The Joe Rogan Experience - JRQE #2 - Dr. Jeff Meldrum, Duncan Trussell

Episode Date: October 23, 2013

This podcast is currently only available as audio. This podcast was recorded during the production of "Joe Rogan Questions Everything" which originally aired on SyFy.

Before this podcast airs, I just want to say thank you to the fine folks at SyFy and Arthur Smith, the production company that made my show, Joe Rogan Questions Everything. Thank you to Tim and Wayne from SyFy also for allowing us to put this on the air as a podcast. One of the things that we did when we were filming the show is we wanted to incorporate the podcast into the show because first of all, it's the best method that I know of for discussing an issue. There's one, one of the things that I found about the show that was kind of awkward. I really enjoyed doing the show. I really enjoyed the opportunity to explore all these different topics. It didn't come out perfect. There's a lot of things that I wasn't happy with, but that's all just a part of the growing pains of creating a show. Um, but one thing that I did find is part of the growing pains of creating a show. But one thing that I

did find is that having conversations in front of people standing up in weird circumstances, like in a hallway or, you know, in a laboratory or whatever, many, many different scenarios that we had conversations on the show is very awkward. The best way to have a conversation is on a podcast, On the show is very awkward. The best way to have a conversation is on a podcast sitting down across each other in a comfortable chair in front of a big oak desk where you're relaxed. You feel confident. You're comfortable. Rather, you feel comfortable. You feel it's quiet. The room is, you know, it's it's it's a fun place to be. It feels good. There's good energy here. And we control that for the most part by having it in a podcast form. And my favorite aspects of the show were actually Duncan and myself talking to these people on the podcast. And it was kind of a revelation in a lot of ways. It's like my favorite part of doing this show is the stuff that I was already doing before I was doing this show. But I want to thank SyFy

for allowing us to do it that way because it really came out great, those parts of it. And so now you're going to get the full unedited podcast. This first one is from the Bigfoot episode and it's Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum. Dr. Jeff Meldrum is drum is in my opinion the most credible of all the Bigfoot believers I shouldn't say the most credible because maybe there's some out there. They're just as credible that I haven't met

he's the most reasonable guy that I communicated with and I really respect him for his first of all is is Stepping out and saying that he really thinks this is a big, real, undiscovered primate living in the Pacific Northwest, which takes a lot of balls for someone who's a legit professor. Because people immediately think you're fucking crazy if you tell them there's an unknown monkey living in the woods. He doesn't just do that. He does that from an academic point of view. He's a very, very bright guy. And he also does that as an academic point of view. He's a very, very bright guy. And he also does that as an expert in human movement.

And I found his theories on the Sasquatch combined with this knowledge that he has about human movement to be very fascinating. And his analysis of footprints and what's unique about these footprints and why it mimics actual real primates and not human beings, in fact, I thought was also incredibly fascinating. He's a brilliant guy and a very nice guy. And I appreciate very much that he took the time out of his busy schedule to come on the show. So enjoy. This is Dr. Jeff Meldrum. And once again, thanks to everybody involved in the show, everybody from the cameraman on down. It was an amazing, cool place to work for a few months.

So big kiss to you all. And now enjoy a podcast with powerful Duncan Trussell and Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum. Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Tell me we're ready. Dr. Meldrum, first of all, thank you very much for coming here and talking to us about all things Squatch. Duncan and I are very excited about this.

How many years, first of all, have you been involved in this? Were you in that Leonard Nimoy In Search Of Bigfoot show? show no that predated me that predated you okay that's the og of bigfoot shows right yeah i remember seeing that when i was a kid and being so convinced and excited that there was a big hairy man living in the woods obviously back then i didn't realize that it could be a species. It wasn't just like one individual dude, but a whole species. And I've been fascinated by it since I was a little child. I don't know why. I don't know what it is. What is it about Bigfoot?

Maybe you could tell us. What is it about Bigfoot that speaks to man? There are different levels. I mean, there's just simply the mystery, something that's undiscovered, unresolved. I think there's an added mystique because it's so human-like. I mean, that's been an icon, an archetype of the human experience since the beginning of history. Some of the earliest heroes hung out with wild men, whether it was Beowulf and Grendel or Gilgamesh and Enkidu, there were these denizens of the forest that maybe represented our sort of lost connection to wilderness and to wild places.

Do you think there's a certain amount of arrogance in assuming that we have full detail of the entire fossil record of primates when you see things like Homo florescens, the Hobbit man in Indonesia, and the evidence of Gigantopithecus, which is only in the 1920s they found that, right? Absolutely. Yeah, this is a theme that really is placing Sasquatch in a very different context, the one that I keep pushing because I can see this unfolding. With every new discovery of a hominid like Homo floresiensis, the tree of hominid radiation gets bushier and bushier. And then discovery after discovery shows that some of these lineages

have persisted to much more recent times in the past than has ever been acknowledged previously. So, you know, Homo floresiensis, 13,000 years old. A new Neanderthal site, maybe 13,000 years old. A new Neanderthal site, maybe 10,000 years old. Really? Yeah. And so the notion that we're the only hominid on the planet, contrary to all experience in the past when there were multiple hominids coexisting on the landscape, may be a real misnomer, a real misrepresentation of fact, and these relic hominoids may be the rule rather than the exception.

It's a real tricky subject, the Bigfoot Sasquatch subject. I have brought it up with people that I love and respect, and they have mocked me right in front of my face. My friend Dana White mocked me the other night at dinner right in front of my face. For believing in Bigfoot? I tell you, I was pretty disappointed when I heard you were going looking for Bigfoot. I was like, how dare you, sir?

What do you know about Bigfoot, man? It's one of those things. Bigfoot is like ghosts or flying saucers or crop circles. It lumps you in a weirdo category. It does. But that's because there's a lot of weirdos that believe in Bigfoot. That's right. You must know that.

Oh, sure. You probably experience more lunatics than psychiatrists do. And that's what warns off a lot of my colleagues is they don't want to navigate, try to navigate that morass of the lunatic fringe. And so you don't have the luxury of just simply going out and collecting data. You have to winnow through all this chaff to find the kernel. And it's very, I'm sorry, it's very, like when they lump you in, like it's a stain. It really is a stain on your career, on your credentials. They can say, oh, he's that Bigfoot guy.

Absolutely. Well, there was a moment as I was sitting here contemplating these footprints that sort of pulled me into this subject when I was familiar with Grover Krantz. I knew the grief that he'd suffered at the hands of his colleagues because of his pursuit of this subject, you know, in his career, stalling his career. And I contemplated for a moment, do I really want to go down that road or not? But how could you not when you have 35, 45 fresh footprints laid out in front of you that are so clear, so compelling, so persuasive? I mean, for me, that's what science is about.

It's going after those interesting, even if they're anomalous, data points. What was it that got you started on this? Well, it was that. I mean, we could go clear back to my childhood when I was born in the Pacific Northwest and knew of Bigfoot, knew of Roger Patterson and his film. He came to Spokane where I lived as a youngster and showed his documentary showcasing that film clip. My academic interest began in 1996 when I was shown the same line of tracks I just referred to in the Blue Mountains outside of Walla Walla. And I tell you, the hook was set. Has there ever been a moment where you stepped back and said, hang on, am I wasting my time on some hooey?

Sure. Is there a lot of hooey involved in this subject? There is, yeah. You've got to get past that. But I tell you, what I have seen, what I've experienced firsthand, be it finding tracks in very remote areas myself, hearing vocalizations, having rocks thrown at me. What have you, tell us about your experiences.

You've seen tracks where there's no people, like deep in the woods? Yeah, on several occasions well one one was in connection with a kind of an interesting inner impossible interaction we never actually saw something or anything but uh when you eliminate uh you know when you eliminate the the uh likely uh scenarios uh then the unlikely is what you're left with and in this case we had we were in the Siskiyou wilderness of Northern California, one of the first expeditions of sorts that I participated in. We'd gone off from our base camp quite some distance off trail to investigate some lakes we thought might have been shrunken up in the heat and exposing mudflats for more

tracking opportunities. We did find a set of tracks on a dusty stretch of the trail. You know, if you've ever been out camping, you get up real early and the dust of a campsite is still moistened with the dew and you step out of your tent and everything sticks to your foot. Those were the kind of footprints that we found on the trail one morning. They were just as clear as could be. Something with a 16-inch foot, five toes, had stepped in that dew-laden dust, and it just lifted up a perfect outline of a footprint.

Now, as a Bigfoot freak, what was that like for you? This is like your first piece of evidence. You're stumbling upon it yourself. That's right. Yeah. Were you freaking out? No. No. I mean, it was confirming. I'm freaking out. I'm not even there. Yeah, me too. Well, by that time, yeah, there were moments. We'd been in the woods already for over four weeks.

And so we had kind of gotten to the point, you know, you have to sort of steel yourself against that natural fear reaction to those circumstances. But I think this is something that a lot of Bigfoot hunters assume, which is that Bigfoot is sweet or Bigfoot's this harmless being that's out there picking flowers and printing his footprints in the dew. This could be a killer. This thing could be a deadly, angry, tired, bitter old jungle ape. Aren't you worried that in your quest for Bigfoot, you actually might find him? Well, find one of them, too. You know, let's make it clear.

There's more than one. Yeah, this is not one lone monster roaming this. Right. Yeah. It's not a boogeyman. But your points will take in. I mean, clearly, if it exists, this is a large, powerful, potentially dangerous animal and should be shown deference. But, I mean, if they were killers, like grizzly bears, they would have been hunted to extinction just like grizzlies were in the lower 48 for quite a period of time.

stories you hear about antagonistic behavior towards humans is usually precipitated when the humans have shot at them. They've started the quarrel. But otherwise, they seem to be, you know, it's just like with gorillas. You know, gorillas were billed by Barnum and Bailey as the most terrifying creature on the face of the planet. But now they're considered the gentle giants, you know, the vicar of the endangered, imperiled tropical forests. The predatory primates are the ones that are the most dangerous, right? Like chimpanzees are more dangerous than gorillas

because they're predatory. True, yeah. And this apparently, what the lore is, what people believe at least, is that if Sasquatch is a real thing, it eats animals. And it probably eats elk and it probably follows elk migrations. Yeah.

