August 17, 2023 • 39 mins
Flora is joined by journalist, podcaster, and author Laura Krantz to discuss her podcast and book The Search for Sasquatch! Creator and host of Wild Thing podcast, Laura Krantz has parlayed her experience in Bigfoot research into a show and now book. New to the field of Sasquatchery, she dove right in with boots on the ground journalism and interviews with heavy hitters in the realm of Bigfoot science. With a familial tie to legendary researcher Grover Krantz, Laura got to experience a ton of fascinating things in her first foray into this controversial field. David interviews her about her time and journey in learning about something new and foreign to her. Be sure to check out her work, and don't forget to check out other Blurry Photos episodes!
Watch me stream games on Twitch!
Get a copy of her book The Search of Sasquatch
Check out Wild Thing podcast
Watch me stream games on Twitch!
Get a copy of her book The Search of Sasquatch
Check out Wild Thing podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Hey, yeah, welcome to BlurryPhotos. I'm your host, David Flora.
I've got a fun interview coming upfor you, and if you're interested
in seeing the film Shadows in theDesert the thing Derek Hayes and I have
been working on it for the pastfew years. It'll be in a couple
of theaters soon, with hopefully moreon the way. I'll tell you the
details real quick and then we canget into the episode. So, as
(00:36):
of right now, you can seethe film in Coshocton, Ohio on August
twenty fourth. That's if we canwork out the details of playing the film
there, But right now we're scheduledfor August twenty fourth at the Shelby Theaters.
You can see it in Joplin,Missouri from September eighth to September fourteenth
(00:57):
at the book House Cinema. Andyou can see it in Crested Butte,
Colorado on September sixteenth at the MajesticTheater. We could be adding more,
so keep up to date on possibleadditions by going to Borego Triangle dot com.
We're still awaiting a stream date,and as soon as we know,
I'll post on all the socials andannounce on shows when that will be so
(01:19):
on to the episode. I hadthe pleasure of meeting journalist, editor,
producer, and author Laura Krantz ata recent literary festival and suckered her into
coming on Blurry Photos to chat withme. Laura is the creator and host
of wild Thing Podcast, a longform narrative podcast about the obsessions that capture
(01:40):
our imaginations. She has produced threeseasons of the show, each focusing on
a different topic, including bigfoot,UFOs, and nuclear power, and she
has parlayed these seasons into a bookseries for middle grade readers, starting with
the Search for Sasquatch. She joinsme to talk about the book and her
experiences getting to know the world ofbigfoot research. Here is my interview with
(02:07):
Laura Krantz. Enjoy. She's thehost of wild Thing podcast and the author
of the new book, The Searchfor Sasquatch. Laura Krantz, Welcome to
Blurry Photos. I am very excitedto be here and to discuss all of
the blurry photos that I have nottaken. It's funny because throughout the series
(02:31):
you do say blurry photos quite abit in there, and every time my
ears were like doing. Oh,Laura and I were recently on a panel
at the Mountain Words Literary Festival herein Kristibute, Colorado, and I was
lucky enough to grab a copy ofthe book, which I'll talk more about
later, But first I want toask you about this journey you've taken to
(02:53):
get to where you've been able towrite a book, and particularly about your
experiences being relatively fresh to this realmof the unknown. So you actually have
a connection to this stuff, aconnection that you didn't know about for a
while, Is that right? Yeah, So I really found out about this,
Well now I found it's two thousandand six, so now we're closing
(03:15):
in on twenty years ago. Butwhat happened was I was living and working
in Washington, DC, and therewas this big article in the Washington Post
about a guy named Grover Krantz whohad just donated his bones, the bones
of his three Irish wolfhounds, whoare already dead. I have to clarify
that some people think he killed hisdogs and the Smithsonian he did not.
(03:36):
The dogs were dead, but hehad donated his bones, the bones of
his dogs to the Smithsonian for themto have in their collection. And they're
always looking for you full specimens tohave, and he really wanted to be
put on display, and they werelike, yeah, that's probably not going
to happen. But as luck shouldhave it, they were doing an exhibit
on forensic anthropology and like how youcan find out stuff from bones, and
(04:00):
the last piece of the exhibit,they wanted to do something really, really
cool, so they recreated a photoof Grover standing in someone's backyard with his
dog, Clyde, who was hisfavorite of his wolfhounds, and the dogs
got its paws up on Grover's shoulder, it's standing on its hind legs,
it's like licking his face. It'sa very sweet photo. They recreated that
with the two skeletons and put iton display. And so this article in
(04:24):
the Washington Post is all about thisparticular you know, exhibit and Grover and
all of the interesting things he'd done. He'd been a tenured professor of anthropology
at Washington State University. He wasa scientist. Oh and he was the
country's pre eminent academic expert on bigfoot. And you're real I'm reading this and
(04:46):
I'm like, who the hell isthis guy? What a weirdo. Can
you be a man of science anda man at bigfoot? Oh? Also
same last name, born in SaltLake City, which is where my dad's
family was from. And so Ifind out through my grandfather that, yes,
Grover had been his cousin. Hewould show up to the family picnics
(05:08):
with calipers and measure people's heads.My grandfather, who was several years older,
seven or eight I think, actuallystole a hand from the University of
Utah's medical lab and gave it toGrover because he knew he was so fascinated
by all the all things that anthropologicaland anatomy. I don't think that's legal,
(05:29):
but you know, my grandfather isnow dead as well, so it
goes. But yeah, I foundout about this connection, and for a
long time it was really just likecocktail party conversation. Hey, I have
a relative in the Smithsonian and bhe was a bigfoot expert. Ha ha
ha isn't that hilarious? And thenI decided to do a podcast about it
after I found out that Grover's fourthwife, number four, lived about thirty
(05:55):
miles south of me here in Colorado, in Parker. Actually, I don't
even know what it's thirty It's likethirty minutes. So I was like,
Okay, I'm going to go interviewher and then we're going to see where
this goes. So the impetus forit all was connecting those dots that Grover
was kined to you and he hadan ex wife or you know, his
(06:17):
fourth wife, you said, nearyou. If she hadn't lived near you,
do you think you would have gonethat that route? I probably would
have eventually, but I think thatreally it was one of those like signs
from the universe kind of things.Not that I believe in that kind of
stuff necessarily, but you know,I'd been sort of sitting on this story
(06:39):
for a while and was My husbandwas like, you should write a book,
and I was like, I can'twrite a book. That's there's too
many words in books, and I'mused to doing audio. But I kept
seeing bigfoot stuff everywhere, and like, you know, we moved to Colorado
and there's a big Foot museum likenot that far from us, up in
Bailey, Colorado. There's just bigfootstuff everywhere. And then the more I
(07:02):
was just thinking about it more andmore and more, and then I was
like, Okay, I'm going tosort of look up and see if there's
anyone who knew Grover and try andreach out to them. And I probably
would have reached out to Diane Horton, that was his fourth wife, even
if she'd lived far away. Butthen finding out that she was in Parker,
I was like, Okay, youkind of have to do this.
Yeah, yeah, it kind ofwrites itself after a while, right,
(07:24):
yeah, Right, So you talkedto her and did that kind of kick
off what you thought you could puttogether with this. It was that that
was the deciding factor that you thenpacked up and decided to see what all
the fuss was about. Yeah.So after talking to her, you know,
she would talk about Grover's fascination withthis. She talked about also just
(07:45):
how well loved he was as ateacher at Washington State, and like how
well regarded he was. We talkeda little bit about the other kind of
work he did, which was reallyyou know, he was kind of on
the forefront of a lot of thediscussions about human evolution and migration patterns in
North America, and he'd waded intoa lot of discussions about sort of evolution
versus creationism. There'd been a bigdebate at Washington State in like the nineteen
(08:09):
sixties, and he'd been the faceof that in terms of the evolution side,
so he was a well known guyin anthropological circles. And then a
lot of people feel he shot himselfon the foot because he basically wouldn't give
up the bigfoot stuff, and everyonewas like, what the f are you
doing? Man, Like what doesthis have to do with science? But
he really was trying to approach itfrom a very scientific perspective. And I
(08:31):
found that fascinating, Like how thisguy who was so science oriented was also
out there looking for a creature thatmost of us consider mythological or you know,
at least something in the very distantpast that is not around anymore.
