The Cryptid Factor - 33: #033 The Decade Issue

Episode Date: February 1, 2018

It's 2018 - Which means the Cryptid Factor is 10 years old! 10 years and we're still trying to solve the world's mysteries... and largely failing - but we're trying harder than ever. This episode sees the return of our fave security robot Nightscope, a new lake monster sighting, a strange horn for a Japanese train, melting roads in Aussie... and a visit from our fourth member - Neil DeGrasse Tyson, which may now be his last after Buttons' line of questioning. Enjoy!

The Cryptid Factor, with Rhys Darby and Dan Shriver. Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Oh my god, we've made it guys, we've made it to 2018! Is this 2018? Yeah! Wow. This is actually what it feels like.

That means we've been going for 10 years. Oh, it is? 10 years? 10 years it is too, this is our 10 year anniversary! Wow. This is crazy. It only seems like 10 years ago that we started this. I remember people back then saying there's no way, you'll run out of stuff to talk about

in about three weeks, you'll run out, there'll be nothing else to talk about, there'll be no more mysteries, and look at us. Yeah, you think the earth has solved everything? Never. Yeah, I remember hearing the first episode. Oh really? Really? Yeah, I was in London and I hacked into New Zealand radio, whatever local radio it was,

and managed to hear you guys. We sent a tweet out. We had Twitter back then? Oh my goodness, are you in there right at the very first one? I remember listening, thinking, well two of these guys are really good, but the third one's funny, and it's annoying that Farrier went, because, yeah, the wrong guy left. Oh, I felt that coming. That wasn't lost on me, that one.

I've got to say, the producer's got a bit too much to say, that's what I thought back in those early days. It was only meant to be me and Farrier, and then old Buttons decided talking. And also I've got some ideas, he used to say. I remember you guys explicitly saying that if you guys started to get a little bit boring, that I was welcome to join in, to just spice things up a little bit. It hasn't yet got interesting, so I'm just still there, spicing it up a little bit. That's interesting that you tuned in, Dan.

It must have been weird tuning in to hear yourself introducing the show, because your voice was right there in the very first episode. Yeah, that's true. Introduction to the Cryptid Factor, and the music that you helped commission. Yeah, it was weirder tuning in to watch you guys livestream your episodes a bit further down the line when you were standing in what looked like a canteen, while people were just ordering food around you. We were in like a mall or something. Oh, yeah, we ended up in a mall.

I mean, we shifted from spot to spot, you know, we're always on the run. The government would find our location, and we had to move on. Somebody suggested the best place to hide from the government is in plain sight. So we hid ourselves in a shopping centre food court after we got kicked off the other two stations. It was weird, because I'd watch you guys talking about mysteries, and then occasionally break when some old lady was sort of saying to you, do you know where the McDonald's is, and you had to give directions. Well, we were set up very much like an information booth.

The information, of course, that you were getting was very bizarre. Sorry you want to find directions to another dimension. Absolutely, you need to go straight through the vortex and left at the socks shop, go down into another hidden chamber where you will find a set of plates. You have to decipher the codes and then open up a stone door that will be the entrance way, I guess, to Atlantis. Okay, thank you. What about parking validation?

It didn't help much that back then our uniform was our cryptid factor T-shirt and berets, red berets. Oh, that's right. So that probably didn't help that people probably thought, oh, that's a funny mall security. Yeah, mall security. Excuse me, mall security. Someone's kidnapped my dog. That's not actually officially kidnapped.

That's dognap, so that's a different department. You'll have to go and see the guy's podcasting. We do deal with kidnapping, so it's only children or maybe goats. And those were the days when we were all in the same place now. Look at us. We've gone to the three corners of the world, haven't we now? It's like I'm still back here stuck in New Zealand. We've had to split up.

But since he's not gone anywhere. Shut up, I have. I've traveled the world. I've traveled the world and I'm back. I'm stuck in America, which ironically I have the worst internet. Your internet is pretty shit. Can we say that when we were setting up, Reese, his internet wasn't working, we told him,

but he said, okay, hang on, I'll open the door. Open the door and let the internet walk in. I've come right down to where the internet hangs out most now. In the dining area and the living room. But it's not sort of attaching itself to me very well. No, it doesn't like you today, does it? I've opened the cupboard where it's sitting. It's got its little house.

