pretty remarkable. But yeah, when he came on Joe Rogan and said, like, I found this documentation and it looks like the American Museum of Natural History dumped X amount of tons of this stuff in the river and they deny it, it started like what they called like the new American bone rush. And people started going in and people started going in and finding mammoth tusks in that river in New York. And so they're still looking for this stuff.

So it's a crazy story. It's definitely worth like if you're into that kind of thing, it's very much attention to for sure. That's fascinating. See, hearing stuff like that, my natural thing is, oh, man, I want to talk to that guy. And there's a couple of things with that. One, audience listening right now, you let me know if you'd be interested in me talking to somebody that's not directly on the paranormal typos spectrum. I mean, this is very much not on topic. I want talk to somebody like that, though. But the other part of that is when I reach out to them and I tell my platform, you're like, why would I ever want to talk to you? I'm just like, but it's interesting. I want to talk about it. So his name's John Reeves. I looked him up. I followed him on Instagram while

you were talking. So I'm going to be looking into that. It's really cool. I am actually heading out on the 30th to Norris Dam here in Knoxville area because there's this legend when they're creating the dam that they uncovered Egyptian ruins and they wound up just covering it up by the dam. There's conflicting arguments with it where some people say it never existed, it never happened, the story is not real. Other will say that there was some kind of professor or something like that in England who saw the pictures of these ruins and labeled them Egyptian, but in actuality they were just Native American. I am going out on a boat on a third. 30th, we have sonar, and we are going to see if there's anything there to explore as far as

underneath. If there is, if we can see any kind of anomalies, we might be spending some time with divers and just seeing what we can dig up. If we're allowed, I don't even know if we're allowed. I just had to do things and wait for somebody to tell me I'm not allowed to do it. So, you know, and I just say, I don't know. But this area is just so fascinating. These topics are I think the mystery behind, like, we just spend time talking about the Alaskan Boneyard and how they tie into other topics and understanding other topics. And you can kind of pull, well, we know this is true. So over here on this topic, maybe that offers an explanation for our understanding. I think it's very important for this kind of stuff to take place.

And as we're winding down here, I have one comment and one question. I will start with the question, and then I'll end on the comment. As far as you can tell when it comes to the topic of Sasquatch in North America, let's not talk about the world and different things. Sasquatch in North America. I know you've thought of it, thought about it. What would be your general estimation as a number of population goes? It's tough. You know, because they seem so analogous to black bears that I think that's one of the best sort of measuring tools. Like if saskwatches exist, you know, all the caveats aside that they seem to be these, you know, large omnivorous things and, you know, the habitats overlap. They're only seen basically in the same places that black bears occupy,

with a few exceptions, you know, some places where black bears used to exist, but have been extirpated, you know, certain parts of like, maybe like Southern California, although I guess they're coming back in certain places there, whereas the brown bear has. hasn't, but it'd be tough to come up with like an oblique estimate of like maybe one Sasquatch for every hundred black bears, maybe one for every two hundred. I have no idea. But I think whatever the smallest number you can reasonably get to is probably the closest to being correct.

Because I've heard so many wild speculations where people, oh, you know, there's, there's three thousand of them in eastern Kentucky. And it's like, man, I don't know about that, you know, that's a lot. A lot. It's a lot. So like North Georgia, for example, I think the Chattahoochee National Forest in total is about 866,000 acres. And because Southern Appalachia is such a rich environment, and you're in the best place in the country for this stuff because it's temperate rainforest. Of Southern Appalachia, there's 135,000 miles that are temperate rainforest. And so it's also the second most biodiverse temperate rainforest on the planet. The only other temperate rainforest, it's more biodiverse is in central China. in that shenonga area or close to that region. And so a black bear's habitat in southern Appalachia is small for home range requirements because that amount of land produces so much food and an animal is going to go as far as it has to go to sustain itself.

So if you're in southern Appalachia, the average home range of the adult male black bear is 16 to 18 square miles. If you take that same black bear up into Pennsylvania, the home range gets like 35, 50 square miles because it takes that much more land to produce that same amount of food. Then you go out in the Pacific or the Intermountain West, it can be 75 to 100 square miles because the food's more patchily distributed. You know, it's not as concentrated or rich or the Pacific Northwest can be like 50 to 75 square miles. And this is all for the same, you know, average 250 pound adult male black bear. And so you could, I think Sasquatch is, there's probably something similar going on, whereas like, depending on the environment, the ranges get larger or smaller based on the needs,

based on the size, the sex, because females have smaller home ranges than males across many species, including ape species, but also bears, tigers on and on. So I think in North America, the total is something like 600,000 black bears, roughly speaking, because we'll never know for certain. That's like an oblique estimate if I'm not mistaken. So if you were to say like it's a 1 to 100 ratio, what is that? Like 60,000 or something like that or 6,000. So I feel like 6,000 Sasquatches in all of North America is a little too small.