So that kind of fascinated me.And then it's like, why do people
believe? Why are we so fascinatedwith this idea of bigfoot? Why is
(08:52):
there? Why are there bigfoot bumperstickers and chocolate and socks and tires and
you know, music festivals, andyou know, you can I can just
go on and on and on andon and on and on and on,
because once I started thinking about thisbigfoot idea, there was just like bigfoot
stuff everywhere, So it's clearly capturedour imaginations, even for people who were
like, yeah, it's not real, but wouldn't that be cool if it
(09:13):
was. Yeah, it seems likeit's kind of the closest thing to magic
that we have. You know,I think a lot of people cling onto
that hope just to have something elseto believe in, you know, besides
just like, oh, reality isharsh. You know, it's not that
reality is necessarily boring, because youcould go into all kinds of stuff and
(09:35):
you know, really be fascinated bythe minutest details. But a topic like
this, it really is easy forpeople to latch onto and then to want
to know more about and to understand. I think, yeah, for sure,
And I think for a lot ofpeople, it's like this idea that
the world is still wild enough,that it's still unexplored enough that we haven't
(09:58):
like paved, impruned and you know, plasticized every single thing out there,
and something like this could exist,Like that seems magical. You know what
you think about the explorers of oldlike going off into the jungle and not
necessarily knowing what they were going tofind out there, Like there's an element
of still wanting that to be theway the world is. Yeah, and
(10:20):
I can see the appeal to that. It's it's fascinating and fun and adventurous
and a little dangerous. You know, there's all kinds of stuff you can
get out of it. But thereare several audio clips that you include in
the series on what Grover said,Like literally from Grover, he first of
all, has an amazing voice.I know, right, it's so good.
(10:43):
It's like perfect for radio, itreally is. And he's kind of
like the Carl Sagan of Bigfoot stuff. And I thought that, you know,
from the get go, and thenlater in the series it actually comes
up someone mentions Carl Sagan in there, and uh, I think it was
Matt Moneymaker actually when you interviewed him. I think, oh, yeah,
(11:05):
vaguely. It's really funny that youare because I have I have not listened
to it since I put it out. I was so sick of it,
and so now people ask me aboutlike little moments and I'm like, I
don't remember. That's well, thiswas also twenty eighteen, twenty seven.
Yeah, I was twenty eighteen whenit came out, so it's been a
while, but yeah, he did. He did mention Carl Sagan. I
(11:28):
remember that. Now, that's funny. Yeah, I think it's great because
Grover was also an educator, andyou know, he you could hear in
his voice that he loved teaching andthat he loved learning. And that's that's
kind of the approach I like totake with this as well. You know,
I'm in it to learn, andwhatever I find out, I'm happy
to teach. And I don't know, man, it's it's hard when you
(11:52):
come up against some difficulties with peoplewho maybe don't share that same view.
And we can into that later,but I wanted to ask you, how
did your professional background prepare you andhelp you for the journey that you took
with this. Yeah. So Icame from a journalism background, which was
(12:13):
great. I'd worked at NPR startingin two thousand and six, and I
worked with them on and off forwell almost I basically for ten years,
both in DC and in Los Angelesa little bit and in Los Angeles,
and essentially like that gave me alot of background in terms of like how
to conduct an interview, how todo the technical side of things in terms
(12:35):
of recording, how to think aboutstory structure, and then a lot of
it. I just kind of wingedit, like I podcasts had been around
for a while, but really itwas like twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen that
they were really kind of hitting likea big stride with those longer narrative formats,
and I would listen to Cereal.I listened to Finding Missing Richard Simmons,
(12:58):
which was Dan Toberski's podcast about RichardSimmons and he like sort of vanished
out of the public eye and therewas all these questions about where he'd gone.
And it's a great podcast if youhaven't heard, he's fantastic. Dan
to Bersky's one of my favorite hostsof all time. But I listened to
that and I was like, Icould do this, Like I know how
to do all of these things,and that was really helpful to hat to
(13:22):
be to realize that I knew thetechnical side of things. I knew a
lot of how to frame this stuffdiving into it, and also like an
outline was very important, and comingfrom journalism and knowing that you need to
sort of have a structure set inplace before you get started so you're not
just sort of wandering in the wildernesswithout any signposts. That was really helpful
too. So those were kind ofthe big things that sort of set me
(13:43):
up, I feel like, foryou know, success in actually making the
thing. And you have a tonof interviews in some pretty big names that
folks would recognize. To Jeff Meldrum, like I said, met money Maker,
he's known with BFR and stuff likethat. You even get Michael Schermer
in there, which I was veryimpressed to hear him speaking of why people
(14:05):
think the way they think, youknow, why people want to believe or
whatever. I've got that book backhere on the shelf. Yeah, I've
got it down here somewhere too.Yeah, what was the price? Did
you call these guys up? Didyou have any inside track on getting those
guys like those are some pretty bignames that I don't know if they do
a lot of interviews. Yeah.So the first thing that I you know,
(14:30):
Grover's wife Diane was instrumental in likesort of making helping me make those
first connections with people who were insidethe big Foot community and knowing where to
go and who to talk to andwhere to turn because you know, like
you said, I came into thiswith like zero zero knowledge. I'd seen
Harry and the Henderson's and that waspretty much the extent of my knowledge or
(14:50):
real really interest in Bigfoot. Andso Diane was like, you should talk
to this guy. You should talkto this guy, and she was like,
feel free to use my name.These people will be very happy to
talk to you. It also helpedthat I had the same last name.
I think that that really did opena lot of doors. And I was
very transparent with people up front.I was just saying, look, this
is the background for this. I'minterested in learning more about this world and
(15:13):
the people who are in it andwhat it is fascinates us. I am
not looking to poke fun at people. I am not looking to laugh at
beliefs. And I think that sortof transparency about what I was trying to
accomplish also helped. But with someonelike Michael Shermer, I mean a lot
of these were just sort of likeI'd send an email and he wrote back.
(15:33):
So I think some of these peopleare more willing to talk than it
might seem like at the outset,And it could be that they've gotten more
cautious as time has gone forward,and they've perhaps become bigger names or there's
been this sort of explosion of podcastsand everybody wants to talk to them.
They might be a little bit pickier, but I think too. Also saying
(15:54):
you know, I come from anNPR background probably helped add some gravitas to
the question I was asking. Yeah, I get that because I once emailed
to ask someone if they'd come onfor an interview. This was back when
the show was my show was alittle a little younger, and we were
(16:15):
I had a co host. Wecame from an improv background, so we'd
add a lot of humor to theepisodes. And you don't want to be
that transparent when asking for interviews whenyou're like, hey, we you know,
we approached the stuff with a littlebit of humor. We don't take
it that seriously, this and that, and then just got the nastiest response
back, being like, why wouldI want to come on a comedy show?
(16:37):
And it's just like okay, ohno, that that helps the old
self esteem. Yeah. Was thatfrom someone who was like a bigfoot person
who didn't want you making fun ofit or it was the same realm.
It wasn't specifically a bigfoot person,but someone who deals in that stuff.
And writes books, and they're nota very good person outside of that anyway.
(17:03):
So I've heard okay, so itall made sense, But it was
an experience. So I you know, lesson learned. You learn as you
go. But speaking of learning,how you have taken the process that you
come from and know and applied itto this. The first series of wild
Thing brings listeners with you on yourquest to basically embed yourself in the culture
(17:27):
and learn about all the aspects ofsasquatchery. It's nine episodes full of interviews
and audio clips and field recordings.I'm curious how long did it take you
to put it all together? Ittook a while. I was also working
a couple of part time jobs atthe same time, which you know,
as you well know, there's nota lot of money in podcasting, so
(17:51):
I was doing other things to sortof supplement income, and also was kind
of at the whims of other people'sschedules. So in terms of doing the
field recordings, like when could Ifly out? When was going to be
convenient for them? You know,when were events happening, Like there was
an event called beach Foot which isand yeah, have you been no,
no, it sounds super exclusive.I do not think they would want me
(18:12):
there. Oh they might, younever know. They were a lot of
fun and they were really, reallynice, and so I think I don't
remember how I made the connection withthem. That was one of those it's
like Diane connected me to someone,someone else connected me to someone else.
Like I kept like laddering people ontop of each other and like using those
connections as much as I could,because I think that really helps. But
(18:33):
you know, you're at the mercyof schedules of like that and in putting
things together. And also this isthe first time I had done something this
big, and it took a while, Like I think the first episode probably
went through five or six iterations beforeI settled on a structure I really liked.