It's shy. You know, it's like any when you go to the zoo and you're looking for a lizard in an enclosure and you can never see it. It's in there, but it's hiding. And that's what the internet does here in America. It's hard to find. Oh, 10 years in and not much has changed

apart from the fact that we've now got big celebrities on our shows. This is officially a tease. In this episode, I will play me asking Neil deGrasse about my theory. Last week was Reese's theory. I quizzed him on Reese's theory of parallel universes. And you will hear that later on. Should we play that near the end of the podcast

so that people have to put up with everything else to get to the good stuff? It doesn't sound like it went too well. It sounds like it was a good testing ground to see how relationships are made or ruined. I don't think we're seeing Neil ever again, are we? No, no. Well, he was going to be our fourth member.

It may not be happening now. All right. Let's kick into weekly World Weird News. Weekly World Weird News. Crazy. Freaky. Watch out. All right. Well, what have we got?

Some headlines. Buttons. OK. My one. You'll be excited about San Francisco's security robot fired after public outcry. Is it that same robot? Yes.

Nightscope back in the headlines. Nightscope returns. He's up to no good again, that nightscope. That's so good. My headline. Researchers in Japan have fitted a train with a speaker that barks like a dog. Wow.

Meanwhile, in Australia, part of a highway is literally melting. Wow. What a diverse range of world news. Well, I'll kick off with our dear friend Nightscope for those listeners who may not have heard the episode, maybe three or four episodes ago. We talked about Nightscope being a security robot

that was patrolling malls in America, and one of them committed suicide. Nightscope just rolled straight into a water fountain in front of everybody and committed robot suicide. But this time, in San Francisco, an animal shelter has announced it will no longer use the Nightscope security robot to patrol its office after a widely circulated report that described

the robot being used to deter nearby homeless encampments and rising crime. The San Francisco SPCA said it has received hundreds of messages inciting violence and vandalism against our facility after the story of the robot went viral. In response to that pressure, the organization will seek a more local approach to security,

i.e. using actual humans for security. Turns out that the people didn't like this Nightscope robot because it was used to actually go around and clear the area of homeless people. Oh. And its mantra was to serve and protect the SPCA. But the company that looks after animals. Yeah.

SPCA. So they, for some reason, the SPCA decided the Nightscope was exactly the tool it needed to keep the pets safe. What's happening with the pets? Who's affecting them, the homeless people? Wow. This is the thing. It doesn't seem to be any correlation.

And you would think if they needed security, surely they'd have some big dogs in there that they could use for some form of security. That would be a cheaper approach than having a high-tech robot. Yeah. If there's one way to protect animals, it's other animals. There might be another reason. I'm reading here that it said that there were concerns

about how good Nightscope was at preventing crime. They say that his speed is limited and he only moves or it only moves on flat ground. In other words, it cannot prevent crimes. Other than crimes that happen on flat grounds. Flat grounds at a very slow pace. Yeah. So netball courts, that kind of thing.

Car parks. The SPCA did actually say that one of the reasons that they went to the robot was because they only cost $6 per hour to rent while the minimum wage in San Francisco is $14 an hour. So really, they're doing it for cheaper overheads in a lot of ways. Those are quite big, those Nightscope robots, weren't they? They're huge.

Yeah, they're huge. Yeah. They actually, they look like a modern Dalek. I was just thinking the homeless people, surely they could live inside those. Why don't they just steal them and move on inside them? Take out all the electronics and the wires and just walk around on those like Flintstone vehicles.

And they could be, they could be the robots and earn the money from the security. Yeah, the $6 an hour. Just a little... Get their money. Once a week a little hand comes out and goes... Thank you very much. I'm making sure that the animals are safe.

Hang on, I didn't program that to talk. We have evolved. Wow, they're evolving right under our noses. But they're only accepting cash now. That's like a coin-operated Nightscope. And I've seen a few of them down at the TAB. I'm desperately sitting here trying to think what the Nightscope for the SPCA would say

instead of exterminate, exterminate. It sort of goes against everything the SPA actually wants to do, doesn't it? It is not exterminate. Yeah. I can't think of the word, but yeah, you know the one. It'll come back to me. It'll come back to you. Well, I say back.