And I feel like 60,000 might be too high. I just don't know. But I think we use Black Bear as an example and whatever the smallest number we can reasonably arrive at. It's probably closest to the truth because otherwise they'd be so abundant. I think we'd just see them more frequently. And plenty of animals survive

in small numbers like that. Tigers, cougars, other apes, orangutans, for example. So that would be my guess. But some areas would be richer than others and maybe impartial or biased because I grew up in Southern Appalachia, but I do think Southern Appalach

is probably the best habitat. Yeah. Me, too because you know kind of here. I love it here. I didn't realize how good it would be here until I got here and I was like this is amazing. And so yeah, I mean 6,000 Sasquatch across the country

that's like 120, 30-ish, something like that per state, you know, and that's just per state but you're not even really doing that properly because certain states would definitely have less than others. They're like For instance, Hawaii. How many are in Hawaii, right? And so, you know, it's interesting,

but taking it in all that, I mean, there's probably, there would probably be a decent population right here in East Tennessee then. And that's very encouraging for somebody like myself. I know I said I was going to ask one more question. Let me ask you another question, though, because it's kind of popped in my head. I'm just going to put you on the spot for a controversial question. Kill or no kill? No kill. I mean, What are your thoughts on the whole thing? Because I'm on record. I'm just like, just shoot it.

I don't care. Like I'm just like, I don't care. I mean, even if it looks like a human, just popping it in the head and see what happens. Well, I know it's a necessity. I mean, that's the thing that makes it,

it shouldn't be as controversial as it is, but it's been made clear over and over again that like a specimen will be necessary. Whether that's from shooting and killing one, dispatching one, whether that's from discovering a naturally deceased one, which seems pretty unlikely. And then when it comes to, okay, well, how do you do that? Like, well, obviously the most ethical thing would be, you know, a lethal shot that involves no pain and suffering.

People don't like to hear that, but it is true. Now, I'm not trying to do that. I carry a camera, you know, I don't carry a long gun. I have a sidearm for self-preservation. I don't think it would work on a, you know, a thousand pound eight-foot-tall Sasquatch. So it's really not for the squatches as much as it is for the humans and other tricky. animals occasionally that you encounter, but I understand that people think it's a very sad and ugly truth and I also understand that it's necessary. And so in that way, it's like, it is sad,

it is ugly and it is necessary. And it's an emotional hot button for people. You know, people often say, oh, why can't we just live capture one? It's like, you think that's more ethical? Yeah. First of all, the stress that you would put something through and then keeping it in captivity and it probably harms itself or humans during the capture or during captivity or people say, what about tranquilization? And, you know, there's been so much research done on that about, like, you know, how many animals die during that process? They have to be intubated immediately or they'll just, you know, suffocate.

They'll stop breathing. There's a whole host of things that happen. Then when you reintroduce them back in the wild, they often have a host of after effects that can lead to prolonged illness and death. And so as sad as an unfortunate as it is, I do think that the quickest, most ethical way to discover the Sasquatch would be through, you know, lethal means without the prolonged suffering. Now, for a lot of people would make the argument like, well, why do we need to discover them? And that's a good question because you hear both sides of the argument, what if they're in danger? What if killing one threatens the population? Well, if that's true, then they're already gone.

If killing one individual would threaten the entire stability of all Sasquatches everywhere, then it's already too late. I don't think that they're in danger. They seem to be doing pretty well. And if you look at the same trends we were just talking about, like bears or elk or all these other animals that are just on these huge rebounds, a lot of it due to human intervention, obviously. But because there's more of everything else around now, like,

Maybe there's more of these things around now that, you know, now that we logging practices have really, you know, you take old growth virgin forest, you replace it with secondary and then tertiary forests. Those are richer forests. They're more productive. And so even in Schaller's book that I mentioned earlier, he found that gorillas preferred secondary forests. So gorillas would come back and they would rather be in the places that humans had logged and they had regrown than to be in sort of virgin timber or old grower. growth forest. And so that's true of a lot of animals. And so we know it's true of apes. And so maybe