And then some of the episodes Icould write really quickly. The second
episode, which was all about evolution, that was that was a breeze like
(18:56):
there was that was very straightforward towrite. There was another episode that was
about sort of the taboo surrounding thistopic for a lot of the people who
are fascinated by it, they don'tlike to talk about it. That one
went through a lot of iterations aswell, and sort of figuring out how
to how to present this information ina way that was not going to be
just like look at these people likethat, which is not what I wanted
(19:18):
to do, Like everybody was verynice and thoughtful, and that's not what
I was I was out to do. So all told, it took me
about a year and a half fromwhen I first started working on it until
like the episodes were going out thedoor, and I also finished it in
advance of launch, and then spentabout a month doing press, like trying
(19:41):
to get interest in it before Ilaunched, so that it wouldn't just sort
of like into the you know,the abyss of meat of like all the
media out Yeah, throwing a waterbottle in the ocean. Yeah, exactly.
We're going to take a quick breakfor ad space and be back in
just a couple of minutes. Well, you have three seasons of the show
(20:06):
out now, and the other seasonsfocus on different topics, namely UFOs and
season two and nuclear power in seasonthree? When did you get the notion
to assemble your notes into book form? Yeah, So what happened with that
is season two was out and Ihad started to get lots of letters mostly
(20:30):
from parents who were listening with theirkids, which I had not anticipated with
season one. Actually, this wouldhave happened before season two came out,
because what happened was I started gettingthose letters and I was like, oh,
crap, I have to take theswearing out for subsequent seasons because I
had not anticipated the kids would belistening to this, and I swore a
little bit, not a ton,but a little bit in the first one,
(20:51):
and so then you end up witha you know, an explicit rating,
and that makes it harder for peopleto find it. So in any
case, letters from parents who arelistening with their kids, letters from teachers
who were using elements of the podcastin their classroom to talk about evolution,
evidence, scientific method things like that, and I realized, oh, there's
(21:11):
a way to approach a different audiencewith this. And my agent suggested middle
grade nonfiction because she said there's adearth of material in there that kids find
interesting. It's often very dry,it's not something that they get very excited
about, but teachers and parents arelooking for that kind of material. So
(21:33):
yeah, A did a whole pitchto a bunch of different publishers and they
went for it, and they wanteda three book deal, so yeah,
that's kind of how that happened.Yeah, the book is gorgeous, the
art and even the covers a blendof matt and shiny, glossy stuff and
(21:56):
a little puffy I love it.Yeah. Raphael Obray is the guy who
did the illustrations, and he nailedit. Like I had sort of a
different idea in my head of whatit would look like, sort of more
dreamy water colory, but when theysent me his stuff, I was like,
Yeah, that's great. I loveit. Are you sticking with him
for later? He's doing book twoand I believe they're talking to him about
(22:18):
book three right now, So awesome, that's great. Yeah. So when
you're putting season one together, whatkind of difficulties did you encounter some of
the things I encountered or things thatyou encountered where it's like people didn't necessarily
want to talk to me, andthis was more on the science side of
things. Yeah. I had reachedout to the Smithsonian initially to talk to
(22:44):
them about the human evolution stuff becauseI thought it made sense to go there
because Grower's stuff was there and theywanted nothing to do with it. So
that was a little I was alittle surprised, but not wholly surprised.
And then when Ian Tattersall, whois the curator over at the American Museum
of National Natural History in New York, when he said, yeah, you
(23:04):
know, I don't believe in Bigfoot, but i'll happily talk to you,
I was like, Okay, wellthat's a pretty sweet score, Like,
yeah, he's no joke. So, you know, ultimately, a lot
of these things ended up working out. I think some of the other problems
I ran into were you know,there were times where I was kind of
struggling with what the structure was goingto look like and how to cover this
material fairly. And then I madea decision pretty early on to not do
(23:30):
anything that would be considered woo.So you know, telepathic Bigfoot, Bigfoot
as an alien, Bigfoot lives inmy basement, Yeah, multi dimensional Bigfoot.
I just was like, like,we haven't even proven any of that
exists in the normal world, Like, why are we just attributing that to
Bigfoot? So I stuck with whatGrovers, Yeah, well he just teleported,
(23:55):
that's why you can't see him.Yeah, duh. Yeah, if
we would just unlock more than tenpercent of our brains. We could,
We totally could. You're just notusing your brain, right, man.
So I did run into a littlebit of pushback where we'd be talking to
people and they would sort of goin that direction. I'd be like,
thank you, and they'd be like, what, you know, you have
(24:15):
to keep your mind open and embraceall possibilities. And I'm like, well,
if you can bring me some reallysolid evidence that, you know,
the nineteenth dimension does exist, thenwe can talk about Bigfoot existing in it.
But yeah, let's let's start atthe let's begin at the beginning.
Other issues I ran into. Youwent out in the field a lot.
(24:37):
Yeah, the field was that wasa lot of fun. Yeah, and
I was surprised. Usually something willgo south on those kinds of trips,
like really south. And the biggestproblem was it just poured rain at Willow
Creek when I went for the fiftiethanniversary of the Patterson Gimblin film, Like
it was just dumping rain the wholeweekend. But in some ways that actually
ended up being helpful because it keptpeople indoors and in one place, and
(25:00):
so it was easier to find themand talk to them. Granted it kind
of prevented you from going out tothe site of where the supposed film was
shot, but I didn't really needto be out there for that, So
yeah, I got kind of lucky. Like I feel like a lot of
things fell into place with this,like the opportunity to go see those nests,
which was, you know, great, Like they didn't have to take
(25:22):
me out there. They'd certainly deniedother media the opportunity to go do it.
But I think by that point Ihad talked to enough people. This
was a late enough in the reportingprocess, and I'd talked to enough the
people who were adjacent to that projector involved in it that they trusted me
and they were willing to let mecome out there and see it, provided
I didn't take any photos, whichI didn't. And then people were like,
well, why didn't you take anyphotos? And I was like,
(25:44):
they didn't ask me to, butif you go online you can find them.
So how many times through the process, because there's several field recordings that
you have and you went out multipletimes, how many how many times did
you do you think you went outthere to good stuff? Because you went't
like there were sometimes where you wentfor you saw the nests. There were
sometimes you went and did like thewhoops and then tree knocks and things like
(26:08):
that. Is that the same tripor yeah, some of them were the
same trip, And some of thetimes I would use material from one trip
in multiple episodes to sort of talkabout different aspects of it. So there
was let's see went out to seethe nests, And that was actually towards
the end of all the reporting.As I mentioned, beach Foot was the
(26:29):
first field recording event that I wentto and I was like, what am
I doing here? Who were thesepeople? I'm sure they were like,
who's this lady walking around with amicrophone? And that was actually one of
those moments where you know, itwas like, hello, my name is
you had the tag on and Isaid Laura Krantz and people were like,
oh, are you related to Grover? They all knew who Grover was,
(26:49):
Like one guy, one guy actuallygot down on his knees in front of
me and was like, you know, Grover is my God and like you
know that kind of thing. Iwas like, whoa, okay, And
that was sort of my first introductionto how much people really really loved Grover
and what he stood for and whathe represented the represented to this community.
(27:10):
So there was beech Foot. ThenI did the Bigfoot Expedition with Shane Courson
and Cindy Caddell, who were bothinvolved with Bigot Field rear. Cindy was
with Bigfoot Field Researcher Organization and theOlympic Project, which are two of the
Bigfoot recon groups. She's the anthropologist. Yeah, she's one of the anthropologists.
(27:32):
Kathy Strain was the other one,and she's one I met at beach
Foot. And then I also wentto Willow Creek for the fiftieth anniversary.