So there is always that risk. I mean, you know, anyone who's going out in the woods should use, do caution. Yeah. I mean, people eat people. Sure. Exactly. Do you pack heat? Do you pack heat?

It depends on the circumstance. He's a doctor, dude. He carries a gun. How dare you? He's about to say he He's a doctor, dude. He carries a gun. How dare you? He's about to say he packs heat. Oh, sure. No, when we're in the field, I mean, we're in areas where there are grizzly bears, where there's cougar. In Northern California, they've got lots of issues with cougars preying on or attacking people.

Oh, yeah. Cougars are personal security. Sure. We sometimes do. Cougars are no joke. Pepper spray, too. Pepper spray and a thick jacket. Cougars are no joke. Pepper spray, too. Pepper spray and a thick jacket. These cougars, you want a lot of protection.

I prefer a 10 millimeter. That, too, son. And get some Kevlar. Maybe a sword. Well, what a predicament you're putting yourself in. Because let's say you do run into a tribe of these things. And they're smart enough to know that they can't be discovered you've got to decide between not getting ripped to shreds by these bigfoot or blasting them into oblivion sure what

do you pick well that's a good question i mean it's a i hate to speculate too much on a what if scenario i i don't think that they're in tribal social organizations or that they are that intelligent. I mean, I think we're dealing with, you know, at least a large primate, a large ape, and at most a very early offshoot of the hominid radiation that, you know, has intelligence that's not much higher than that of a chimp or a gorilla.

I just have no experience to back up anything beyond that. If I could let you pick a toe, any toe, and we hack that sucker off and then immediately take you to Bigfoot with cameras, crew, whole deal, you get to see Sasquatch, a whole Sasquatch family. Do you accept that? Do you hack off a toe to meet Sasquatch and know for sure? I could probably get by without a pinky toe. Oh, my goodness.

You got it bad, sir. You're ready to chop off toes. I'll chop off my toe. Throw my pinky into the pot. Would you really? Absolutely. I love my pinkies. I'm not going to do that.

What's it for? What does it do? What does a pinky even do? It helps you move around, you freak. Barely. Yeah, it wiggles to the left and pushes off. It helps you stabilize. The pinky toe?

Yes, it's there for a reason. It's like barely a Vienna sausage. Maybe yours. Mine's very active. It's hard to clip that little nail, you know. I wouldn't have to worry about that anymore. Oh, my goodness. You guys are both sick.

How dare you? Okay, wait. It's tempting, though. You would transform human history with this video. I want my toes, dude. Discussion over. Selfish. Not chopping.

It's a valid question, because, I mean, a guy like you who's been studying this for how many decades now? Nearly two decades, yeah. Nearly two decades. Think about all that time and effort just to see it right there. But it's been a great ride. I mean, I've got to see places on this planet and see some of the most beautiful landscapes and terrains

and meet all kinds of interesting people. So it's been an interesting experience. Yeah. As we talked to one sasquatch hunter what he said was that even if he doesn't find sasquatch he's still camping oh sure enjoying himself yeah exactly i always tell people you know cultivate an appreciation for natural history enjoying the outdoors because it's like me with fishing if i don't catch a fish in the first five minutes i'll start to lose interest pretty soon and And if you're that way, chances of you catching a fish

or having a Sasquatch experience in the first weekend you go out is pretty slim. So enjoy what you're doing. You mentioned that these creatures throw rocks. How big are the rocks that they throw? Well, in my experience, when we were there in the Siskiyous, it was about a softball-sized rock. I mean, if you wanted to cold-cock me, it could have, probably. But I think it was more of a, I got the impression it was just letting me know that we were close.

And I got the sensation, in fact, that we had stopped to take a break at a spot that was on one of the pathways that they follow. It was where we had found the footprints the first go. Say that again? Siskiyous? The Siskiyous in Northern California. Six Rivers National Forest and Siskiyous Wilderness. So the primary theory, when it comes... What's the matter? Just a little tear right there.

Perfect. Sorry. Sorry. So is the primary theory about Sasquatch is that it was something along the lines of a gigantopithecus that was in Asia, came down the Bering Strait with humans, and that's why there's so many of them inhabiting the dense rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, the right time to have expanded its range over the Bering Land Bridge. And there were times when that land bridge was a corridor of forest, not an Arctic tundra. So it wasn't like they were migrating. They were just expanding the range. Each generation would expand into the available habitat.

So from Asia all the way to North America was forest at one point in time? At times, yeah, off and on. It wasn't always ice-locked. And that would have preceded probably the time that humans came. So they were probably here before Native Americans or Paleo Indians arrived in North America. There's a lot of speculation as to how intelligent it is. You seem to think it's very ape-like, but I've talked to other folks who think it's almost a human. Right. That it's like something in between us and a chimpanzee. Yeah.

Well, a lot of those people who attribute to, you know, primal people or some kind of primitive human often also attribute various paranormal qualities. They're in psychic communication. Yeah. They're being taught by them, you know, this ancient wisdom and et cetera. And, you know, I don't have any personal experience upon which to evaluate those kinds of subjective... How very respectful of you. That was so scientific. That was a nice way to say they're fucking crazy.

Lunatics. That's how a scientist calls you, a lunatic. Yeah, it is a weird thing, isn't it? That it falls into that crystals channeling energy thing. Oftentimes, yeah. Which gives me agita. I got to get out of the room when someone starts talking energy and crystals. I really, I'm allergic to it.

Like we had it yesterday. Someone started talking about energy and a safe zone, a safe space. I was like, I got to get out of here. It's like immediately I feel like I'm threatened. My sanity is threatened. I might get sucked into your stupid vortex. Will become one of you. Why is that?

Why do you think Bigfoot is a loon magnet? Do you think it's – because when you have people searching for other things like butterflies that they theorize that might exist or other undiscovered species, they haven't gone completely mad. But for some reason, a lot of these Bigfoot hunters, it seems like they've lost their mind in this pursuit. Why do you think that is? Well, I think part of it is that when Bigfoot sort of fell into the lap of academia back in, well, it was coincident with the Patterson-Gilman film, essentially. That's when it was thrust under the nose of science, the scientific community. Before that, it was just a bunch of, you know, logger stories and forester stories coming out of the northern woods of British Columbia or Northern California, which

was still really wild back then. It came at a time that preceded a lot of what we understand now about early human evolution and grade 8 natural history. And it was just, there was no place to put it. There was no pigeonhole to stick this in. And so it was rejected by the scientific community. And in that vacuum came the amateur fortune seekers or enthusiasts or, you know, those that thought it was left here by a UFO or traveling through interdimensional portals or any type of explanation as to why we aren't finding them, what makes them different from other common wildlife? I think what it is is that there's, first of all, I think there's two different types of people that get attracted to really following up on Sasquatch. And one of them is the loons. One of them is the people that, if it wasn't,

if they weren't looking for Sasquatch, they would be looking to remote view, or they'd be looking to find out the cause of chemtrails, or they would find some mystery and lock onto it. The other one is courageous people who aren't afraid of looking like kooks. Because, like yourself, I think you look at it, you're obviously a very intelligent man,

you're an anthropologist, you're a professor, you know what you're talking about. You look at this and you go, you know what, I don't think I can dismiss this. You know what, I think there might be something here. Right, right. Even though it sounds crazy to say it, I'm sorry, guys. This is why there might be something here. That's right. What's the most compelling piece of evidence?

If you were trying to convince a person, if a person was on the fence and they were like, well, geez, Dr. Meldrum, I don't know. I mean, you seem like a normal guy. Really, Bigfoot? Like, tell me in a paragraph, what's the most compelling piece of evidence? Well, for me, again, from my point of expertise, it's the footprint evidence. That's what drew me into this, because my study of the evolution of human bipedalism prepared me, I guess you'd say. I mean, why wouldn't I be fascinated by the possibility that there's another biped out there? I mean, it's a perfect natural experiment against which to compare and contrast our own adaptation for walking on two legs, which is otherwise considered to be unique amongst primates. Was Gigantopithecus thought to be bipedal, or is that in debate?

Well, it's in debate. Grover Krantz some arguments based on the the shape of the jaw given the breadth the angle of the jaw that's supposed to be a gigantopithecus that is that's one of the two of the uh examples of the largest species of gigantopithecus blackie owie yeah and it looks like it would hurt if it bit you yeah well yeah those are massive massive molars the head then like about that absolutely yeah absolutely They call that thing blacky? Yeah, Gigantopithecus blacky, yeah, after the discoverer. How rude. That's what he said.

That's his name. Well, the thought is that they look more orangutan-like than gorilla. Is that correct? Well, again, it's speculation. Because they're found in Asia, they're part of what we call the shivapithecine radiation, the thick enameled apes, of which orangutan is the only relic species in existence today. But, again, there's no way to know. I mean, gorillas and chimps are closely related,

and yet their skulls look quite different from one another in many ways. So the footprint evidence is, in your opinion, the best evidence. Right. And this one that we have, we both have the same one. What is the origin of this footprint? This was cast by a deputy sheriff by the name of Dennis Hereford in the 80s in Grays Harbor County, Washington State, so over at the base of the Olympic Peninsula. And he was responding to a report of a disturbance at a construction site,

and there on that spur road, hard-packed dirt with a layer of fine pulverized dust from the movements of the heavy machinery, wet down by a rain, left this remarkably clear imprint. These are actually desiccation cracks where that wet mud was beginning to dry in the sun and shrink and crack. But the extrusion of the mud around the footprint and between the toes and all left a very striking facsimile of that foot. It seems so uniform. That's where I start to get skeptical. Again, it's the remarkable conditions, there were photographs of a number of footprints at that site, including some interesting what I refer to as half tracks that terminate.