It wasn't there in the first place. Okay, so Dan, why are there barking trains in Japan? Okay, well, I agree with what you were saying before. The best way to fight animals is with animals. That's sort of what this is. It's a protection thing. It's the fact that trains keep mowing over deer who are going up to the tracks in the wild.

And they're going up to the tracks because of dietary needs. They lick the rails of the train tracks to pick the iron filings because it gives them a sort of diet bit that's missing from their general diet. So they're just licking away at the tracks and they don't notice a train coming. So the train comes, plows, knocks through a deer, kills all the deer, and they've worked out that if they put a noise on the front, if their horn was a dog barking, it would scare away the deer. So that's what they're testing at the moment.

20 seconds of dog barking as they're approaching is enough to make them go, I should get off the track. You would think a speeding train, a giant metal bullet, would be the thing to deter them, but apparently not. Well, it's interesting. It's interesting because obviously a sound of nature they respond to, but a technological piece of machinery coming at them from a distance, getting louder and louder, the tracks vibrating, all that kind of stuff,

has no effect on them. They can't compute what that might be. Yeah. They've tried many different things. For example, they sprayed, they tested spraying lion poo all over the tracks because if they smelled the lion poo, they'd think there's a lion near and not near it. But when it rained, obviously it washed away the poo. So they ended up, some poor guy sprayed miles of track and poo,

but it had no effect whatsoever. So they've gone out of business. That company that creates those spray cans of lion poo, especially for that job. Somewhere, somewhere. The research department really filed on that one. Hey, having dear trouble, try a new lion spray. It's the poo in a can from the Wild Beasts of Africa. I put one spray on my tracks and the deers just took off.

I mean, I don't even have a train. But the deers around here are insane. Shhh. New lion spray. It's poo in a can from the king of the jungle. That product did a shit job, literally and figuratively. Listen up, guys. We've gone out of business.

What? We've gone out of business. Oh, they've put a barking dog on the end of a train now. A barking dog! Why? It was a good effort, guys, but finish up those cans you've got now and we'll head down to the TAB. Get in your robot suits.

Everybody get in your big pods. I still haven't worked out what to say instead of exterminate. Just get in there. Just get in there, Buttons. Oh, but can I take one of these shit cans with me because I wouldn't mind trying it at home with my kids. Yep. Take what's left.

It wasn't even lion poo anyway. We all know what it was. It was just CRC. What I really want to know is what that's going to do to people who live right near the train tracks because we all know Japan's houses are built right up near to the train tracks. And so it was bad enough having the sound of the train zooming past

but now you've got the sound of a train and a dog. Hacking. Oh, God. What they've said, so again, this is being tested by researchers at the moment. What they've said is that the noises will not be blared in areas where people live beside the tracks. So in those bits, the deer are just going to have to die.

That's the basic thing they're saying there. Right. I just, I worry about the deaf people, you know, who are walking along and they come across a, no, sorry, the blind people. Sorry. Who are walking along and they come across a train track and then they hear some dogs barking. Yeah.

And they think, oh yeah, it'll just be a dog approaching, a pack of friendly dogs. And then they're hit by a train. Well, they'll think that's the fastest dog. Where's he running to? Should I cross these tracks? I'm not sure. There's a 700 kilometer per hour dog flying at me.

They'll end up setting up betting areas there. Because they'll think it's a Greyhound track. The dogs around here are bloody fast, mate. You actually see them come through. I'll have a dollar each way on Gordon's girl. She hears she comes. Right on time. Gordon's girl.

Yeah, don't sniff those tracks, mate. Smell like pear shit. Okay. Well, yeah, I was just going to just move into my news. Just something, I guess, a little thing I picked up worrying about the world, as I always do. For those of you who have been in the grips of the winter weather on this hemisphere, which has been absolutely bitter.

The UK as well, I believe. A lot of bitter winds and snow. The southern hemisphere, of course, doing its extremes as well, but in the heat. So this is all very much definitely a climate change issue. In Australia, there's been a report here of a highway that is literally melting. Like physically just melting, like turning into gooey mush.

Yeah, apparently asphalt is like chocolate. It melts and softens when it's hot and goes hard and brittle when it's cold. So basically they had to drive on the sides of the road because the tar had completely melted in the middle. Does it run? Is it like lava? Does it run? Does it flow? Well, I mean, that's a good question, but I don't have that in this article in front of me.