And I might actually be doing thesein the wrong order. It might have
been beach Foot, Willow Creek,the camp out in Mount Hood Wilderness,
and then the nests. So Iwent out in the field at least four
(27:52):
times. Oh, and then therewas the trip to Bailey to the Sasquatch
Outpost. And but I find goingout in the field, hey, it's
a lot of fun. It's alot more work because you're just having to
pay attention to a lot of stuffand it's a you know, it's like
three or four days of just recordingeverything you can and then you have to
come back and kind of sift throughall that and figure out what you want
to use. But you get allthis great ambient sound. It's an opportunity
(28:15):
to, like you said, takepeople on a journey with you if you
can create sort of a nice,you know, soundscape behind you when you're
talking about some of this stuff.So, yeah, the field recordings were
a lot of fun. I didn'tget to do as much of that with
other ones, or at least thesound wasn't quite as rich with some of
the other ones. For lack ofa better term. Was it very creepy
or scary at times or was therea lot of priming going on in your
(28:40):
head that maybe made it seem thatway. So I will say the Mount
Hood one was a little bit onthe creepy side, mainly because we got
all set up to camp and thiswas an area that Shane had brought us
to because he'd been camping there beforeand he'd had an experience. And so,
you know, the sun goes down, we sit by the fire and
(29:00):
he tells his story, which wedeliberately set it up that way so he
would do it, you know,at the at the creepiest possible moment,
right and then he finishes telling thestory and you're like, oh shit,
what was that? And then youknow, my tents on the very edge
of the camp site, and I'mlike, maybe I want to move more
towards the middle. Like and I'mnot really a nervous camper, like I
(29:22):
enjoy camping. I've never been someonewho's totally, you know, freaked out
about anything other really than bears ofwhen you're like backpacking and wyoming grizzlies,
that's some scary shit, yea.But yeah, after hearing that story,
and then we went on this kindof night hike and like you're wandering around
and pitch black darkness. Well,we had headlamps on, but we would
turn them off from time to timejust to get a sense of like how
(29:44):
oppressive the dark was. And yeah, I mean that that had a little
bit of an eerie quality to itfor sure. Yeah, it sounds fun.
It was fun. I had ablast. If you ever get a
chance to go on a big footexpedition with anyone, you should totally do
it. Did anything in particular orsurprise you on this journey? Yeah,
that I became open more open mindedabout the idea of bigfoot. I think
(30:06):
that was the biggest one, becauseI went into it being like total hoax,
big joke, total myth, likethere's nothing to it. And then,
you know, after listening to thestuff about evolution and hearing about other
species that had been alive at thesame time as Homo sapiens, and thinking
about how difficult it is for youknow, the fossil record to hold onto
evidence of everything, I was like, well, maybe there was something back
(30:29):
then. It's hard to know.And then there was also just people's stories
and the stories because I had beenso particular and selecting, you know,
a path for this podcast in termsof steering clear of the wo I ended
up. I did end up talkingto a lot of people who were fairly
scientific or had spent a lot oftheir time in the woods and were fish
(30:51):
and wildlife people or anthropologists and hadstories that you trusted them more, because
at least I trusted them more becausethey seemed so grounded in reality. And
then they would tell the story andthey're like, I don't know what it
was. I know, I can'tsay it was bigfoot because that's not science.
But this was the weirdest thing Ihave ever experienced, and I don't
(31:15):
know how else to describe it.And now those kinds of things, it's
like, well, something clearly happenedto them, it's true to them.
Yeah, yeah, And I thinkthat's what surprised me as I sort of
came out of it. I stillwant, you know, I would want
scientific evidence. I want the body, I want the big piece of the
body, I want the DNA,I want all the things that science require.
But I'm open to the possibility thatthat might exist, whereas before I
(31:38):
was just like total joke. M. I kind of empathize with you on
that because shooting this documentary that Iwill hopefully be releasing this summer, we
went into it thinking, well,there's all these stories about a Sasquatch in
southern California in the desert of allplaces, and how is that possible?
(32:01):
Like that that sounds ridiculous. Butwe talked to biologists, we talked to
people who study the plant life outthere and other species, and how many
forms of food you can find ifyou know where to look, where to
find the water, if you knowyou know where to look. Migration,
you know, up into the coolerelevations at the it's only thirty forty miles
(32:27):
away. You know, and andthat's an easy trek for a big eight
foot tall thing to if theyd he'sa snowbird. Absolutely half the time he's
in Texas, the other half he'sin Aspen. So but we came out
of it being like, well,you know, it's not impossible. It's
(32:49):
uh yeah, if you know whatwhere to look, what you're doing.
Yeah, it's it's possible to survive. But my question has always been,
and this is something that Michael Schermermentioned in that episode with him in it.
He said the same thing I wasthinking. You need a population to
(33:09):
survive, right, you need yep, couple hundred to make sure that it
can continue unless there's some like freakof nature where they survive for hundreds of
years at a time, like turtlesor something, you know. But or
maybe they're like one of those jellyfishthat like they get to a certain age
and they sort of like dissolve inon themselves and then they like reborn.
(33:31):
Yeah yeah, yeah, they're likea phoenix creature. Yeah. But again
that's one of those where it's like, well, that jellyfish is really the
only example of that. I'd liketo see something with bones, maybe that
does that yeah, or something observableat the very least three. Yeah,
And I think you know you're right, it's possible, But is it plausible?
(33:52):
And I think that becomes the bigquestion. Yeah, the world is
full of possibility, but what's theplausibility of it? Yeah, that's kind
of the thing that I always keptbringing me back. I like the idea
of bigfoot. I think that wouldbe great if Bigfoot were out there.
I am hard pressed to believe thatthat's the case. Yeah. And also
(34:13):
the photos. Let's talk about thephotos. Everybody has a camera in their
pocket. There are untold numbers oftrail cams and gain cams and security cams.
What do we have blob squatches?Yeah, bingo. This whole podcast
might not exist if it weren't forthose those photos, very photos. So
(34:37):
I wanted to ask you, isthere two pieces of advice that you could
give. One to the folks whoare convinced Sasquatch exists, and then one
to those who are skeptical that openminded. My piece of advice to the
people who are convinced that Bigfoot existsis keep looking, but you're gonna have
to find if you want people totake you seriously, and you want people
(34:59):
to take seriously, you're going toactually have to find the kind of evidence
scientists and the scientific community are willingto accept. And there's not a conspiracy
to keep Bigfoot hidden or keep youdown or anything like that. Like,
you haven't found the kind of evidencethat will convince them, and you won't
convince them until you do. Sothat's that first piece of advice to the
(35:22):
people who are skeptical but open minded. I don't know if I have advice
for them. Necessarily, don't laughat people, I think would be my
advice. You know. I thinkone of the things that I have been
concerned about with the bigfoot stuff isit feels a little bit like a gateway
drug into bigger conspiracy theories, andso, you know, that is a
(35:45):
problem. I think we kind ofhave to set that aside and maybe we
talk about that later. But there'sno need to laugh at people who have
a genuine question about the world andare interested in learning more, as long
as they are sort of staying withinthe bounds of reality. And so that's
sort of my general feeling, andI think that's why I really liked doing
this topic for kids. In someways, it's because kids like have this
(36:07):
wild imagination and all these ideas,and there's an opportunity here to be like,
let's harness that imagination, you know, think about it anyway you want
to, but then look at thesort of boundaries that you have to consider
it in for it to be areal creature. And it's this lesson in
in the scientific method and in evidenceand in learning to think critically about things
(36:30):
and not just accepting everything at facevalue. Yeah, a great, A
great endeavor, boy, something Iwish that more people would put some time
into. And you interview several peoplewho do bring up the point that anecdotes
are great, but it's not data, it's not empirical evidence. I mean,
(36:52):
there's a reason that I witness atestimony is often not being considered in
court anymore because it's not reliable.So, yeah, you had a crazy
experience, I don't doubt that,But what are the facts on the ground.
What is the actual evidence of whathappened to you? And you can't
say it's bigfoot unless it's bigfoot andyou have proof that it's bigfoot. So
(37:17):
so I'm excited for book two aboutUFOs to come out. That's coming out
in October, is that right?Yeah? October third. It's called is
Anybody out There? Or is thereAnybody out there? And it's about the
search for extraterrestrials from amiba's to aliens, So it's beyond UFOs even it's that's
(37:38):
part of it, but it's alsolike, you know what kind of life
might be out there? Zenobiology?Yeah, is there are there a little
tiny one cell the organisms living underthe crust of Mars? Or are we
alone in the universe? You knowthat kind of thing. Nice. Well,
we'll have to get your back onhere to discuss your experiences with that.