I mean, the details on here are remarkable. You can see what looks like the head and the base of the fifth metatarsal, maybe a little bit of arthritis or some kind of injury to the joints there. Yeah. This bulge right here, then, is the key, though. That you have on the side of your foot. If you left a wet footprint on the cement when you came out of the pool, you'd see that bulge, and it's positioned at what we call the calcaneocuboid joint,

which is right there. Now, in apes, these two joints across here are much more flexible. They're adapted to climbing trees. If this were a chimpanzee, it would look more like this. And when they're grasping that branch, then you have to be able to lever the foot without disrupting the grip. We've changed that altogether by relinquishing that grip and incorporating the big toe into one stiff lever, like this, so the whole foot acts as a mechanical lever. But there's moves here remarkably.

Sasquatch foot appears to have retained that ape-like degree of flexibility, which is actually a pretty elegant adaptation to climbing on very steep, rugged, mountainous terrain. What would be the evolutionary benefit of keeping a human-like foot as opposed to like a gorilla or a chimp where they can grab and climb with their feet? Well, when you're 800 pounds, it's kind of dangerous to climb up into trees. Besides, what would you look for up there? We don't have fruiting trees in the coniferous forests. The fruit element of your diet is in the understory,

the berries in the shrub layer. So I've only, I've heard a couple of people say they climb trees. You think that's hooey? Well, it's probably juveniles maybe to, you know, putting a youngster up in a tree in order to get it away from potential predators. If you're parking it there while you're off foraging, for example. But no, I don't think, I mean, just as large male gorillas don't spend much time climbing up in the trees

because a fall, even for humans, a fall from 10 feet can be fatal if you're an experienced rock climber. It seems like if you wanted to fake that, you would have to have a very advanced understanding of gorillas. If you were going to draw that thing and spend the time doing it, you'd have to have a deep understanding of primates. Or you're really shitty at making a fake foot,

and you just got lucky and incorporated something that looks remarkably similar to that metatarsal break. I don't know. That's good luck. I would never throw an accidental metatarsal break. Is that what it is, a metatarsal break? Did I make that up? No, that's right. How are you going to accidentally draw accidental metatarsal break. Is that what it is, a metatarsal break? Did I make that up? No, that's right. Yeah, how are you going to accidentally draw a metatarsal break?

But where are his calluses? It seems like his feet are kind of shaved down or manicured. They're beautiful. It's like he could go to the beach right now. He could go and lay out, and people would think he had great feet. Well, again, the conditions of that particular footprint were just really quite remarkable, making a very clear imprint. But it's indicated that the sole pad is probably pretty substantial and pretty thick. We have some examples of them where they've stepped on rocks or stepped on other obstructions,

and that sole pad, that substantial sole pad, is able to accommodate those intrusions quite remarkably. But it's the composite. If you take one example and you look at it, you can dissect it and criticize it and pick it apart and question it. But then you see, as you point out, repeated appearances, not only showing, for example, the mid-tarsal break, but these correlated half-tracks where they're running.

I mean, when we run, because of our stiff arch, if we're sprinting, not exhibiting a heel strike, we'll leave just an abbreviated footprint because we're up on the ball of our foot. Since their foot's flexible, when they run, they run like this. And it imprints the entire fore part of the foot. So in other words, if this individual were running, its running track would look like that. And again, so that's the question I've often asked. If this is all just spurious convergences of would-be hoaxers, who's passing out the little black book giving instructions on how to fake a remarkably consistent...

How uniform is that? Oh, remarkably. Very consistent? Remarkably, yeah. Example after example after example. I mean, to the point that I took the leap of intellectual faith, if you will, of naming the footprints. naming the footprints. There's a convention of taxonomy called ichnotaxonomy that applies

Linnaean classification schemes to trace evidence like footprints where the maker of the footprint is unknown. And so we can now call these footprints a published peer-reviewed name Anthropoidopes ameriborealis

which is North American eight foot. Wow. How silly would that be if it's all fake, though? God, you made a whole beautiful sounding Latin name. Well, it's going to be hard to prove that something doesn't exist, though. I guess so, but that's not what science is all about, right? No, it's not. Proving things do exist based on evidence.

Based on the evidence. And that's it. It's based on a diagnosis of distinguishing characteristics. These are not just facsimiles of enlarged human footprints, like this example. This is actually pretty large. This would represent an individual with a foot

that's probably in the upper 1% of the human population. Have you ever seen Shaquille O'Neal's shoe? No, I haven't. I've always wanted to get it. I've got a photo. I've got to remember to get it to you guys. It's a picture of me, my face, next to Shaquille O'Neal's shoe? No, I haven't. I've always wanted to get a... I've got a photo. I've got to remember to get it to you guys. It's a picture of me, my face, next to Shaquille O'Neal's shoe. It's bigger than my entire head. It's huge.

I'm not kidding. It's bigger than this. It's totally, totally bigger than this. So Shaquille O'Neal, if he wanted to, could be the greatest Bigfoot hoaxer of all time. He is Bigfoot. He could be. I mean, if he went and wandered through the woods, he's seven feet tall. He's more than 300 pounds. Yeah. He just slaps some fur on him. He's Bigfoot. I mean, if he went and wandered through the woods, he's seven feet tall. He's more than 300 pounds.

He just slaps some fur on him. Would his foot have the same kind of bend? No, it wouldn't. That's the thing. Even as large as his foot is, it would probably not be, and I don't have his metrics to say this with certitude, but I would predict that his foot is not as wide as this imprint. Most likely. Yeah, most likely.

And he doesn't have the mid-tarsal break. He doesn't have evidence of that. He probably has. They probably banned him from the league. They don't allow Sasquatches. Because if they ever did catch Sasquatches and then they found out that Sasquatches were people very similar to Neanderthals and they wanted to start playing football, we'd have real problems. We football. We'd have real problems.

We would. We'd have real problems. What would the problem be? Except football would be interesting for once. They'd start banging all the white chicks, first of all. So what? That would be a huge problem. You're going to have Sasquatch hybrids.

Great. The giant nine-foot people. I'll take them. Sasquatches won't want to enter into the UFC. We'd have to make new weight classes. Everything gets better if you add a Sasquatch. I don want to enter into the UFC. We'd have to make new weight classes. Everything gets better if you add a Sasquatch. I don't care what it is. If they start showing up, we're set.

Now, gorillas are fairly intelligent. Chimpanzees are intelligent. Dolphins are very intelligent. We have zero problem locking them up in swimming pools. If we did find a Sasquatch, do you think because of the bipedal nature of it, there would probably be some pretty intense debate as to what to do with this thing? Well, our humanity isn't defined by any one characteristic like bipedalism or opposable thumbs or a non-divergent big toe.

I mean, it's a composite of a number of characteristics. And so we're beginning to understand that bipedalism was a characteristic of many different species, of a very early hominid and even some non-hominid ape species. So you don't think that it would be like people go like, it's a man, he's standing up straight, we can't put him in a zoo. Well, I'm sure there'll be some that would say that, yes. What do you think they would do? What is your honest opinion?

Would they detain him? Would they have to hang out to him for a little while, see if we could figure out his language? Or what if it's like killer whale, like you just never figure out their language? Like you know they're smart, but you're like, I don't know what you're saying, dude. And eventually you just let them loose.

Well, sure, there'll be all kinds of ethical questions if we come to that point, and what the outcome will be, you you know it's really hard to predict i mean because then you're not only dealing with the characteristics but you're dealing with human reaction human attitudes political agendas whatever yeah i'm sorry to what if you to death but that's just what duncan and i do all day but i think that's an important question. I think when you're out there looking for this thing, you do have to consider that your discovery of the thing might be the worst thing that ever happened to Sasquatch. In a way, you're his enemy. Yeah.

Well, you know, that's been suggested to me and brought up numerous times by various people. various people. And one of my responses is simply, the formal recognition, the discovery of the species isn't suddenly going to make it easy to go out and shoot a Sasquatch or to catch a Sasquatch. It's not going to change much at all. There's a study underway now to extract and examine DNA from hair samples attributed to Sasquatch. If that researcher, Dr. Brian Sykes from Oxford, if he discovers a novel sequence that confirms that there's a species out there we don't recognize, it's not going to change that situation. We still won't know anything else about them.

DNA will only tell us so much. It may tell us about where it fits in the family tree, but not what it does on a daily basis or how intelligent it is or whatever. If I'm the president, okay, and I come to you and I'm like, Dr. Meldrum, enough is enough. We need answers. We need a Sasquatch research team head up by you, sir. Will you accept this position? And you have unlimited resources to go find Sasquatch?

What's your plan? Well, we've actually got an initiative. Thank you for the segue there. It's entitled The Falcon Project. They're going to confuse people. They're going to think you're looking for birds. Why not call it The Bigfoot Project? That's badass.

Why does it have to be Falcon? That's just badass. It doesn't matter. Falcon's badass. It's so badass. The Falcon Project. It sounds like it's a's a badass. It's so badass. The Falcon Project. It sounds like it's a comic book thing. Yeah, it does kind of in a way.

Well, the person who is the originator of this notion, he picked that, he tells me, just because falcons fly high and see far. And the premise of this approach is to use lighter-than-air ships, a helium-filled dirigible, so a drone, an unmanned drone. God, I love that. But with the capability of hovering and doing a grid search pattern using state-of-the-art thermal imaging and high-resolution videography and survey that way. Why a blimp, though? Why a balloon?