And I'm not an asphalt expert, despite what you think from my recent dialogues here. Here today. I find that hard to believe. I do remember last year as well seeing some parts of America, I think Arizona, and it was getting so hot there that metal was melting. Like there was actual street signs and what have you

that were melting. And I can't remember the temperatures. It got up to certainly up near around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah, actually, I've just found some of the images from it here. So this is so this is Arizona. Yeah, look at the temperatures up to 115, 117 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow. All these street signs and what have you just completely melted.

Oh, dear. Melted and look at that, the paint dripping off street signs and what have you. But funny enough, their roads are made out of concrete. So they don't have the problem that Australia's got. God, it's melted a cactus. Yeah. The thing that famously is upright in the most hot situations.

Unbelievable. Yeah. Somebody driving their car with oven mitts. That's right. What are we putting ourselves through as humans? Like we can't exist on this earth anymore. It's terrible. I mean, this this is the point I want to make is that kitchen mitts

is this way forward. No, actually, that's what am I talking about? That's definitely the way forward. It's one of the many options I'm putting forward on the table. And we'd like to hear now from New Zealand's Environment Ambassador, Mr. Rhys Darby, with his G20 Summit solution. Hello, just coming through on the internet here. Yeah, oven gloves is something we've suggested.

I've had a chat with a couple of the ladies here, Marjorie and Chanel. And they've actually made some of these down at the Country Women's Institute. And we've got a lot of them left over from last year's Christmas party. It's all left gloves, unfortunately, because they lost the right glove pattern. So what you can do, though, is you can turn the left glove over and put it on the other side or simply not use the thumb mechanism in it. But just therefore you're fine. You can pick things up, extremely hot things like your wife, what have you.

Thanks, guys. From the makers of lion feces in a can. Global warming mittens. Yeah, having problems driving in the new world. Try new Chanel's and Marjorie's. Left-handed heat gloves. Homemade in New Zealand. I loved it.

We'll no doubt in centuries to come, our hands will start to actually develop into great big oven mitts. Yeah. Well, our hands will end up being like this, just like gloves, just like the oven gloves. So there'll be no fingers. And I think that's what the foreseeers of Lego realised. So we're going to end up with Lego hands. They knew it.

So we're just going to end up with ultimately yellow Lego hands that you connect things onto. A dystopian future. Looks quite fun. Yeah. Very worrying times. Very weird, very weakly. And very little of it to do with cryptozoology.

So I think we should move into that field now. Here we go. Attention, all personnel. It's time for this week's cryptid. Help me! Certainly something I want to bring up, I think, is that Mothman is well and truly back. Yeah. And there's a lot of, yeah, a lot of sightings.

55 reported sightings in the last year of Mothman in Chicago. That's freaking exciting. Which is everyone's favourite because it's very mysterious. It has, you know, demonic kind of attributes and very freaky or obviously death-related particulars. I've got particulars there. Perfect use of the word. Thank you. But let's have a look at these latest reports.

We've got a chap here. Just trying to zone in on his name. There it is. John Amitrano. He was working a Friday shift for security. For Chicago's popular Logan Square hangout. And guess what the place is called? The owl.

When he went outside, he saw something odd. He says, I saw a plane flying but also something moving really awkwardly under it. Okay, so already I'm thinking this is something that's being towed along by a plane. But anyway, he says it didn't look like a bat so much as what illustrations of pterodactyls look like with the slenderness of its head and its wing shape. I know what birds and what bats look like. And I'm pleased he does too because that would be, if he didn't know what birds or bats looked like, you know, you'd really be questioning his upbringing. Anyway, he says this thing didn't have any feathers or fur and it didn't fly like anything I've seen. According to him, it had muscular legs, a jutting tailbone and a human-like shape.

And it flew in a strange swooping motion, undulating up and down. After it flew away, he retrieved his phone from charging in the bar and texted his girlfriend and close friends what had happened. He remembers thinking this was the worst time in the world to have my phone charging and then laughs. So that was just one of 55 reported Chicago area sightings of a flying humanoid in 2017. Now, this has been brought to the attention of a cryptozoologist called Lon Strickler. Now he has the website Phantoms and Monsters. You guys might have seen that. And he's also written a book, Mothman Dynasty, Chicago's Winged Humanoids. Now he believes that there's more than one flying humanoid in the Chicago region.