Sasquatch has experienced the same sort of population growth as a consequence of logging practices too. Now the question is, do they need protection? Do we need to protect their habitat? Well, that's an argument we could have all day. But like we'll never answer any of those questions unless we know that they're there. And so if they need protection or if their habitat needs protection or whatever the case may be, like discovery is. So I understand. the argument if like they need to be discovered, it will benefit them, it will benefit us. Of course, I have all the selfish arguments too. Like, I want to know, you know, do we have a right to know what animals we share the continent with? Probably, you know, we're currently like the stewards of the

planet. That's sort of our charge at this point in time. Like, so do we have a right to know everything that exists within the environments that we're taking care of for good or for bad? You whether we're damaging the environments, but we're also rebuilding them at a crazy rate. I mean, we're reforesting so many places and forests are healthier in a lot of places. You know, I don't think we're quite the destructive force that we're always painted out to be. We're doing a lot of good. So do humans have the right to know that these things are around if they're around? I would say yes.

And is that a selfish argument? Probably. But like, do I want to know? Like, hell yeah, I want to know. I've spent all this time. Like, do I want every witness who's claimed to see one? and been disbelieved or ridiculed or questioned or called a liar to be vindicated? Like, hell, yeah, I want that.

Do I want John Green and, you know, a lot of the luminaries that I look up to to their work to be validated? Like, of course. So I think more reasons stack up collectively for humans for the benefit of Sasquatches and then selfishly, you know, personally on the individual level, stack up to the yes. Now, if there was some way to do that without killing one, I'd be all for it because I'm not going to be that person. I actually no longer even think that it's within the citizen scientist's reach. That's up to the individual.

If a person decides that's what they're going to do, you know, if they can pull that off ethically and safely, then best luck to you. I'm not going to be. There's so many dangers and pitfalls involved in that. But it's like, you remember in Indiana Jones when, in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they're looking down in the pit and they see all the snakes? Oh, yeah. And Salas says like, Asps, very dangerous. You go first.

That's going to how I feel like, it needs to be done. You go do it front. You do it. So if it could be done through photographs or video or through the collection of genetic material, like I would be all for that. And I hope that can be done because those are the kind of things that I'm interested in trying to get, but I do think it's necessary. And I understand why people are very against it. And I think both views are true. It's like, is it sad? Yes. Is it necessary? Yes.

Like, that's the reality of it. Let me paint a fancy, fancy storyline for you. This is actually a thought that I had years ago. I don't even want to say I believe this. I just was trying to think outside the box years ago. I'm talking like this is probably 2015, 2016 when I was trying to just think about all the stuff. And back then I thought I was just going to, I was going to go find a big foot and just show everybody it's ridiculously easy to find it and still haven't done it. But I had this thought that why, if these things are in existence, why is it that we, the government isn't talking about it? Because surely they would know about it. They have to. in my mind they have to. I think they know. And then I started thinking about what the implications would be if on a broad scale humanity, you know, the citizens of this country,

know that these things are out there. I think it would scare people away from going out there in the woods. But I also think it would enhance the poacher side of things. I think people will go out there to kill these things. It's just, I think there's people in this world. We know there's people in this world that do poaching and all of a sudden there's this creature that didn't exist that now exists and there's going to be high value in bringing those things down and selling it on the black market to very rich people definitely I think something like that would happen on those lines there's learned behavior now I'm just talking from a natural side of things like you know physical all that like this is this is pre-tony woo-woo stuff so I I lived in the

Philadelphia area. I'm very familiar with Valley Forge. It's a historic landmark. It's touristy now. There is no hunting. You can't go hunting in the park. Therefore, there is an insane amount of deer in that park that have no fear in the world that they're going to be hunted. To the point that you can actually walk up to deer, they will not run away from you. If you get within a foot or two, they'll run, they'll jump back on a thing. But they're not scared of cars. They stand right next to the the side road as you drive by, it's learned behavior in the sense of not to fear because there's nothing to fear. So if Sasquatch is as intelligent as we believe it could be, could there be a reverse thing where say there are people now more than there used to be going out there

specifically looking for those things and trying to shoot at them, could there be a learned behavior of not only are humans dangerous, but maybe we go on the offensive and maybe people start dying by Bigfoot. That's a thought that I started thinking about years ago. I was like, man, can you imagine if like Bigfoot views humans as no longer something to avoid because we just don't want to be detected, but literally they see a human and they assume human is going to try killing them. And so they go on the offensive and snap people's necks. They're hiding behind and they just reach out, pop it like a zip and keep it moving. That'd be kind of crazy. So that's just kind of with the crazy mind of Tony, especially when I was driving truck and stuff,