Aside from the fact that it's incredible and I can't think of anything more psychedelic than to release a balloon into the forest to look for Bigfoot. With Zeppelin music playing from it? Yeah, yeah. Dun, dun, dun. Project Falcon.

So that would be the move, balloons. I think this is a novel, not entirely novel. These techniques are being used in wildlife survey studies already. I mean, there are companies that have popped up that provide this service to government agencies, you know, fishing game and so forth. It's just the combination with this particular type of an airship.

But I think it's the way to get at the daily behaviors and ranging patterns and so forth of these creatures. On the ground, you're looking for that proverbial moving needle in a haystack. We're going to obviously combine the effort with ground insertion teams that will attempt to follow up to find trace and physical evidence. How many people do you need?

I'm the president member. We're going to give you an unlimited budget. How many? Let's see. Half a dozen could do it. Listen, we're going to need to take all these people away from the DEA and give them real jobs. This is the move. Take the people from the DEA and put them in the BEA. Yeah.

Now, if they're primal people, though, we may have the problems with- Bigfoot Enforcement Agency. Personal rights and so forth. If they are people, right? If they are people, yeah. That does become an issue, right? Intrusion, yeah. Well, there's people that have said that they've shot them, and then, of course, now they've passed laws saying in certain states it's actually illegal to shoot a Sasquatch.

It is, yeah. Not in all 50, right? No. It's usually by county. So, Bannock County, where I come from, we have a safe haven ordinance. For Sasquatches. Yep. Wow.

Now, if someone did shoot a Sasquatch in your county, what's the penalty? It's like a parking ticket or do you go to jail? They were kind of vague on that. Yeah. What the penalty actually was. I guess we'd have to see. And that raises the question of their status. Right.

Whether they're- Humans. Non-human or human. Right. Why have there been no bodies? Why have there been no skulls? Why has there been no hair? Why have there been- Well,? Why has there been no hair? Why have there been...

Lots of hair. But none of it substantiated as in fact something that's not a human. By way of morphology, we've got hair that can't be attributed to any commonly known wildlife that has consistent morphological characteristics. One of which is

a hollow or acellular medulla, the central core, which makes getting DNA from a hair that's simply shed, that doesn't have an actively dividing follicle, very difficult, very challenging. But it was proven to be actual real hair? Oh, yes, definitely, absolutely. So it's an unknown animal's hair. Right. Do you know what kind of animal? Is that known?

Primate-like. Primate-like. Well, definitely. Do you know what kind of animal? Is that known? Primate-like. Primate-like. Well, definitely. Well, in the sense that non-primate mammals, fur-bearing mammals of North America, have fur rather than simply hair. That means they have guard hairs, these long, coarse, tapering guard hairs that provide mechanical protection.

And then the underlying, that differentiated layer of insulating hair, very fine under fur. That's like down? Yes, exactly. Like down on a bird. Birds have down and flight feathers. In mammals, it's guard hairs and under fur. Primates, though, don't have that differentiation. They have hair that's kind of like a modified guard hair, but it's untapered.

It's long parallel tips, worn tips, no sign of ever having been cut. Trimmed. Yeah. With a flowbee. Sasquatch with a flowbee out in the woods. What color is the hair? It ranges. It correlates with the reported colors of Sasquatches seen by eyewitnesses from almost white to blonde.

To chocolate. They have almost white. Is it the Yeti or actual Sasquatch almost white? Well, we're still talking about Sasquatch. So there have been white Sasquatch described by witnesses. Yeah, rare, but nevertheless seen all the way to black. The DNA on the hair comes up with nothing? Well, it's difficult to get DNA because there's, you know, the way hair is constructed,

you have a cuticle and then you have a layer called the cortex and then a central core. And if that core or medulla has cells stacked up in it, then that's usually where the DNA is extracted from. stacked up in it, then that's usually where the DNA is extracted from. In animals that don't have a medulla present, a cellular medulla, then you have very little nuclear material of the cell left in that shaft, in that keratin shaft. And so getting any DNA in order to sequence it is almost impossible. What do the party poopers say that that hair is? Well, they don't. They say there's no evidence, you know, one way or the other. So it's basically you've got this hair that hasn't been identified.

But, you know, identifying hair is kind of more art than science because even on our bodies we have hair that differs in appearance. Head hair, beard hair, pubic hair. Eyelashes. Mole hairs. Exactly. Pubic, you hair, beard hair, pubic hair. Eyelashes. Mole hairs. Exactly. Pubic, you had to bring that up, mole hairs. It's different. Yeah, it's definitely different, yeah.

Yeah, inside nose hairs, what the fuck are those all about? Those are ridiculous. Or eyelashes, for God's sake. Yeah, eyebrows. No one's going to fake. Here's another thing. In the same way that I can't imagine someone taking the time to fake those footprints, no one's going to go through the woods with a bag of weird hair and scatter it through the forest.

No, but you might pretend you found it. You don't have to go scatter it if you're pretending you found it yourself. There's a lot of people that are full of poop, right? We know that. You know that. I know that. And this subject particularly attracts a lot of them. I'm sure you're aware of the gentleman in Montana recently that was killed.

Yeah. This hilarious but not hilarious because poor fellow is just trying to hoax somebody. He had a Bigfoot suit on, got hit by one car driven by a 17-year-old girl, and then run over by another car driven by a 16-year-old girl. He's an asshole. He's trying to scare kids you know well that could cause a wreck anyway yeah look i have a 16-year-old daughter if he got she got scared by an asshole in a fake bigfoot suit and got into a wreck i'd be pissed yeah sure so the world got a little lighter as bill hicks would say we lost a moron. This phenomenon, for whatever reason, is, well, I guess there's a bunch of reasons why people would want to hoax it.

First of all, notoriety. Second of all, because it's fun. And third of all, because it's so similar to us. It's not like trying to, if we tried to hoax the Loch Ness Monster, that would be a pain in the ass. But, you know, you're a fairly big guy. We'll put you in a big monkey suit, put you at a distance. Sure. You know, have you wandering around.

You know, as long as there's nothing, we could line up for perspective. You look a little, you know, we can get it off. Oh, sure. We can get it off. Oh, yeah. There's lots of misidentifications. I mean, that's one of the problems of eyewitness testimony is you're not only at the mercy of the witness's credibility, but honestly, even if they're sincere and genuine in what they think they saw, you have to evaluate their ability to evaluate their experience, to interpret what they experienced. Yeah, my memories poop.

Mine too. Especially because since we started doing the podcast and just having all this information rattled at me every day and having these long-form three-hour conversations, I don't remember who I said what with or when. And I confused stories. Sure. You know what? Also, and I don't know if there's any statistics for it, but I heard that there's a statistic that 40% of the people at Disneyland are on ecstasy at any given time. I heard that's like a statistic, like the number of people on psychedelics there. In the same way

in the forest, how many people camping are high? What's the percentage? Because I think it's 90% of the people who go camping are high. And I don't think that this discounts the fact that there's Bigfoot, but I would say that most of the people who see Bigfoot, if they're out in the woods, they're probably

stoned on top of it. It's possible that they are, but I think another issue is that you may only be able to contact Bigfoot when you're high. I'm sure. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's because the Pacific Northwest, we need to get you on some mushrooms, son. The Pacific Northwest is overflowing with psilocybin mushrooms. I mean, they're everywhere. Right. It's so rainy up there. It's just like the perfect fertile ground for them.

And a lot of people go up there to gather those things. Now, if you were up there and you were gathering those things, maybe that puts your mind into a certain frequency. Yes. When Bigfoot's like, I know this guy's tripping. Let's go fuck with him. Yes. And then Bigfoot shows himself. Hey, dude.

Plus, those mushroom pickers are pretty territorial. So maybe they're just making up the stories to scare off the competition. Are they really? Oh, they're. We think mushroom people would be the least territorial. Oh, no. They're, it's big. How do you know, sir?

Busted. I've run into a lot of Merle Bickers. Run into them. Yeah. As in called them, hey, meet me here with a bag. I've run into you, and you've run into my cash. I wonder if Bigfoot eats those mushrooms. Of course he does.

Why wouldn't he? He's smart. That's the craziest trip. Tripping with Bigfoot? No, being Bigfoot on mushrooms. Yeah. Tripping with Bigfoot? No, being Bigfoot on mushrooms. Yeah. Tripping with Bigfoot is definitely a great kid's book. I wonder if Bigfoot is pissed at all the wolves killing the elk.

They have serious issues with wolves killing elk and deer now because they reintroduced the... They took a Canada wolf, which is a larger version of the gray wolf, and introduced them to Idaho and all these different areas. Now they're having a problem. These things are running rampant. There's thousands of them. They're just in massive packs killing things. Well, they've just opened a season in Idaho on wolves. On wolves.

That disturbs the shit out of people. And that's just a wolf. And it's because we see it as a dog. I've got to say, I think that you are a courageous person because you seem very level-headed. You seem completely logical and rational with all this stuff. And I think it must take an awful lot of patience to constantly end up in interviews with stoners asking you if Bigfoot eats mushrooms. Yeah, yeah.

Well, there's a lighter side. I've got a notebook with all the lighter stories that I'll publish one day. All right, now here's something that you said that unfortunately disturbs me. Here's something you said that unfortunately disturbs me. Oh, okay. And that is you talked about the Patterson footage as if it wasn't BS. That Patterson footage, to me, looks like a blurry video of a dude in a monkey suit. Patterson footage, to me, looks like a blurry video of a dude in a monkey suit.

Well, if it looks that blurry to you, then you haven't seen the best renditions, the best copies of the film. Are they online? There's one that's online. What's the best one? Well, I'm not sure if I can call it off the top of my head. The producer of the show just looked at me like, oh, no, here we go. Because he knows I've got a thing for the Patterson footage. Well, one of the things... It's only about an hour.