Excellent. She's the author of TheSearch for Sasquatch and host of wild
(38:01):
Thing podcast. Laura Krantz. Thankyou for talking to us today. I'm
blurry photos, Laura, I appreciateit. Thank you so much for having
me on. This has been fun. Thanks once again to Laura for speaking
with me. You can find herbook and podcasts at Laura Krantz dot com
and by searching for wild Thing onany podcatcher. Don't forget to check out
(38:24):
more paranormal topics taken not too seriouslyby searching for hysteria fifty one, find
a bunch of trivia by listening toQuiz Quiz, Bang Bang, and listen
to some short spooky stories narrated byme on Five Minute Frights. All of
those are searchable on your podcatcher.Thank you for listening and for this episode
(38:46):
of Blurry Photos. I have beenDavid mild thing Flora. Don't stop blur even
Hey, yeah, welcome to BlurryPhotos. I'm your host, David Flora.
I've got a fun interview coming upfor you, and if you're interested
in seeing the film Shadows in theDesert the thing Derek Hayes and I have
been working on it for the pastfew years. It'll be in a couple
of theaters soon, with hopefully moreon the way. I'll tell you the
details real quick and then we canget into the episode. So, as
(00:36):
of right now, you can seethe film in Coshocton, Ohio on August
twenty fourth. That's if we canwork out the details of playing the film
there, But right now we're scheduledfor August twenty fourth at the Shelby Theaters.
You can see it in Joplin,Missouri from September eighth to September fourteenth
(00:57):
at the book House Cinema. Andyou can see it in Crested Butte,
Colorado on September sixteenth at the MajesticTheater. We could be adding more,
so keep up to date on possibleadditions by going to Borego Triangle dot com.
We're still awaiting a stream date,and as soon as we know,
I'll post on all the socials andannounce on shows when that will be so
(01:19):
on to the episode. I hadthe pleasure of meeting journalist, editor,
producer, and author Laura Krantz ata recent literary festival and suckered her into
coming on Blurry Photos to chat withme. Laura is the creator and host
of wild Thing Podcast, a longform narrative podcast about the obsessions that capture
(01:40):
our imaginations. She has produced threeseasons of the show, each focusing on
a different topic, including bigfoot,UFOs, and nuclear power, and she
has parlayed these seasons into a bookseries for middle grade readers, starting with
the Search for Sasquatch. She joinsme to talk about the book and her
experiences getting to know the world ofbigfoot research. Here is my interview with
(02:07):
Laura Krantz. Enjoy. She's thehost of wild Thing podcast and the author
of the new book, The Searchfor Sasquatch. Laura Krantz, Welcome to
Blurry Photos. I am very excitedto be here and to discuss all of
the blurry photos that I have nottaken. It's funny because throughout the series
(02:31):
you do say blurry photos quite abit in there, and every time my
ears were like doing. Oh,Laura and I were recently on a panel
at the Mountain Words Literary Festival herein Kristibute, Colorado, and I was
lucky enough to grab a copy ofthe book, which I'll talk more about
later, But first I want toask you about this journey you've taken to
(02:53):
get to where you've been able towrite a book, and particularly about your
experiences being relatively fresh to this realmof the unknown. So you actually have
a connection to this stuff, aconnection that you didn't know about for a
while, Is that right? Yeah, So I really found out about this,
Well now I found it's two thousandand six, so now we're closing
(03:15):
in on twenty years ago. Butwhat happened was I was living and working
in Washington, DC, and therewas this big article in the Washington Post
about a guy named Grover Krantz whohad just donated his bones, the bones
of his three Irish wolfhounds, whoare already dead. I have to clarify
that some people think he killed hisdogs and the Smithsonian he did not.
(03:36):
The dogs were dead, but hehad donated his bones, the bones of
his dogs to the Smithsonian for themto have in their collection. And they're
always looking for you full specimens tohave, and he really wanted to be
put on display, and they werelike, yeah, that's probably not going
to happen. But as luck shouldhave it, they were doing an exhibit
on forensic anthropology and like how youcan find out stuff from bones, and
(04:00):
the last piece of the exhibit,they wanted to do something really, really
cool, so they recreated a photoof Grover standing in someone's backyard with his
dog, Clyde, who was hisfavorite of his wolfhounds, and the dogs
got its paws up on Grover's shoulder, it's standing on its hind legs,
it's like licking his face. It'sa very sweet photo. They recreated that
with the two skeletons and put iton display. And so this article in
(04:24):
the Washington Post is all about thisparticular you know, exhibit and Grover and
all of the interesting things he'd done. He'd been a tenured professor of anthropology
at Washington State University. He wasa scientist. Oh and he was the
country's pre eminent academic expert on bigfoot. And you're real I'm reading this and
(04:46):
I'm like, who the hell isthis guy? What a weirdo. Can
you be a man of science anda man at bigfoot? Oh? Also
same last name, born in SaltLake City, which is where my dad's
family was from. And so Ifind out through my grandfather that, yes,
Grover had been his cousin. Hewould show up to the family picnics
(05:08):
with calipers and measure people's heads.My grandfather, who was several years older,
seven or eight I think, actuallystole a hand from the University of
Utah's medical lab and gave it toGrover because he knew he was so fascinated
by all the all things that anthropologicaland anatomy. I don't think that's legal,
(05:29):
but you know, my grandfather isnow dead as well, so it
goes. But yeah, I foundout about this connection, and for a
long time it was really just likecocktail party conversation. Hey, I have
a relative in the Smithsonian and bhe was a bigfoot expert. Ha ha
ha isn't that hilarious? And thenI decided to do a podcast about it
after I found out that Grover's fourthwife, number four, lived about thirty
(05:55):
miles south of me here in Colorado, in Parker. Actually, I don't
even know what it's thirty It's likethirty minutes. So I was like,
Okay, I'm going to go interviewher and then we're going to see where
this goes. So the impetus forit all was connecting those dots that Grover
was kined to you and he hadan ex wife or you know, his
(06:17):
fourth wife, you said, nearyou. If she hadn't lived near you,
do you think you would have gonethat that route? I probably would
have eventually, but I think thatreally it was one of those like signs
from the universe kind of things.Not that I believe in that kind of
stuff necessarily, but you know,I'd been sort of sitting on this story
(06:39):
for a while and was My husbandwas like, you should write a book,
and I was like, I can'twrite a book. That's there's too
many words in books, and I'mused to doing audio. But I kept
seeing bigfoot stuff everywhere, and like, you know, we moved to Colorado
and there's a big Foot museum likenot that far from us, up in
Bailey, Colorado. There's just bigfootstuff everywhere. And then the more I
(07:02):
was just thinking about it more andmore and more, and then I was
like, Okay, I'm going tosort of look up and see if there's
anyone who knew Grover and try andreach out to them. And I probably
would have reached out to Diane Horton, that was his fourth wife, even
if she'd lived far away. Butthen finding out that she was in Parker,
I was like, Okay, youkind of have to do this.
Yeah, yeah, it kind ofwrites itself after a while, right,
(07:24):
yeah, Right, So you talkedto her and did that kind of kick
off what you thought you could puttogether with this. It was that that
was the deciding factor that you thenpacked up and decided to see what all
the fuss was about. Yeah.So after talking to her, you know,
she would talk about Grover's fascination withthis. She talked about also just
(07:45):
how well loved he was as ateacher at Washington State, and like how
well regarded he was. We talkeda little bit about the other kind of
work he did, which was reallyyou know, he was kind of on
the forefront of a lot of thediscussions about human evolution and migration patterns in
North America, and he'd waded intoa lot of discussions about sort of evolution
versus creationism. There'd been a bigdebate at Washington State in like the nineteen
(08:09):
sixties, and he'd been the faceof that in terms of the evolution side,
so he was a well known guyin anthropological circles. And then a
lot of people feel he shot himselfon the foot because he basically wouldn't give
up the bigfoot stuff, and everyonewas like, what the f are you
doing? Man, Like what doesthis have to do with science? But
he really was trying to approach itfrom a very scientific perspective. And I
(08:31):
found that fascinating, Like how thisguy who was so science oriented was also
out there looking for a creature thatmost of us consider mythological or you know,
at least something in the very distantpast that is not around anymore.