thinking about all that stuff. But let me ask you this one more question. And then I'm done. What band did you play in? And don't be offended if I don't know the band. I don't really know a whole lot of music. Oh, you probably don't know it. But, you know, I started playing music really young. And so I had a band in high school until I was about 21. And then there was a band out of Atlanta that got signed to Island Def Jam in the, I guess in 2000, they were called injected. They're sort of like local hometown heroes, one of my favorite bands. All those guys were like five and six years older than me. And I just like, they were one of my favorite bands. And so I became friends with them. I gave the singer a demo, the singer guitar player, a demo of

my little high school band. And he was like, oh, that's, you're pretty good. Like, why don't you come to our rehearsal sometime, hang out? And I was like, oh, that's so nice. And I was a kid. And I came and their guitar player couldn't make it. And I was like, I know all your songs. They were like, sure you do, kid. I was like, no, I really do. And so then we played like, I don't know, eight, nine songs. They were like, you know the songs. And I'll never forget the drummer, Chris, was like, he's like, man, the guitar player's

name was Jade. It's like, oh, if Jade ever, like, needs a help in hand, like, you're getting a call. And things happened. And I got the call in 2003. I was 21. And it was amazing. And so we were in kind of a weird position because their first record did really well. They had a pretty decent hit on modern rock, alternative rock radio video.

They did well on MTV. They did like the MTV Campus Invasion tour with Nickelback. And they were on island at the time with like saliva and a bunch of these other rock bands that were doing pretty well, Hubasank. So they did a lot of these big tours and festivals and things like that. And so when I joined the band, it was like the end of that first album cycle, made a second record. And then overnight, the label changed hands. And no one really knew what to do with us. And so we remade that album and recut a lot of it, like, multiple times with, like, different producers and different things.

And it basically never got put out. And so we ended up being let go of the contract because we just spent their money for years trying to, like, make something that they would put out. And they were like, you know, this isn't radio-friendly or whatever. The funny is the most ironic thing of all of it is like, because I love that band so much and I love that first record. So I'm fortunate enough to meet people that are like, oh, my God, I loved Injected. I saw you guys at Red Rocks. And I'm like, that wasn't me, but thank you so much. Or like, oh, dude, I love that album.

Like, you're playing on that song. And I'm like, that wasn't me, but thanks. I could have been if they would have asked me, though. I knew the song. Well, we did some touring. And so I've gotten to play those songs with them a lot. That's awesome. But the crazy thing was that a few years after we dissolved, there was a guy from, I think

he was from Tulsa, but a guy won American Idol during their most watched season and he was an injected fan. And so he was going to do this record, because you know when you win American Idol, you get a record deal and all this kind of stuff. And so he reached out to

our singer and was like, hey, I heard you guys made a second album that never came out. Like, I'd love to hear some of this stuff. And so Danny sent him these songs. And so he picked, he was like, oh, I'd love to do this song. And it was sort of our most, one of our weird or sort of like, hypnotic slow, sludgy, like stoner rock songs, you know, like real weird and psychedelic.

And we're like, good luck with that man. And not only did he do it, but it was a single for him. Wow. And it's hilarious because, like, his first single is a guy named David Cook. And so his first single was co-written by Chris Cornell from Soundgarden. And then his second single was this song of ours. And so we were like, how ironic that like this label told us like, oh, we don't hear any singles. And then like some dude who wins a game show has a single with one of our tunes.

So, uh, yeah, there's like his versions are online and all that stuff. And like there's footage of us playing it like years prior on YouTube and on it. So it was a lot of fun. I love those guys. I keep in touch with them. I used to talk their ears off about Sasquatch stuff. You know, and like, and so they're all still really interested in it, which is pretty cool. But yeah, the band was injected.

So long-winded answer once again. So that's awesome, man. Hey, you're, you're a great. podcast interviewer, interviewee, because you're not short on words, and that's fantastic for a host, too. You give, like, at least for me,

because I don't enter into conversations with a whole lot of pre-set questions. I told you that before we started. And for, so for me, somebody who comes in and just, you talk, you allow me, you give me more material in live, in real time in order to host

the conversation. So, no, don't ever apologize for that, at least on this show. It's not like you're preventing me from getting to questions. You're enhancing the conversation. I've greatly appreciated it. So before we get out of here, though, let people know again about the book, the title of the book, where they can get it. I highly encourage people to get this book. And I will say this before you say what you're about to say. I'm going to gas you a little bit. So Bobo, you work with Bobo and you know Bovo very well. I will tell anybody this. Bobo is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met my life.