We're fine. We've got a thing for the Patterson footage. Well, one of the things... It's only about an hour. We're fine. We got a lot of good stuff already. One of the things that's interesting is every time the film is assailed by a critic or a pretender

to be the man in the suit, such as Bob Hieronymus. Right. The, you know, it seems that new technologies have become available

in the intervening period, and they're applied. One of those was digital imagery. By scanning that film digitally, the color could be channel split. We know that the lens that was used was not corrected for chromatic aberrations, so different colors refracting different experientially through that lens. Boy, you sure talk a good game, Mr. Chromatic Aberrations. How dare you? When you split, you know, just, well, it's Papa Mushroom,

and you'll understand what I'm talking about here with these rainbow colors. We split the colors. We can subtract away the least clear channels and just limit the image to the sharpest imagery. And, boy, I tell you, you see that image as you've never seen it before. And there are details. I'm working right now with a gentleman who is a former Hollywood makeup artist and costume fabricator, Bill Munns. He's also very good with computer graphics, with photogrammetry, and we're doing some really interesting work on the film. But, you know, when you stop and think about the materials that were available in 1967,

they didn't have four-way stretch fur. They just had fur cloth, which when you make a costume out of it, even a padded costume, it looks like pajamas. It doesn't look like a fitted costume. It doesn't look real to me. That thing does not walk like a gorilla. It walks like somebody who's late for a meeting. Not only that, there's the context. There's something about human beings where when a human being is wearing a suit or you see a human being that's pretending to be something that they're not, it doesn't seem right. They walk like a human. You see that thing walk?

That, to me, feels like a human being. I've seen chimps walk on two legs. I've seen gorillas. I've seen primates move. They move differently than people do they have a completely different anatomical structure they feel different when you watch them this feels like an asshole

pretending to be Bigfoot also let me just play Bigfoot advocate here there is the possibility though if you're shooting a Bigfoot hoax video you're going to're shooting a bigfoot hoax video you're gonna walk better than that this whoever did this is like it's like he's in between takes going to use the

bathroom or something well this is just a dude is it with bob hieronymus the guy who says it's him he's just a guy who's friends with bob patterson and we we've already been over the fact that patterson like wrote a bad check to pay for the very camera that did. He's a shady character. He wasn't exactly the salt of the earth. But if you're going to take... He went looking, I'm sorry, but he went looking for Bigfoot and then found Bigfoot. That sounds so ridiculous. But if you're going to take the time to go out in the forest with whatever that big suit is and to film yourself walking through the woods to make a hoax Bigfoot video, you're going to try to walk more like a gorilla or some supernatural thing. The stride of that thing is so bad and seems so fake that it makes me believe that it's

real. I got baked one night at the ice house and I was convincing myself for 20 minutes. I mind fucked myself and I completely convinced myself that it was real. And then I woke up and I was like, that's ridiculous. That's a kind of monkey suit. Ask, ask Dr.

Melvin though what he was studying before Bigfoot. Cause it's germane to his. Okay. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Um, but the, this,

this film, have you ever looked at it and thought it was fake? Never. Well, I mean, I've, I've questioned whether it was authentic or not, but I've never come to a conclusion that it must have been fake.

It's the holy grail of Bigfoot footage. Yeah, but that's not the reason. No, I'm not saying it is, but it is. Yes, oh sure, it has set the bar, I guess. I would rather look at it that. It sets the bar as high as it is for photographic evidence. And anything that falls short of it, since we're still debating it, is certainly not going to tip the scales. But if it was fake, it would be devastating.

No. No, it wouldn't. Because we still have this dozens and dozens, hundreds of footprints that fill my lab that form the basis of my conclusion. But I would think it would just be devastating just because people would be so upset they were claiming that it wasn't real. Or that it was real, rather. That would be ego-wise, that would be a crusher. Especially to such a fringe belief anyway, right? Sure.

But if all I had to go on was the correlated footprints, were the correlated footprints from that film side, that would be enough to convince me that it's authentic. Really? The correlated footprints were very good? Well, yeah. This example that

so... Is that one from Bluff Creek? That is. So that's from the Patterson footage? That is. And that exhibits that whole mid-tarsal break that you talk about? That's right. And you can see that kinematic, that action in the foot of the film subject. You know what it looks to me when I watch it?

It looks like a guy walking with ice skates on. You know when you have ice skates, you can't walk right? Well, that's that effect of the compliancy of the gait. They don't walk. You said it doesn't look like a chimp. It doesn't look like a gorilla. And that's absolutely true because gorillas and chimps are quadrupeds. They're not bipeds.

Well, actually, I said it looks like a person is what I said. I said it doesn't look like a person. When you watch a chimp move and you watch a gorilla move, they don't look like human beings. This looks like a human being. Right. And that similarity is largely due to the fact that this is another biped that uses a mode of locomotion that's very similar but not identical to our own. And one of those differences, you pointed out with the ice skating, is that effect of the compliant gait. One of the things you notice, often notice in many of these footprints is, compared to a human, there's not a real distinctive heel impression and

a ball impression, which is the result of our arched foot that concentrates pressure under those ends of the arch. So we have a heel strike and a toe off when we walk. This creature, because of its great mass has to distribute its weight over a larger surface area so it walks more flat-footed without an arch and then you've got the action that mid-tarsal break you can see here's the deepest part of the footprint right there and then the pressure ridge the pressure release that's pushed up behind it but in order to also reduce those reaction forces though that impact of the step it walks with a slightly bent ankle knee and hip and so instead of the head bobbing along like we

walk when we're walking briskly down you know the the sidewalk um it's smooth exactly i've had eyewitnesses when when they saw they thought it was either levitating, floating through the air. One described it, he said it looked like it was on a bicycle because its head was just moving horizontally through space as it was walking so smoothly. Wow. So that's an interesting distinction. But to my eye, that confirms the credibility rather than refutes it. That's interesting. Still looks like a dude in a monkey suit, though.

Well, it does at first glance. But when you start looking at things like, you're a bodybuilder, the attachment of the trapezius. Oh, yeah, I am. Just to let you know. The attachment of the trapezius on the back of the head. You can see the traps come down to those massive shoulders. You can see the definition of the deltoid.

Or you see a dude who has football pads on inside a gorilla suit. I don't know. I gotta tell you, you have such a smooth voice and such an easy way of talking about this. You could make me believe in leprechauns, unicorns. You mean you don't? That would be

fantastic. It's easy to get me to start believing, man. I start looking at it over and over again. I've been watching the video the entire time we're talking. Maybe, maybe, man. Nobody would want it to be real more than me. That's why it disturbs me that I think it's fake. Because, man, I would want that to be real so bad. Almost as much as you.

You first, me second. Well, one of the interesting things, you know, Roger's no longer here to defend himself. But Bob Gimlin, his partner, is. And Bob was kind of pulled in on this. He was the friend who had the necessary horse trailer and equipment and so forth to make this kind of happen. And he got pulled in. He was interested.

He, you know, heard the stories that Roger told him and went out riding with him every now and again over by Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams near where they lived in Yakima. But they had gone down there specifically because there had been footprints discovered a month earlier. A long line of tracks of three individuals, a 15-inch, which I'm convinced was her, and then a 13 and an 11-inch, which probably were juvenile offspring of hers that were just in tow. They'd been down there for two weeks already. It's not like they just went down and got it. Two whole weeks? Wow.

They put in the time. They really deserve finding the first video footage ever of a giant ape-like man thing. Well, it's dumb luck. There's always a certain element of dumb luck in anything. Or, yeah, of course. You can play it off either side of it but you gotta weigh the you know even if even if you dismiss it on the basis or if you uh hedge on the basis of those circumstantial evidences then you gotta account for the film you know that

was the year that planet of the apes came out now that was the state of the art in the industry for costumes. That has never been repeated in the industry. We quickly passed costumes, and if we were going to do it now, we'd do it with CGI. No one would even tackle that with a costume. All right, let me play devil's advocate real quick. Even the really good footage,

let's be honest, it's blurry. If you went to see a movie and it looked like that, you'd be pissed. Sure. What kind of shit movie are you making? I can't even see what's going on honest, it's blurry. If you went to see a movie and it looked like that, you'd be pissed. Sure. What kind of shit movie are you making? I can't even see what's going on. This is all blurry. The trees, you can't see the leaves. Everything is like washed out. It's very difficult to distinguish

really, really closely exactly what you're looking at. Well, there's enough detail that you can see the deep-set eyes, you can see the nose, you can see the deep-set eyes. You can see the nose. You can see the split of the mouth. You can see the... Oh, no, there, there, there. You see something.

Go on. But what about Bob Hieronymus, the guy who says that he was in the suit, and the guy who, when he walks, looks like Bigfoot? Well, he doesn't, actually. One interesting thing. No, he doesn't look anything like it. His limb proportions are completely off. Right.

He's not wearing a suit. Here's a funny little telltale sign. You notice that when he tries to imitate the Patterson film, he walks like an Egyptian. He turns his backhand back really far. There was a frame from the Patterson film that was widely published sometime after. It was actually a copy that was in the possession of Rene de Hinden. It was actually a copy that was in the possession of Rene de Hinden. And it had a little blemish on the copy that made it look like there was almost like a thumb and a forefinger making an okay sign.

That made it look like that hand was turned back like this. That's an artifact of the copying. The hand is actually positioned like this. The palm doesn't face backwards. like this. The poem doesn't face backwards, but Hieronymus trying to exemplify, trying to emulate the posture exaggerates this Egyptian hand posture based on that widely published, publicized thing. That sounds to me like someone's got a little confirmation bias. I don't, look. Someone wants it to be real a little bit. No, no. A little bit. It sounds that way because I'm throwing out things that are based on very exhaustive evaluation of the film. The exhaustive evaluation of Bob Hieronymus' Walk Like an Egyptian Hands?