So that kind of fascinated me.And then it's like, why do people
believe? Why are we so fascinatedwith this idea of bigfoot? Why is
(08:52):
there? Why are there bigfoot bumperstickers and chocolate and socks and tires and
you know, music festivals, andyou know, you can I can just
go on and on and on andon and on and on and on,
because once I started thinking about thisbigfoot idea, there was just like bigfoot
stuff everywhere, So it's clearly capturedour imaginations, even for people who were
like, yeah, it's not real, but wouldn't that be cool if it
(09:13):
was. Yeah, it seems likeit's kind of the closest thing to magic
that we have. You know,I think a lot of people cling onto
that hope just to have something elseto believe in, you know, besides
just like, oh, reality isharsh. You know, it's not that
reality is necessarily boring, because youcould go into all kinds of stuff and
(09:35):
you know, really be fascinated bythe minutest details. But a topic like
this, it really is easy forpeople to latch onto and then to want
to know more about and to understand. I think, yeah, for sure,
And I think for a lot ofpeople, it's like this idea that
the world is still wild enough,that it's still unexplored enough that we haven't
(09:58):
like paved, impruned and you know, plasticized every single thing out there,
and something like this could exist,Like that seems magical. You know what
you think about the explorers of oldlike going off into the jungle and not
necessarily knowing what they were going tofind out there, Like there's an element
of still wanting that to be theway the world is. Yeah, and
(10:20):
I can see the appeal to that. It's it's fascinating and fun and adventurous
and a little dangerous. You know, there's all kinds of stuff you can
get out of it. But thereare several audio clips that you include in
the series on what Grover said,Like literally from Grover, he first of
all, has an amazing voice.I know, right, it's so good.
(10:43):
It's like perfect for radio, itreally is. And he's kind of
like the Carl Sagan of Bigfoot stuff. And I thought that, you know,
from the get go, and thenlater in the series it actually comes
up someone mentions Carl Sagan in there, and uh, I think it was
Matt Moneymaker actually when you interviewed him. I think, oh, yeah,
(11:05):
vaguely. It's really funny that youare because I have I have not listened
to it since I put it out. I was so sick of it,
and so now people ask me aboutlike little moments and I'm like, I
don't remember. That's well, thiswas also twenty eighteen, twenty seven.
Yeah, I was twenty eighteen whenit came out, so it's been a
while, but yeah, he did. He did mention Carl Sagan. I
(11:28):
remember that. Now, that's funny. Yeah, I think it's great because
Grover was also an educator, andyou know, he you could hear in
his voice that he loved teaching andthat he loved learning. And that's that's
kind of the approach I like totake with this as well. You know,
I'm in it to learn, andwhatever I find out, I'm happy
to teach. And I don't know, man, it's it's hard when you
(11:52):
come up against some difficulties with peoplewho maybe don't share that same view.
And we can into that later,but I wanted to ask you, how
did your professional background prepare you andhelp you for the journey that you took
with this. Yeah. So Icame from a journalism background, which was
(12:13):
great. I'd worked at NPR startingin two thousand and six, and I
worked with them on and off forwell almost I basically for ten years,
both in DC and in Los Angelesa little bit and in Los Angeles,
and essentially like that gave me alot of background in terms of like how
to conduct an interview, how todo the technical side of things in terms
(12:35):
of recording, how to think aboutstory structure, and then a lot of
it. I just kind of wingedit, like I podcasts had been around
for a while, but really itwas like twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen that
they were really kind of hitting likea big stride with those longer narrative formats,
and I would listen to Cereal.I listened to Finding Missing Richard Simmons,
(12:58):
which was Dan Toberski's podcast about RichardSimmons and he like sort of vanished
out of the public eye and therewas all these questions about where he'd gone.
And it's a great podcast if youhaven't heard, he's fantastic. Dan
to Bersky's one of my favorite hostsof all time. But I listened to
that and I was like, Icould do this, Like I know how
to do all of these things,and that was really helpful to hat to
(13:22):
be to realize that I knew thetechnical side of things. I knew a
lot of how to frame this stuffdiving into it, and also like an
outline was very important, and comingfrom journalism and knowing that you need to
sort of have a structure set inplace before you get started so you're not
just sort of wandering in the wildernesswithout any signposts. That was really helpful
too. So those were kind ofthe big things that sort of set me
(13:43):
up, I feel like, foryou know, success in actually making the
thing. And you have a tonof interviews in some pretty big names that
folks would recognize. To Jeff Meldrum, like I said, met money Maker,
he's known with BFR and stuff likethat. You even get Michael Schermer
in there, which I was veryimpressed to hear him speaking of why people
(14:05):
think the way they think, youknow, why people want to believe or
whatever. I've got that book backhere on the shelf. Yeah, I've
got it down here somewhere too.Yeah, what was the price? Did
you call these guys up? Didyou have any inside track on getting those
guys like those are some pretty bignames that I don't know if they do
a lot of interviews. Yeah.So the first thing that I you know,
(14:30):
Grover's wife Diane was instrumental in likesort of making helping me make those
first connections with people who were insidethe big Foot community and knowing where to
go and who to talk to andwhere to turn because you know, like
you said, I came into thiswith like zero zero knowledge. I'd seen
Harry and the Henderson's and that waspretty much the extent of my knowledge or
(14:50):
real really interest in Bigfoot. Andso Diane was like, you should talk
to this guy. You should talkto this guy, and she was like,
feel free to use my name.These people will be very happy to
talk to you. It also helpedthat I had the same last name.
I think that that really did opena lot of doors. And I was
very transparent with people up front.I was just saying, look, this
is the background for this. I'minterested in learning more about this world and
(15:13):
the people who are in it andwhat it is fascinates us. I am
not looking to poke fun at people. I am not looking to laugh at
beliefs. And I think that sortof transparency about what I was trying to
accomplish also helped. But with someonelike Michael Shermer, I mean a lot
of these were just sort of likeI'd send an email and he wrote back.
(15:33):
So I think some of these peopleare more willing to talk than it
might seem like at the outset,And it could be that they've gotten more
cautious as time has gone forward,and they've perhaps become bigger names or there's
been this sort of explosion of podcastsand everybody wants to talk to them.
They might be a little bit pickier, but I think too. Also saying
(15:54):
you know, I come from anNPR background probably helped add some gravitas to
the question I was asking. Yeah, I get that because I once emailed
to ask someone if they'd come onfor an interview. This was back when
the show was my show was alittle a little younger, and we were
(16:15):
I had a co host. Wecame from an improv background, so we'd
add a lot of humor to theepisodes. And you don't want to be
that transparent when asking for interviews whenyou're like, hey, we you know,
we approached the stuff with a littlebit of humor. We don't take
it that seriously, this and that, and then just got the nastiest response
back, being like, why wouldI want to come on a comedy show?
(16:37):
And it's just like okay, ohno, that that helps the old
self esteem. Yeah. Was thatfrom someone who was like a bigfoot person
who didn't want you making fun ofit or it was the same realm.
It wasn't specifically a bigfoot person,but someone who deals in that stuff.
And writes books, and they're nota very good person outside of that anyway.
(17:03):
So I've heard okay, so itall made sense, But it was
an experience. So I you know, lesson learned. You learn as you
go. But speaking of learning,how you have taken the process that you
come from and know and applied itto this. The first series of wild
Thing brings listeners with you on yourquest to basically embed yourself in the culture
(17:27):
and learn about all the aspects ofsasquatchery. It's nine episodes full of interviews
and audio clips and field recordings.I'm curious how long did it take you
to put it all together? Ittook a while. I was also working
a couple of part time jobs atthe same time, which you know,
as you well know, there's nota lot of money in podcasting, so
(17:51):
I was doing other things to sortof supplement income, and also was kind
of at the whims of other people'sschedules. So in terms of doing the
field recordings, like when could Ifly out? When was going to be
convenient for them? You know,when were events happening, Like there was
an event called beach Foot which isand yeah, have you been no,
no, it sounds super exclusive.I do not think they would want me
(18:12):
there. Oh they might, younever know. They were a lot of
fun and they were really, reallynice, and so I think I don't
remember how I made the connection withthem. That was one of those it's
like Diane connected me to someone,someone else connected me to someone else.
Like I kept like laddering people ontop of each other and like using those
connections as much as I could,because I think that really helps. But
(18:33):
you know, you're at the mercyof schedules of like that and in putting
things together. And also this isthe first time I had done something this
big, and it took a while, Like I think the first episode probably
went through five or six iterations beforeI settled on a structure I really liked.