And you don't expect it because just how he talks. He has that California vibe, man, you know. But he is one of the smartest people in general, not just Bigfoot. I'm talking in general. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met my entire life. And Bobo sings praises about this book. He said this is one of the most important books in the field of Bigfoot that he's ever read. And so with that said, people have to understand that,

we talked about today is just a snippet. But this is decades of experience and research that went into this book breaking down. And I just think it's, I think it's a very, very well worth people's investment to check out. So let them know about the book again and where they can get it. I appreciate that so very much. And again, the book is called the phenomenal Sasquatch. You can get it directly from Amazon. I published it independently through there. So they're really quick. Most of the people I know who've ordered it have gotten it, you know, within a day or two. or you get the Kindle version there. If you are looking for signed copies, you can find me in an event.

I do a few speaking events a year if I can, or through Cliffs, North American Bigfoot Center site. So if you need to find me online, I'm at Matt Pruittonline.com. I don't really do much social media stuff. I can't really stand social media. I have a Twitter account that's the only like Bigfoot-related thing I do, and I tweet maybe six times a year. I just don't touch that stuff.

but I really appreciate you having me, man. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. You're so very generous with your time and always really love catching up with you too. So we've got to do this more often. I agree 100%. You're just three hours away. So anytime I'm passing or you're passing through, we need to connect. And yeah, I share sentiments on the social media side of things.

I always say if I'm never, if one day I'm not doing podcast stuff and this stuff, I'm off social media. In fact, I'm technically off social media now. I hired a social media manager who does. all my posting and takes care of my social media for me. So it's like I don't have to even worry about in fact, if people follow the show and they're like, man, Tony's been really posting a lot. It ain't me. It's only me if you see me on like Instagram live talking to you. That's me. But it allows me to have a social media presence without having to focus on it. And plus, I've just learned that the bigger this animal has gotten for me over the years, the more

I don't have time to do everything. So like when you first start things out, like you can just you're the everything guy, but if you're going to grow and continue to progress through things, you need to learn how to delegate. And that's what I'm learning how to do. It's very hard as a micromanager, but I'm learning how to delegate and like, okay, listen, I've made, you know, five Instagram posts in the last month and a half. That's not good for a business. So clearly, I need help in that department. So you start delegating, even though you're just like, oh, I can do everything. No, you can't anymore, man. So anyways, I just go off on tangent. So I'm going to end it now before we go another 30 minutes on stupid crap. I do appreciate you, man. I appreciate you joining me.

And we will do it again sometimes. So thank you very much. Thank you, Tony. Really appreciate it. Well, that's a show. Everybody, I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy it, go ahead and share it with your friends. All the people who are Bigfoot haters, the ones to say to you, Bigfoot's not real and you're crazy, send it to them because all they need to do is listen to that episode, get Matt's book, and they will be believers sitting in the Bigfoot corner with you. All right, friends, thanks for being here. Thanks for checking out the show. If you're new here, please come back next week. and all you OGs that have been here forever. I'll see you next week next Tuesday right here on the Confessionals.

And until then, stay safe, take care, and remember, the truth will set you free, but first it'll piss you off. Bye. Awakened from the forest and the depths of the abyss. This creature is a paradigm of time lost and time itself. It fears no one. It adheres to no rule that man can create. It forges its own path, and yet its path remains hidden,

from the world. The sphere of his existence is beyond most comprehension as it exudes its power quietly but transcendent. It needs no one's approval to exist, but yet its very existence is sought after by many. It watches. It learns. Adapt to the ever-changing environment around it, even as the environment is wrought with corruption. It battles the corruption only when pressed, or for the protection of others like it. It is a mirage that few will ever understand. It's a cornucopia of knowledge from an era long past. It's free.

It's Bigfoot. My fantasy's always consistent of making it big. My soul was nothing more than a bargaining chip. Marketing is what they tell you to do and what you're willing to give Larkin to the fullest extent. I don't wait, I shoot first like high on a roadie, and then people don't understand me like reading the Nokia. Tretches thin, like pulling in accordion.

My heart, at primordium. All these historians telling us lies, the genocide. Everything is medicalized. Politicians selling the ride. I bet him a die where the relevance lies. They're dressing alike. Reptilians.