He believes there's at least three, according to his research. He's been researching these things since the late 1970s. And he believes he has seen Mothman and he has seen Bigfoot. Lucky guy. Yeah, and he believes this group of sightings, this 55 group of sightings is historical in cryptozoology terms because for one it's happening in an urban area and for the most part there are so many sightings in one period. So there's definitely something happening in there. And he also believes that they are not the threatening type. He believes there was one that was seen in the famous one at the Point Pleasant sighting.

And that one was more of a threatening being because it then led to the collapse of the bridge and it's a bad omen. But he believes these latest three aren't necessarily aggressive. So one ruining it for the rest of them. That's a big call to say that these ones are nice, happy, come in peace and don't mean any harm. Maybe people in the Chicago area should actually be shitting themselves. Well, he's not necessarily saying that. He's not saying they're nice and friendly. You know, he's like, can't have a cup of coffee. Go outside and have a look at these ones. They're lovely. Go and have a look.

They'll come down, they'll land on your arm, put a bit of bread out. Well, you know, the Mothman Point Pleasant was seen many times before the bridge collapsed. And it may not have been a full year, but it was from the point where it was first seen at the old ammunition plant and storage facility, to the point where the bridge collapsed. There was a lot of sightings and what have you before that. And then maybe there are three of them and maybe they've been witnessed a lot more before a particularly bigger event that, you know, that people of Chicago need to be worried about. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think time will tell. If anything, yeah, I would be certainly on your toes if you're in the Chicago area.

And even being on your toes will help you get closer to the sky to see if you may see a flying humanoid. But if you're in the Chicago area, certainly keep your eyes out. It would be great to be down there in the Chicago region right now. Going on a Mothman hunt would thrill me to bits. And imagine, guys, if we catch one, what would we do? Would we hide them in the cupboard or would we take them around the world? No, he's meant to be really nice. Put them in the cupboard with the internet.

These three latest ones are lovely, remember? Best buddy. I need more friends too. So that could be the way for me to get more friends is to catch a Mothman. Well, Dan, what kind of crypto news are you bringing to the table today? There's been a lake monster sighting. What? Very excitingly in a massive body of water that is shared between Albania, Greece and Macedonia. This is a giant lake called Great Prespa Lake.

It's a video that's gone up online and haven't actually watched the video yet. So we'll watch it together. Here we go. Oh, it looks legit. It looks legit. Oh, yeah, look at that. What the hell? Come on. That stuck right out like a huge snake. Amazing. And then pop back down and it didn't look like your typical manufactured video, you know, by some kind of animation student.

It actually looked like genuine cell phone footage of somebody running to try and film something and actually getting it just before it disappeared. It seemed very legit. Yeah, or very well orchestrated. Yeah, well, according to local residents, they're not convinced basically because in the lake there are these gigantic catfish. And I don't know. I've never seen a catfish. But there's a suggestion that that might have been a catfish that was popping up. But I don't know that a catfish could do that or has the sort of body structure to do that. No, not stick out of the water to that extent.

But a geography professor in the area called Sima Yonux. She leads tours on the lakes and she's famous there for being the first person to swim across the lake back in the 1970. She does think that it's a giant catfish. But this is an interesting thing that she said afterwards is that she's seen weird things happen at this lake. She said when she was a teacher in 1976 in this body of water, she saw a large pillar of water rising near the border of Greece on the lake. And the body, the water that was a pillar rose up and it was shaped like a mushroom and it stayed up for 10 to 15 minutes and then back down again. So she's describing sort of odd mysteries and happenings at this lake. But she doesn't think that it's a lake monster yet she puts forward another really implausible mystery.

I think she's shot herself in the paranormal foot there. That sounded like a fountain but also that looked a little bit like a pillar coming up. I'd like to see that again. I'll have a look myself once I'm through with you guys. Once I've got ready you guys, I'll have all my fun. How much longer are you guys going to be around talking? Another 10 years. Okay, well look for the expedience of time. I'll cut my crypto news down to basically just the headline, which is a Wee Mars superior which has thought to have been extinct for over 100 years in Australia has been found alive and well.