Oh, sure. Yeah. I've looked at everything that he's allowed to be replicated or published. Can I throw my pinky in with the doctor here? Please do. I just want to say, look, here's the thing. If I'm going out in the woods and I've got this futuristic Bigfoot suit and horses and a camera, I'm going to walk in a weirder way. I'm not going to walk.

That's you, buddy. Right. Me, I would walk exactly like this guy in the monkey suit. You would walk like that. Yeah. I would never know, number one, about the head movement thing. I wouldn't know that this was some kind of primordial thing. So these people seem to have deeply studied it to make something seem so fake.

Or it just walked straight and they filmed it all blurry and then we add all these things to it. Well, yeah. Why is it exhibiting behavior that's so uncharacteristic of every other Sasquatch sighting? Every single Sasquatch sighting, they're like in the middle of the woods. They don't come out in the open. They don't stand there. And when they walk, why would they walk that way? Why wouldn't it go right back in the woods?

Why is it walking diagonally when you have to give you a nice long view of itself as you've got your camera? It seems that way. It seems staged. Well, one, there's several possibilities. Just give you an apologetic okay first one is it's bullshit right first one of course sure it's bullshit but the other is that one of them is that uh first you have to know the lay of the land there and and we've been to the site we've surveyed the the landmarks the trees the stumps and so forth this is a very deep canyon with very

steep walls at that point there's a wide girth there because of the flood that essentially scoured out that creek bed and left that very convenient, if you will, sandbar where those beautiful tracks could be laid down. But it made a beeline upstream some distance, crossed the creek, and once it was past that steep narrow, it opened up a bit. And that's where it immediately went up to higher elevation. One explanation that's been offered is that it was, now remember I said that a month earlier there were actually three sets of tracks, possibly two juveniles. Those aren't obvious here in this footage. And like I said, I'm quite convinced that her tracks match those of the other 15-inch set of tracks. So she's obviously a female, if it's real.

And so if she has some young in tow, one behavior that exemplifies the maternal instinct is that broken wing syndrome, where the mother walks off nonchalantly to lead the intruders away from the sequestered offspring. Oh, so the offspring are over here, so she's making them follow her to leave her offspring alone. Isn't that an odd thing to do in a place that's filled with predators? And then you're seeing two predators, that's how they do it? Well, humans, you know, how much of a threat are humans? I would think they're a huge threat, which is why sasquatches are hiding.

Otherwise, if they came down and got food from us, we would feed them every day. I mean, I feed squirrels, dude. You're telling me I wouldn't feed a sasquatch if a sasquatch showed up in the yard? Sure. How have they avoided trail cams? Well, there are a lot of animals that are capable of avoiding trail cams. I mean, there's actually growing literature showing everything from, you know, coyotes, especially other predators like felids that exhibit avoidance behavior, whether it's electronic emissions, whether it's light leakage, whether it's scent,

whether it's just the novelty of something on that regularly used trail that wasn't there the day before. Probably smells like people or something. I had a friend, he's a wildlife biologist. He's been working over in Southeast Asia. And he said recently a BBC crew came over and they wanted to get images of elephants. And they put out 18 trail cams. The elephants found and destroyed over half of them. Wow.

Yeah, elephants are very smart exactly it's kind of strange how smart they are exactly so we have no problem locking them up well yeah again but it's uh it's a question in part of rarity of solidarity and intelligence and behavior and and so on you know isn't it possible that this creature has evolved the ability to hide? Wait, let me ask that again. Isn't it possible that this creature has evolved beyond other beings when it comes to the ability to hide? Maybe whatever this is is super advanced in camouflaging itself in a way that we've never seen. Well, it's possible.

I don't think that we really have to resort to extraordinary explanations for it hiding. I mean, other animals are very capable of remaining undetected. It's just a matter of odds. I mean, how many times when you have gone out, or, you know, people, I just drove through Yellowstone, you know, and got caught up in these traffic jams where people would stop to see the bear or the bison. But there are hundreds of bison out there that are never seen. But when you have that many scattered across the landscape, the chances of bumping into one increase. But if you're talking about a very rare animal, something like a wolverine or a fisher or a marten,

you can talk to people who have spent lots of time in the woods who have never had a sighting of one of those animals. So it's just, you know, for me, it's a matter of statistics, just probabilities of encountering. But, gee, you know, if we don't see something move, a vertical line especially is very cryptic in the woods. We're usually seeing things that are horizontally oriented, like the back of a deer or a bear, whatever. But it's kind of like that closing scene in Harry and the Hendersons, when suddenly the... How dare you quote Harry and the Hendersons when you come on a show to talk to us about serious Bigfoot science. Everything was so good.

By the way, that's a pretty obscure reference, pal, for most normal folks. Most normal folks are not like quoting Harry and the Henders Most normal folks are not quoting Harry and the Hendersons. And what happened in Harry and the Hendersons? Well, in the final scene, when Harry's sent back into the woods, then out from the landscape emerges his whole family. And they were standing there right in front of you, but just because they were still, you didn't see them. That's cute when it's a movie.

Well, right. But there's truth to that. We really pick up our brain, zeroes in on a movement, you know, a movement. But if it's absolutely still, we have a hard time sometimes. Like in Predator. Yeah, exactly. How much credence do you give to the idea that they're all over the country? Oh, very little. Their distribution, again, assuming they exist for a moment, is very ecologically based.

So we don't find them in the middle of wheat fields of Kansas or, you know, West Texas. We find them where there's sufficient rainfall to support coniferous forests and understory that's productive enough to support a large omnivore. So if you got a guide to mammals and flipped open to American black bear, for example, looked at the distribution, or better yet, flip open to my field guide. You have a Sasquatch field guide. I have a Sasquatch field guide. It's laminated, isn't it? Waterproof. But there is a,

if I can find it here, there is a distribution map of a hypothetical distribution. Where can I get one of those? Well, I can give you an address to send a check to and get one. How much? How dare you? He just got money out of you. How much?

With postage, it would be $11.50. I'll take it. I'll buy it for you. Merry Christmas, buddy. But there's a distribution map, and what's interesting is it's very similar to the distribution map for American black bears, because there's another omnivore that needs a certain amount

of productive habitat, and there's lots of space on that map where there's no evidence of any Sasquatch existing. So your belief is that you're dealing with the Pacific Northwest primarily and then possibly a few other spots like Connecticut? Sure. Well, the backside of the Appalachia. So if you go across the boreal forest of Canada, down the backside of the Appalachia, New England states. Connecticut? Sure. Well, the backside of the Appalachia. So if you go across the boreal forest of Canada, down the backside of the Appalachia, New England states.

Connecticut? Connecticut. Well, it could be. Really? That's a pretty densely populated state. Yeah, pretty. Kind of hard to hide if you're a giant monkey. But down the backside of the Appalachia,

even eastern Ohio, it's surprising if you've never been there. Yeah, there's some support for. So you believe Ohio, maybe possibly Pennsylvania? Yeah, western Pennsylvania could be. Florida? Florida, Stone Cape? Sure. Really? Some of that.

There's a lot of... My experience has been, and for a long time I simply used the easy caveat that I didn't have the time or resources to consider all the evidence east of the Mississippi. But my experience has been that the data that has come from those areas that might corroborate such sightings is pretty scant. And there's a lot of things that are just not credible whatsoever. Like meth. Like meth? A lot of meth in Florida. I think if you're seeing skunk apes.

Can you talk a little bit about the way that a Bigfoot smells? Well, yeah. Oftentimes the skunk ape is a moniker that derives from that supposed stench. But it's interesting. When you look at the statistics collated from lots and lots of sightings, a stench is only reported in about 10% of the sightings. That suggests to me that they don't continually smell badly to our nose, but that they're capable of exuding a smell.

Great apes, like chimps and gorillas, have very well-developed axillary organs. The apocrine sweat glands. Right. The things that, when we sweat, when we're nervous, as opposed to the watery sweat that is used in evaporative cooling. And when animals are, like gorillas, Diane Fossey, rather, excuse me, she describes the first time a silverback bluff charged her, came barreling down at her. She hunkered down, you know, and averted her gaze, and it stopped just a foot short of her. But she said she was nearly bowled over by this locker room scent that it was emitting. Oh, my God.

And she was probably emitting one by that point, too. Just imagine how horrifying that would be. You got a giant silverback charging you. It gets so close you can smell his stink. So whether it's fear or tension or intimidation, they're probably capable of exuding that kind of smell under those circumstances. Just like a skunk. Just like a skunk.

We were in my backyard the other night, and I had explained to my daughter that you can't get too close to the skunk. There was a skunk just like skunk we were in my backyard the other night and uh i had explained to my daughter that you can't get too close to the skunk there was skunk wandering in the backyard we have chickens and the skunk has found out we have chickens by the way skunks are murderers okay they're very carnivorous they're predators and they were looking to kill my chickens and they actually drink their blood that's what the hell they get they gank their neck and drink their blood so cute little skunksunks, pepe le pew. They are cute. Not so much.

They're little monsters. But, you know, I had explained to her, like, I go, if it gets you, the smell is unbelievably bad. And, you know, she's five. She's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. It doesn't smell at all. I'm like, it can smell. It smells on purpose.

Sure. That's a weird thing, the ability to spray that stuff on purpose. Absolutely, yeah. And they can only do it. I heard they can only do it 10 times a year. Skunks? Yeah. Wow.

They only have a certain amount that they could spray. So whenever they spray, they have to mean it. The rate of production. What's fascinating is that smell that we can recognize in just small parts per million. Right. That's how dogs smell us. Yeah. Yeah.