And then some of the episodes Icould write really quickly. The second
episode, which was all about evolution, that was that was a breeze like
(18:56):
there was that was very straightforward towrite. There was another episode that was
about sort of the taboo surrounding thistopic for a lot of the people who
are fascinated by it, they don'tlike to talk about it. That one
went through a lot of iterations aswell, and sort of figuring out how
to how to present this information ina way that was not going to be
just like look at these people likethat, which is not what I wanted
(19:18):
to do, Like everybody was verynice and thoughtful, and that's not what
I was I was out to do. So all told, it took me
about a year and a half fromwhen I first started working on it until
like the episodes were going out thedoor, and I also finished it in
advance of launch, and then spentabout a month doing press, like trying
(19:41):
to get interest in it before Ilaunched, so that it wouldn't just sort
of like into the you know,the abyss of meat of like all the
media out Yeah, throwing a waterbottle in the ocean. Yeah, exactly.
We're going to take a quick breakfor ad space and be back in
just a couple of minutes. Well, you have three seasons of the show
(20:06):
out now, and the other seasonsfocus on different topics, namely UFOs and
season two and nuclear power in seasonthree? When did you get the notion
to assemble your notes into book form? Yeah, So what happened with that
is season two was out and Ihad started to get lots of letters mostly
(20:30):
from parents who were listening with theirkids, which I had not anticipated with
season one. Actually, this wouldhave happened before season two came out,
because what happened was I started gettingthose letters and I was like, oh,
crap, I have to take theswearing out for subsequent seasons because I
had not anticipated the kids would belistening to this, and I swore a
little bit, not a ton,but a little bit in the first one,
(20:51):
and so then you end up witha you know, an explicit rating,
and that makes it harder for peopleto find it. So in any
case, letters from parents who arelistening with their kids, letters from teachers
who were using elements of the podcastin their classroom to talk about evolution,
evidence, scientific method things like that, and I realized, oh, there's
(21:11):
a way to approach a different audiencewith this. And my agent suggested middle
grade nonfiction because she said there's adearth of material in there that kids find
interesting. It's often very dry,it's not something that they get very excited
about, but teachers and parents arelooking for that kind of material. So
(21:33):
yeah, A did a whole pitchto a bunch of different publishers and they
went for it, and they wanteda three book deal, so yeah,
that's kind of how that happened.Yeah, the book is gorgeous, the
art and even the covers a blendof matt and shiny, glossy stuff and
(21:56):
a little puffy I love it.Yeah. Raphael Obray is the guy who
did the illustrations, and he nailedit. Like I had sort of a
different idea in my head of whatit would look like, sort of more
dreamy water colory, but when theysent me his stuff, I was like,
Yeah, that's great. I loveit. Are you sticking with him
for later? He's doing book twoand I believe they're talking to him about
(22:18):
book three right now, So awesome, that's great. Yeah. So when
you're putting season one together, whatkind of difficulties did you encounter some of
the things I encountered or things thatyou encountered where it's like people didn't necessarily
want to talk to me, andthis was more on the science side of
things. Yeah. I had reachedout to the Smithsonian initially to talk to
(22:44):
them about the human evolution stuff becauseI thought it made sense to go there
because Grower's stuff was there and theywanted nothing to do with it. So
that was a little I was alittle surprised, but not wholly surprised.
And then when Ian Tattersall, whois the curator over at the American Museum
of National Natural History in New York, when he said, yeah, you
(23:04):
know, I don't believe in Bigfoot, but i'll happily talk to you,
I was like, Okay, wellthat's a pretty sweet score, Like,
yeah, he's no joke. So, you know, ultimately, a lot
of these things ended up working out. I think some of the other problems
I ran into were you know,there were times where I was kind of
struggling with what the structure was goingto look like and how to cover this
material fairly. And then I madea decision pretty early on to not do
(23:30):
anything that would be considered woo.So you know, telepathic Bigfoot, Bigfoot
as an alien, Bigfoot lives inmy basement, Yeah, multi dimensional Bigfoot.
I just was like, like,we haven't even proven any of that
exists in the normal world, Like, why are we just attributing that to
Bigfoot? So I stuck with whatGrovers, Yeah, well he just teleported,
(23:55):
that's why you can't see him.Yeah, duh. Yeah, if
we would just unlock more than tenpercent of our brains. We could,
We totally could. You're just notusing your brain, right, man.
So I did run into a littlebit of pushback where we'd be talking to
people and they would sort of goin that direction. I'd be like,
thank you, and they'd be like, what, you know, you have
(24:15):
to keep your mind open and embraceall possibilities. And I'm like, well,
if you can bring me some reallysolid evidence that, you know,
the nineteenth dimension does exist, thenwe can talk about Bigfoot existing in it.
But yeah, let's let's start atthe let's begin at the beginning.
Other issues I ran into. Youwent out in the field a lot.
(24:37):
Yeah, the field was that wasa lot of fun. Yeah, and
I was surprised. Usually something willgo south on those kinds of trips,
like really south. And the biggestproblem was it just poured rain at Willow
Creek when I went for the fiftiethanniversary of the Patterson Gimblin film, Like
it was just dumping rain the wholeweekend. But in some ways that actually
ended up being helpful because it keptpeople indoors and in one place, and
(25:00):
so it was easier to find themand talk to them. Granted it kind
of prevented you from going out tothe site of where the supposed film was
shot, but I didn't really needto be out there for that, So
yeah, I got kind of lucky. Like I feel like a lot of
things fell into place with this,like the opportunity to go see those nests,
which was, you know, great, Like they didn't have to take
(25:22):
me out there. They'd certainly deniedother media the opportunity to go do it.
But I think by that point Ihad talked to enough people. This
was a late enough in the reportingprocess, and I'd talked to enough the
people who were adjacent to that projector involved in it that they trusted me
and they were willing to let mecome out there and see it, provided
I didn't take any photos, whichI didn't. And then people were like,
well, why didn't you take anyphotos? And I was like,
(25:44):
they didn't ask me to, butif you go online you can find them.
So how many times through the process, because there's several field recordings that
you have and you went out multipletimes, how many how many times did
you do you think you went outthere to good stuff? Because you went't
like there were sometimes where you wentfor you saw the nests. There were
sometimes you went and did like thewhoops and then tree knocks and things like
(26:08):
that. Is that the same tripor yeah, some of them were the
same trip, And some of thetimes I would use material from one trip
in multiple episodes to sort of talkabout different aspects of it. So there
was let's see went out to seethe nests, And that was actually towards
the end of all the reporting.As I mentioned, beach Foot was the
(26:29):
first field recording event that I wentto and I was like, what am
I doing here? Who were thesepeople? I'm sure they were like,
who's this lady walking around with amicrophone? And that was actually one of
those moments where you know, itwas like, hello, my name is
you had the tag on and Isaid Laura Krantz and people were like,
oh, are you related to Grover? They all knew who Grover was,
(26:49):
Like one guy, one guy actuallygot down on his knees in front of
me and was like, you know, Grover is my God and like you
know that kind of thing. Iwas like, whoa, okay, And
that was sort of my first introductionto how much people really really loved Grover
and what he stood for and whathe represented the represented to this community.
(27:10):
So there was beech Foot. ThenI did the Bigfoot Expedition with Shane Courson
and Cindy Caddell, who were bothinvolved with Bigot Field rear. Cindy was
with Bigfoot Field Researcher Organization and theOlympic Project, which are two of the
Bigfoot recon groups. She's the anthropologist. Yeah, she's one of the anthropologists.
(27:32):
Kathy Strain was the other one,and she's one I met at beach
Foot. And then I also wentto Willow Creek for the fiftieth anniversary.
And I might actually be doing thesein the wrong order. It might have
been beach Foot, Willow Creek,the camp out in Mount Hood Wilderness,
and then the nests. So Iwent out in the field at least four
(27:52):
times. Oh, and then therewas the trip to Bailey to the Sasquatch
Outpost. And but I find goingout in the field, hey, it's
a lot of fun. It's alot more work because you're just having to
pay attention to a lot of stuffand it's a you know, it's like
three or four days of just recordingeverything you can and then you have to
come back and kind of sift throughall that and figure out what you want
to use. But you get allthis great ambient sound. It's an opportunity
(28:15):
to, like you said, takepeople on a journey with you if you
can create sort of a nice,you know, soundscape behind you when you're
talking about some of this stuff.So, yeah, the field recordings were
a lot of fun. I didn'tget to do as much of that with
other ones, or at least thesound wasn't quite as rich with some of
the other ones. For lack ofa better term. Was it very creepy
or scary at times or was therea lot of priming going on in your
(28:40):
head that maybe made it seem thatway. So I will say the Mount
Hood one was a little bit onthe creepy side, mainly because we got
all set up to camp and thiswas an area that Shane had brought us
to because he'd been camping there beforeand he'd had an experience. And so,
you know, the sun goes down, we sit by the fire and
(29:00):
he tells his story, which wedeliberately set it up that way so he
would do it, you know,at the at the creepiest possible moment,
right and then he finishes telling thestory and you're like, oh shit,
what was that? And then youknow, my tents on the very edge
of the camp site, and I'mlike, maybe I want to move more
towards the middle. Like and I'mnot really a nervous camper, like I
(29:22):
enjoy camping. I've never been someonewho's totally, you know, freaked out
about anything other really than bears ofwhen you're like backpacking and wyoming grizzlies,
that's some scary shit, yea.But yeah, after hearing that story,
and then we went on this kindof night hike and like you're wandering around
and pitch black darkness. Well,we had headlamps on, but we would
turn them off from time to timejust to get a sense of like how
(29:44):
oppressive the dark was. And yeah, I mean that that had a little
bit of an eerie quality to itfor sure. Yeah, it sounds fun.