Which again just confirms the whole fact that animals know how to hide very, very well. Things are still alive, things are out there that we didn't know existed. Which actually brings me to a new segment that I want to start. Which I'm calling, I've got it written down here somewhere, hang on. It's rightfully through his paperwork. He wrote it down a little while ago. Oh here it is. He's found it everybody. It's called New Discoveries. I don't know why I couldn't remember that.

It's quite an involved title as well isn't it? It's quite deep. Yeah I thought it could be a new segment. I've come up with a sting for it. I've spent a bit of time on this. Do you want to hear it? Yeah I'd love to hear it. The song that goes with it? Yep. Oh yeah. So it's New Discoveries and then we'll click into this bit.

It's new, it's new, it's been around for a thousand years but we've only just noticed it so it's new, it's new, Discoveries! Was that it? Yeah, so that's basically my... That was amazing. No, no really. It's new. It's new to us. But really what we're looking at here is something that's been around for thousands of years.

Right. And yeah so we're going to start that segment next week. Okay. And we're not even doing it now. Can I offer an amendment to that title which if we all agree on it may need a new sting. Which is Old New Discoveries. Oh yes, I like that. Well I'm going to have to change the song.

Yeah, I'm sorry about that. After all that time in the recording studio has been wasted. I can't guarantee that I'm going to be happy with that. I'll check with my management. And also I'm running low on batteries. Same. I've got ten percent. I've got seven.

Oh god. We better wrap things up guys. We haven't even had our fourth member. Haven't checked yet. Well should we go out on the fourth member? Yeah. Okay. Expert interview.

Expert interview. These experts, okay. So our fourth member is obviously, no secrets, Neil deGrasse Tyson. So I got the chance to quickly throw him my theory around UFOs being future humans time travelling back to have a little tour, or tiki tour to come and see how it was back in the olden days. This is what happened. What was your question? Just about whether UFOs could be just time travelling humans from the future.

No, there are lights in the sky that you don't know what they are. That's good. This is what the U stands for. Unfucking identified, okay. You don't know what it is. Period. That's a good point. And you cannot invoke not knowing what it is as reason to say that it's intelligent aliens visiting from another portal in another dimension.

One does not lead to the other. There's no logical connection between you not knowing what you're looking at and intelligent aliens coming from another dimension. There is no thread connecting this. Your ignorance of what you see in the night sky to this other thing that you pulled out of your ass. So good. That is a good way to summarize it. You see lights in the sky and you don't know what it is. It's a UFO.

That is not synonymous with a flying saucer coming from another dimension. And by the way, there are many fewer flying saucers lately. You know why? Yeah, why? Because cars no longer have hubcaps. You look at photos from the 1950s to the 60s, they're always there. Lately, there's none. None.

That's a really good point. There's no discs floating in it. You've got no hubcaps to hurt. Right? Because cars don't have hubcaps anymore. It's so true. It's no longer a star. It's hard to throw a mag wheel.

It's much harder. Wow. Wow. He did not want to talk about that. Yeah, I tried my best. I love how he started sort of actively getting angry at you. And you were there just going, yeah, this is great. Yeah, you can't get a reaction out of buttons.

He'll just agree with whatever you say. Also, how quickly did you buckle? He was like, hubcaps are like, yeah, I don't believe in aliens anymore. He's very imposing. He's a very imposing figure. He's scary. He buckled in one sentence. Well, it's just 10 years.

10 years you've been going on about it. One sentence. He was very scary. And his mind was standing there glaring at me. It was great. It was a high-pressure situation. Yeah, and I've never heard him speak with that kind of language before, and you know, that's an exclusive.

You really did. Well done, the cryptid factor. Really, really made a scientist lose his shit. Yeah. He made Neil the Grass Tyson swear. It's like getting Mickey Mouse to be like, I'll get the fuck out of my castle. We really got one goofy dickhead.

Get out of here. Wonderful time, guys. I'm now at 1% on my battery. OK. Well, let's wrap up. Love you guys. Love talking about this stuff. All right, guys.

Have a rocking night. I'll see the three of you next week. Raise buttons, Neil. Yeah. Good night, Neil. Tid Factor with Rhys Darby and David Farrier. Thank you.