Not so bad, I'm sure. But they can smell. They have the ability to recognize us the way we can recognize skunks. Which is, it really puts it in perspective because there's very few smells that are like that, that are squirted out by a small animal that can spread for blocks and blocks. You know, when you're driving, you're in your car, you smell it through your vents. Right. It's super powerful. So, mostly Pacific Northwest or anywhere where there's large desk forests. Right. It's super powerful. So mostly Pacific Northwest or anywhere where there's large dust forests.

Who's the most credible eyewitness that you've ever talked to? Oh, there have been several. One that always comes to mind when I'm asked that, though, is a lady by the name of Julie Davis who had a remarkable encounter in the South San Juans of Colorado. She's a very avid goat packer, and she's hiked the entire Continental Divide Trail through Colorado. And her story was recounted in the Denver Post in a big feature article. And I've spent over a the in the back country with her and a couple other researchers and got to know her very well and been in her home heard her recount her her recollections over campfire and and um you know when when someone has shares that

kind of experience or well hers is worth retelling very quickly. She was off trail with her goats and a couple of dogs. The dogs were acting up. She suspected maybe that she was being stalked by a bear. And there still are grizzlies, supposedly still are grizzlies. This is the area of the so-called ghost grizzlies, where they think they're extinct, and then a hunter shoots one. And it's a female, and she's obviously suckled the cubs. So there still are some grizzlies out there perhaps.

And what part of the, where is it? South Colorado Rockies, the Wimanooch country and the South San Juans. But at one point, her dogs were again acting up. She was kind of on the lookout. She didn't want her dogs to tangle with the bear, so she was taking the dogs towards the tent and stepped into the tent and got her pepper spray. And suddenly the goats towards the tent and stepped in the tent and got her pepper spray and suddenly the goats approached the tent they weren't looking at her though they were looking up above the tent and so she stepped out thinking she was going to confront a bear and have to spray it and they're standing right behind her tent so about from me to you just a small dome

tent is this eight foot tall hairy figure locking eyes with her. And this was in the middle of the afternoon in broad daylight and at close quarters. She said, it looked at her, it looked at the goats, it looked back at her. I mean, it was apparently fascinated by these funny looking animals it hadn't encountered before, perhaps. And she said she had a sort of a subliminal impression suddenly that, that I won't bother you if you won't bother me. And she said that when she had that sense, its demeanor kind of softened, the edge sort of went off. And at that point, a second one that was standing right behind it, a slightly smaller one, peered out from around the bigger

one. And they sat and kind of stared at each other for, you know, probably what seemed like an eternity. It was just a few seconds. And then they both turned and they headed off towards the tree line and disappeared. I'd be like, where are you going? Yeah, exactly. Let's talk.

Come on, I'll show you. Have candy. Have soda. Have a goat. She didn't dare tell anyone for years about it because of the fear of the stigma. God, that would give $1,000 to know if that's true. Yeah, exactly. Not even to experience it myself, just to know that she was telling the truth.

Well, and as I said, it's one thing to, you know, in your position to say, well, yeah, you know, it could be, it could be, it couldn't be. Right. be it could be it couldn't be right but when when you when it's someone that you have come to know and you count as a friend as a close acquaintance then you know hi oh well you were mistaken you know it was just a bear standing upright from 10 feet away right you uh you know you just imagined it or you've misinterpreted it your brain blew a fuse or or you're lying to me you know you're just making this up for attention we spoke to one one woman who had Barbara who had an incredibly compelling story. I've talked to people that have stories that make you go, boy, I wish I knew. Well, yeah, people are having experiences. Again, it comes back to this issue

of how do you interpret those experiences? How credible are they? That's really got to be where the madness is because you can't discount unique experiences. You really can't. You can't. But I always kind of push for the corroboration. You know, I want to see an associated footprint. I want to see a strand of hair that matches that sort of standard or that archetype of the hair of Sasquatch that's kind of the gold standard, you'd say, I guess. Because then there's another dimension to it.

That takes some of the subjectivity out of the evaluation of the experience, for me anyway. Is this your full-time job? No, no. No, no. I mean, I teach, I do research, you know, I publish on hominid evolution and bipedalism. I publish on hominid evolution and bipedalism. It takes a significant amount, but I see it as one facet, a very complementary facet to my other research. Some of the insights that I've gained from studying carefully the Sasquatch footprints have actually fueled new interpretations of some of the hominid footprint evidence that have caused me to advocate some different alternate interpretations of some of that early evidence.

Besides Bigfoot, what are the other Bigfoot-like creatures that you believe possibly exist? Right. Well, there's the reports all around the globe of different sorts of things, not all related. Now, interestingly, there's reports of very Sasquatch-like creatures in eastern Russia and China and even down in Southeast Asia. In fact, if you go up from Southeast Asia across Myanmar, northeast India, along the foothills of the Himalayas, up around the Pamir and Altai ranges on the border in Mongolia, even as far west as the Caucasus between the Caspian and Black Seas, there are these gigantic reports and evidence of gigantic footprints left by large bipedal creatures very similar to Sasquatch. They have the same mid-tarsal break in the footprints? Well, we have a much scanter fossil record.

They resemble, I mean, one of the tracks from the Caucasus that a researcher, in fact, I'm going to the Caucasus this August to work with this researcher who came back with a footprint that was cast by a villager from a long line of tracks that most of the village witnessed of a

big hairy creature that walked through this fallow field. They resemble remarkably the Sasquatch footprints. So this might be the former range of, you know, Gigantopithecus or a giant Paranthropus or some other hominid. There's the Himalayan Yeti, and there is unfortunately scant evidence for it. I've gone through as systematically as possible and evaluated all the footprint evidence attributed to the Yeti. Much of it's just unintelligible. The prints have melted out or sublimated where the snow evaporates at the high altitude.

Another significant fraction are bears, absolutely bears. And it boils down to probably two specimens, the famous Shipton photo from the Menlo Glacier back in the 50s. What's the name of that? Eric Shipton. S-H-I-P-T-O-N? Yep. And another one that I find even much more compelling is the McNeely-Cronin footprint, the McNeely-Cronin expedition to the Arun Valley in the Himalayas. Those suggest a creature that's actually probably much more akin to this individual.

They exhibit an opposable or divergent big toe. In fact, the McNeely Cronin, particularly, looked just like an oversized chimpanzee with short stout digits. Hold that up again, please, Dr. Mulder. Hold this up again. So you feel like the Yeti might possibly, if it's real, might possibly be a different animal, another different undisclosed, undiscovered primate.

Right, probably one that's still arboreal, that lives not up in the snowfields, but down in the subtropical, detemperate valleys of the high, mid-Himalayas, I guess you'd say, like the Aran Valley. I mean, McNeely, Jeff McNeely and Ed Cronin were biologists who were conducting a two-year biological survey of the wildlife in that area, wildlife and the flora. And so when they woke up one morning and found a line of tracks that came up a very steep slope through three feet of snow bipedally on a ridge leading to a pass that they were just about to go over themselves, made a detour, meandered in amongst the brightly colored tents, and then continued on over the pass, and they lost the trail in a rhododendron thicket.

But here were these chimpanzee-like, very large chimpanzee-like footprints. What's your take on aliens or extraterrestrials? Do you believe in UFOs? Well, you know, and I always eschew that term believe. It doesn't matter if I believe or not, but I've not busied myself with the evidence. I mean, I saw a UFO, an unidentified flying object myself one time. We were out looking at stars on a date. Do you think Bigfoot possibly was in that UFO? No, I don't think so. No?

I don't think so. You never know until you go in that UFO. Can you imagine that? What a mind fuck that would be. It puts from another planet and it just lands and likes to go for walks through the woods just like everybody else. All I saw was a point of light. When we were kids, we would sleep out on the sun decks and we'd count the satellites as they went over. They had very particular kind of oblique orbits.

This thing was going north to south, which would have been fine, except that it executed two right-angle turns in succession. I mean, absolutely right-angle turns, just as sharp as if you put a square up there in the sky. Wow. And so both our jaws dropped. Did you see that? Maybe that's the government, because it's trying to throw you off this Bigfoot thing

by making you look even more ridiculous. This was way before that. This was back in the college years. Maybe they have a time machine, and they knew that you were going to be one of the most prominent Bigfoot researchers. All these conspiracy theories, if there's men in black out there harassing and intimidating these Bigfoot investigators, either I'm a good disseminator of disinformation or something because no one's ever shown up at my lab.

They don't bother you at all? They have never bothered me, no. So the idea is you probably work for the CIA. That's right. You trained underground to have this hypnotic, soothing voice. You get around stoners, convince them Bigfoot exists. Leave little breadcrumb trails, you know. Right.

You're the one with a bag of hairs. I knew it. I knew it. You're right. That's it. You're the one with the bag of hairs. I knew it. I knew it. You're right. That's it. You're a government agent. The possibility that Sasquatch predated humans in North America, you brought that up. What about the possibility that there's some sort of a hybrid between humans and Sasquatch? Is that? Yeah. I think it's very unlikely.

I mean, I actually am aware of a couple of interesting stories from Native American sources that suggest that there was the possibility of interbreeding. So you feel like there's a Yeti, which may or may not exist, but if it does, it's a completely different species, and then there's a Sasquatch. There has been some talk about hybrids, including the Melba Ketchum DNA results, which she reports to indicate some sort of a human and unknown primate hybrid. How do you feel about the results of those?

I don't hold those in very high regard. I don't think that her results are that credible or reliable, and certainly her interpretation of the data is highly questionable. Also, it's important to note that when you say a human-sauce-squatch hybrid, what you're saying is that someone wasn't just lucky enough to discover a Bigfoot, but they were also able to make love with a Bigfoot. Well, we're talking about a long time ago, and most likely they didn't even make love with a Bigfoot.