It was fun. I had ablast. If you ever get a
chance to go on a big footexpedition with anyone, you should totally do
it. Did anything in particular orsurprise you on this journey? Yeah,
that I became open more open mindedabout the idea of bigfoot. I think
(30:06):
that was the biggest one, becauseI went into it being like total hoax,
big joke, total myth, likethere's nothing to it. And then,
you know, after listening to thestuff about evolution and hearing about other
species that had been alive at thesame time as Homo sapiens, and thinking
about how difficult it is for youknow, the fossil record to hold onto
evidence of everything, I was like, well, maybe there was something back
(30:29):
then. It's hard to know.And then there was also just people's stories
and the stories because I had beenso particular and selecting, you know,
a path for this podcast in termsof steering clear of the wo I ended
up. I did end up talkingto a lot of people who were fairly
scientific or had spent a lot oftheir time in the woods and were fish
(30:51):
and wildlife people or anthropologists and hadstories that you trusted them more, because
at least I trusted them more becausethey seemed so grounded in reality. And
then they would tell the story andthey're like, I don't know what it
was. I know, I can'tsay it was bigfoot because that's not science.
But this was the weirdest thing Ihave ever experienced, and I don't
(31:15):
know how else to describe it.And now those kinds of things, it's
like, well, something clearly happenedto them, it's true to them.
Yeah, yeah, And I thinkthat's what surprised me as I sort of
came out of it. I stillwant, you know, I would want
scientific evidence. I want the body, I want the big piece of the
body, I want the DNA,I want all the things that science require.
But I'm open to the possibility thatthat might exist, whereas before I
(31:38):
was just like total joke. M. I kind of empathize with you on
that because shooting this documentary that Iwill hopefully be releasing this summer, we
went into it thinking, well,there's all these stories about a Sasquatch in
southern California in the desert of allplaces, and how is that possible?
(32:01):
Like that that sounds ridiculous. Butwe talked to biologists, we talked to
people who study the plant life outthere and other species, and how many
forms of food you can find ifyou know where to look, where to
find the water, if you knowyou know where to look. Migration,
you know, up into the coolerelevations at the it's only thirty forty miles
(32:27):
away. You know, and andthat's an easy trek for a big eight
foot tall thing to if theyd he'sa snowbird. Absolutely half the time he's
in Texas, the other half he'sin Aspen. So but we came out
of it being like, well,you know, it's not impossible. It's
(32:49):
uh yeah, if you know whatwhere to look, what you're doing.
Yeah, it's it's possible to survive. But my question has always been,
and this is something that Michael Schermermentioned in that episode with him in it.
He said the same thing I wasthinking. You need a population to
(33:09):
survive, right, you need yep, couple hundred to make sure that it
can continue unless there's some like freakof nature where they survive for hundreds of
years at a time, like turtlesor something, you know. But or
maybe they're like one of those jellyfishthat like they get to a certain age
and they sort of like dissolve inon themselves and then they like reborn.
(33:31):
Yeah yeah, yeah, they're likea phoenix creature. Yeah. But again
that's one of those where it's like, well, that jellyfish is really the
only example of that. I'd liketo see something with bones, maybe that
does that yeah, or something observableat the very least three. Yeah,
And I think you know you're right, it's possible, But is it plausible?
(33:52):
And I think that becomes the bigquestion. Yeah, the world is
full of possibility, but what's theplausibility of it? Yeah, that's kind
of the thing that I always keptbringing me back. I like the idea
of bigfoot. I think that wouldbe great if Bigfoot were out there.
I am hard pressed to believe thatthat's the case. Yeah. And also
(34:13):
the photos. Let's talk about thephotos. Everybody has a camera in their
pocket. There are untold numbers oftrail cams and gain cams and security cams.
What do we have blob squatches?Yeah, bingo. This whole podcast
might not exist if it weren't forthose those photos, very photos. So
(34:37):
I wanted to ask you, isthere two pieces of advice that you could
give. One to the folks whoare convinced Sasquatch exists, and then one
to those who are skeptical that openminded. My piece of advice to the
people who are convinced that Bigfoot existsis keep looking, but you're gonna have
to find if you want people totake you seriously, and you want people
(34:59):
to take seriously, you're going toactually have to find the kind of evidence
scientists and the scientific community are willingto accept. And there's not a conspiracy
to keep Bigfoot hidden or keep youdown or anything like that. Like,
you haven't found the kind of evidencethat will convince them, and you won't
convince them until you do. Sothat's that first piece of advice to the
(35:22):
people who are skeptical but open minded. I don't know if I have advice
for them. Necessarily, don't laughat people, I think would be my
advice. You know. I thinkone of the things that I have been
concerned about with the bigfoot stuff isit feels a little bit like a gateway
drug into bigger conspiracy theories, andso, you know, that is a
(35:45):
problem. I think we kind ofhave to set that aside and maybe we
talk about that later. But there'sno need to laugh at people who have
a genuine question about the world andare interested in learning more, as long
as they are sort of staying withinthe bounds of reality. And so that's
sort of my general feeling, andI think that's why I really liked doing
this topic for kids. In someways, it's because kids like have this
(36:07):
wild imagination and all these ideas,and there's an opportunity here to be like,
let's harness that imagination, you know, think about it anyway you want
to, but then look at thesort of boundaries that you have to consider
it in for it to be areal creature. And it's this lesson in
in the scientific method and in evidenceand in learning to think critically about things
(36:30):
and not just accepting everything at facevalue. Yeah, a great, A
great endeavor, boy, something Iwish that more people would put some time
into. And you interview several peoplewho do bring up the point that anecdotes
are great, but it's not data, it's not empirical evidence. I mean,
(36:52):
there's a reason that I witness atestimony is often not being considered in
court anymore because it's not reliable.So, yeah, you had a crazy
experience, I don't doubt that,But what are the facts on the ground.
What is the actual evidence of whathappened to you? And you can't
say it's bigfoot unless it's bigfoot andyou have proof that it's bigfoot. So
(37:17):
so I'm excited for book two aboutUFOs to come out. That's coming out
in October, is that right?Yeah? October third. It's called is
Anybody out There? Or is thereAnybody out there? And it's about the
search for extraterrestrials from amiba's to aliens, So it's beyond UFOs even it's that's
(37:38):
part of it, but it's alsolike, you know what kind of life
might be out there? Zenobiology?Yeah, is there are there a little
tiny one cell the organisms living underthe crust of Mars? Or are we
alone in the universe? You knowthat kind of thing. Nice. Well,
we'll have to get your back onhere to discuss your experiences with that.
Excellent. She's the author of TheSearch for Sasquatch and host of wild
(38:01):
Thing podcast. Laura Krantz. Thankyou for talking to us today. I'm
blurry photos, Laura, I appreciateit. Thank you so much for having
me on. This has been fun. Thanks once again to Laura for speaking
with me. You can find herbook and podcasts at Laura Krantz dot com
and by searching for wild Thing onany podcatcher. Don't forget to check out
(38:24):
more paranormal topics taken not too seriouslyby searching for hysteria fifty one, find
a bunch of trivia by listening toQuiz Quiz, Bang Bang, and listen
to some short spooky stories narrated byme on Five Minute Frights. All of
those are searchable on your podcatcher.Thank you for listening and for this episode
(38:46):
of Blurry Photos. I have beenDavid mild thing Flora. Don't stop blur even
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