They made love with another thing and created Bigfoot. That's the idea. That's her thesis, yeah. But it's not being looked at with rose-colored glasses. I mean, even setting any supposed data aside for a moment, just to think about the feasibility of that scenario. You have to have two populations that are at least close enough that they're going to produce a viable and a fertile offspring, and yet they're different enough that that offspring isn't subsumed into one or the

other of the parental population and just, you know, diluted back into the gene pool. They remain distinct. And then the crosses have to be frequent enough. The hook-making. I like how you're hooking up. That there's a substantial population then that accrues, and that becomes Sasquatch and somehow gets from Europe to North America and other parts of Asia and relinquishes all material culture and other accoutrements of humanity.

I mean, it just kind of... Not only that, how big must that thing have been? If people are our size and then there's Sasquatch, which is even bigger. If this thing had to be even bigger than Sasquatch, that sex with a person made something in the middle, right? Does it work that way? No, it doesn't.

Science does not work that way. You know why it doesn't work that way? Why? Ligers. Ligers are way bigger than tigers or lions. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, there are, yeah, you can point to examples.

They do. Lions and tigers really aren't good biological species because they do, when the opportunity presents, they do cross and produce viable offspring. But the viable offsprings are sterile, are they not? No, ligers, my understanding is that ligers are not sterile. Really? Yeah, that you could breed, you could, in fact, one of, not Pocatello's, but eastern Idaho's claim to fame was Ligertown.

A couple of unscrupulous individuals that were breeding but not taking good care of them. And all heck broke loose when they showed up outside of a school playground. The Ligers did? Yeah. They found well-beaten paths where they were getting out on a regular

basis before they were finally discovered. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. But that's an interesting possible scenario. Now, I started to mention that there's a couple of Native American accounts that suggest, you know, there's always been this theme of abduction of the, you know, the Sasquatch abducting human females. But the only two that I'm aware of upon which i can base any you know any evaluation reported that there was a pregnancy there was a birth but the individual grew very rapidly

very sickly and died and was stunted mentally and died before the you know reaching teen years suggesting it wasn't viable and probably wouldn't have been fertile. And this was an abduction. Yeah. So Bigfoot abducted a Native American woman, made love to her, brought her back, and she had a baby that died. Why did he bring her back? Or she got away or whatever. Maybe she was annoying.

Maybe Bigfoot thought it'd be really cool. It's like a lot of hookups. You build it up in your mind, and then you get together with her, and the reality sets in. Maybe she's annoying. She should have stuck with Bigfoot. I mean, they sound like just-so stories, but we have some precedent. Baruti Galdikas, the orangutan lady, researcher, she, in her book, Reflections of Eden, researcher. She, in her book, Reflections of Eden,

recounts an instance where at a provisioning station, her native assistant was accosted by a young male orangutan who completed the deed. But he had been, he was a re-habituated, or a re-patriated, I guess you'd say, rehabilitated, I'm not sure what the proper term is there, one that had been confiscated and then raised and trained to return to the woods. So it had some contact with humans previously.

But the point simply being is that that scenario is not completely out of the question. The question is what's the probability of there being a successful impregnation between two different species? Can I just stop you? It seems like if an orangutan had made love to a woman, that I would have heard of that by now. And you would have, too. I don't think so. There's that lady in Connecticut that was almost definitely sleeping with her chimp. She was giving it wine and Xanax. It slept in the bed with her. It was very jealous of her. I knew about that. She was probably having in Connecticut that was almost definitely sleeping with her chimp. She was giving it wine and Xanax.

It slept in the bed with her. It was very jealous of her. I knew about that. I knew about that. She was probably having sex with that thing. But this is different from being on an expedition and having an orangutan barrel out of the forest and fuck you. Yeah, but I think it's probably pretty standard for orangutans. They're bigger.

We're smaller. They fuck us. It's not standard. I think that's what they do when they're horny. I don't think they really think about it. There would be a blog dedicated to it at least. Nah, just not enough contact with people with cell phones that live. You can tell this was a Pandora's box, wasn't it?

This whole show is a Pandora's box. Sorry, I apologize for that. The Jane Goodall quote. Boy, when Jane Goodall came out and said that she believes 100% that Sasquatch is a real animal, did you go, yes! You must have been so pumped. Well, I followed up and tried to see if she would read my book manuscript and possibly endorse it, which she did. So the cover of my book boasts an endorsement from Dr. Goodall. Have you spoken with her about this?

I have, yeah, a couple of times. What's her number one thing that she locks onto as far as proof? One of the things that really impressed her was the accounts by Native Americans that she's come to become acquainted with, and the fact that they've had these encounters and that their oral traditions are so deep-rooted about interactions and encounters with these creatures that they're part of the real landscape, as well as with so many animals.

The Native American stories often are very metaphorical, very like Aesop's fables. They convey morals and so forth. Oftentimes the animals are given anthropomorphic characteristics or supernatural characteristics. But that doesn't change the fact that the clever and trickster coyote is based on a real species of animal.

So the wild man of the woods is probably the same. What does Jane Goodall think of this footage? I haven't had that opportunity. Our conversations have always been very brief, unfortunately. We haven't had the opportunity to sit down and speak at any great length. So I don't know what she would say about the footage. What was your background before you became intoxicated with the Bigfoot legend? Right. Well, my training is in anatomical sciences with an emphasis in physical

anthropology. So much of my day is spent teaching human gross anatomy, full-body dissection lab course to health professions programs. So, you know, I've been involved with the dissection of hundreds and hundreds of human bodies, know that machinery inside and out. My research revolves around the evolution of human adaptations, particularly those for walking on two legs, and more specifically, the interpretation of foot form and function as it relates to bipedalism and arboreality and other primates like the great apes and monkeys. You're living in Washington State? Is that where you live? Idaho.

Idaho. In the state of Idaho. I teach at Idaho State University. Nice and woodsy out there, right? Well, Pocatello's kind of plunked there on the edge of the sagebrush steppe, so we have to go a little ways to get to the woodsy, but there's lots of wild country. We're just two hours away from the Tetons in Yellowstone National Park, and Uintas are just south of us, so there's some real prime territory. So you can go squatching pretty close to your house? Sure. Do you? Do you do that? south of us, so there's some real prime territory. So you can go squatching pretty close to your house? Sure, can.

Do you? Do you do that? I've gone, I go out with a colleague, John Meinzinski, who's a wildlife consultant and ethnobotanist, and we've done a lot of work in western Wyoming together, and for a number of years, we've spent at least a month at a time in the field looking for trace evidence and trying to get DNA by various means. Would you say that you spend more time dissecting human bodies or hunting for Bigfoot? Probably dissecting human bodies, yeah. But Bigfoot's really fun, and dissecting bodies get boring after a while, right?

Well, I never lose that. It has a certain novelty to it each and every year. I mean, everybody's a little different, and sharing that experience, you know, it's a real unique opportunity for students to have that very intimate experience of dismantling that marvelous machine that's the human body. So it never really gets old.

For the record, just for the show, would you look at me and tell me exactly who you are and what your credentials are? Yeah. My name is Jeff Meldrum. I'm a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University. I teach primarily anatomy and research the evolution of human bipedalism. I hope you're right. Me too.

I'm seriously rooting for you. There's not a lot of subjects that I really hope are true, but Bigfoot, man, for me, it has always been the one. UFOs, I'm pretty sure there's life out there. Whether or not it's visited us, I'm sort of iffy on that. But Bigfoot, I'm hoping for, man. God, I want it to be real. Well, it's interesting.

There was recently the cover story of New Scientist magazine this year was, of one issue, was what are the top ten questions that face human evolution, the students of researchers of human evolution today. And number nine was, are other hominins alive today? So it's gaining some traction, this notion of relic hominoids. I've actually launched an online scholarly journal, peer-reviewed journal, called the Relic Hominoid Inquiry, to provide a venue for discussion and publication of research on this topic. And so it's making inroads.

Homo floresiensis, that you're so interested in. That was really an interesting... Fascinating. Yeah, because here these discoverers kind of scratch their heads and admit to the reporters, well, yeah, actually the local people have been describing these little three-foot-tall hairy people that live up in the mountains, and even some of the European colonists have described encounters with them all along. And that had been folklore for the longest time and thought to be nothing but just stories until they found these bones. What is it, like 2006 or something like that?

Yeah, it's just been a few years. Crazy, isn't it? Little, tiny, three-foot-tall, non-human people, right? They said could levitate. No, no, no. They fly. They just fly. They don't levitate. They're like Superman levitate. No, no, no. It's part of the myth. They fly. They just fly. They don't levitate.

They're like Superman. No. Superman levitates. They walk through trees. Right through them. They walk right through the tree. They become one with the tree. From what I read, the little people can fly.

Where are the little people supposed to... I mean, there's also the Orang Pendek. Right. Right? Where is that thing supposed to live? That name comes from Malaysia. So, Flores is a little island of Indonesia, but there are reports of these small hominids all throughout Southeast Asia. Recent reports, right?

Oh, yes. Contemporary reports, absolutely, as well as the native traditions. They're still alive. Right. They're very smart, apparently. Hiding from people and very smart. Fascinating stuff. Dr. Meljim seriously

thank you so much and thank you for all this work because if it wasn't for a guy like you an actual intellectual smart dude who is obsessed with bigfoot as well it would be so sketchy because you're getting this information from all these various sources some of them highly doped up you know it's hard It's hard to celebrate the wheat from the shaft. Is that what you said? The wheat from the shaft? Wheat from the shaft. It's hard. I don't think it's shaft. Shaft, I think is the proper term. It's hard

when you're a person like myself who is not educated in anthropology to dissect this stuff. Sure. And if it wasn't for people like you out there, I think the overall picture would be far muddier. So thank you, sir. Thank you. I really, really appreciate it.

My pleasure. And an honor having you on. Really appreciate that. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. That was good? That was good, yeah. Thank you.

That was awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.