Ep. 322 - Strong Beliefs Loosely Held

Cliff Barackman and Matt Pruitt discuss varying perspectives within sasquatchery in this new episode! Topics include: Cliff's recent live appearance with George Noory, the nature of public interactions, and why Thom Powell's attitude rules.

Catch Cliff at the Hocking Hills Bigfoot Festival in McArthur, OH (August 7-10), and catch Pruitt at the Bigfoot MiniConference in Bowling Green, KY (August 1-2).   

Get Nigel Williams' book "Alfie and the Bigfoot of Bluff Creek" here: https://a.co/d/gpEwmh2 

Get Thomas Buker's book "Dust and Duty" here: https://a.co/d/1Ondu5v

Start your free online visit with Hims today at http://hims.com/beyond

Sign up for our weekly bonus podcast "Beyond Bigfoot & Beyond" and ad-free episodes here: https://www.patreon.com/bigfootandbeyondpodcast

Get your official "Bigfoot & Beyond: Enter The Sasquatch" shirt here: https://sasquatchprints.com/product/bigfoot-beyond-enter-the-squatch/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. These guys
are your favor It's so like say subscribe and rade it.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Live Stock and me.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Greatest gone Yesterday, listening watching limb always keep its watching.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
And now your hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Hey, everybody, this is Cliff, and you are listening to Beyond,
Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and usually Bobo and always
Matt Pruitt. So and you can tell by my my
slightly sarcastic introduction there that Bobo is not with us today.
We don't know where he is. We don't have a reason,
we don't know anything. We've been trying to get Ahold
of It form about two days now and he won't

(00:52):
get back to us about scheduling or he hasn't. It's
not like he's refusing, but he might be refusing. You
just don't know he's We have not heard back from
Bobo about when he can record. But fact is it's
a job and we have a responsibility. So we're going
to go ahead and record without him. So there you go. So,
but you know what, if Bobo's not here, that means

(01:12):
we have a robo Bobo behind the curtain somewhere are
you there? Robo? Bobo? All right?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Sweet?

Speaker 3 (01:19):
So it's just like Bobo's here. So yeah, it's going
to be Matt Prue and I just kind of riffing
on some topics. So we have a couple of cool
things to talk about today and maybe and some of
the stuff it comes from you, the listeners as well,
because we listen to you. We want you to be
part of the show. We couldn't be doing We wouldn't
be doing the show with that s you'd be weird.
But I guess that's what regular conversations are, a show
without an audience. So we're going to try to attack
a couple of those things today, and you know, you

(01:40):
never know, because Bobo is an unpredictable kind of guy.
He just might show up. He did last week. This
exact same thing happened last week, except that he agreed
to be on the podcast last week and just kind
of forgot what day it was. You may you may
have remembered that just a week ago. But today we
haven't heard from Bobo at all.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Classic classic.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Matt, how are you doing?

Speaker 2 (02:03):
I'm good? It is classic Bobo. In fact, I titled
this session where four arct al bobio hoping that when
he logged in he would answer that question for us.
So we'll see. I'm kind of excited. It's like Schrodinger's bobes,
like will he or won't he? You know, Yeah, he's
inside the box and outside the box. Inside the box,
of course it's foe bobo robo bobo. We did get

(02:24):
some kind feedback from our good man Wes Germer this
morning that it's funny because I just mentioned that a
member of ours had said something like, oh, I didn't
realize how much I needed a robo bobo in my life.
And Wes's first words in the text to you and
I this morning were I need a robo bobo in
my life.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Well, we can lend out a row bobobo occasionally to
various people. I don't see why not.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, there could be a cottage industry for other podcasters,
you know, like, hey, if you want, you know, dialo bobes,
we got you covered dialo bobs.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah, yeah, because it's well, it could be like a
service he provides. Should I call him bo bites instead
of sound bites? Maybe we should put bo bites in
the merch listing. You know, have a little online bo
Byites merch shop, so you can just buy a belch
for like, you know, ninety nine cents. Oh yeah, would

(03:21):
you like Bobo belching as your ring tone? Let us know.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Another listener, Oh, I should probably find this real quick
so I can give credit where credit is due, because
it would be a great shout out. It's a great idea.
So one second here. Oh it was our great listener
who's also a member submitted a lot of good questions
over the years. Woodbooger James suggested that we consider manufacturing

(03:48):
for retail a talking Bobo action figure. Remember the action
figures back in the day that would make sounds when
you press the button. We should incorporate Robo Boo into
a Bobo action figure, which I think would be amazing.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
You know at the pretty high tech stuff for us
many maybe something more like a Bobo Magic eight ball
or something like that. You know, asking a question, you
turn it over.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
He goes yep, and speaking of listeners, I do. I
did want to give a shout out to our good
listener Nigel Williams, who he submitted questions in the past.
We did a voicemail from him recently, and I had
mentioned that he had authored a book and I had
weighed in a little bit on some of the Sasquatch
oriented information there. And that book is out now. So

(04:31):
it's a book for young readers, sort of like middle
school grade readers maybe, like ages nine to thirteen, and
it's called Alfie and the Bigfoot of Bluff Creek. It's
a great young adult book. It's got a lot of
good Sasquatch information. The Sasquatch is incorporated into the story
and it's treated sympathetically and scientifically. And I'll have the
link to the Amazon listing there in the show notes.
So I wanted to give a shout out to Nigel

(04:52):
and Nigel congratulations on getting the book published. Rad Rad.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
You know, speaking of books, I came into the museum
yesterday named Tom Buker. He's been writing me a little
bit off and on through the years or whatever, and
he actually gave me a book a little while ago
that he wanted to incorporate a little just a little
sasquatch snippet or something in there, and it turned out
to be a much larger snippet than he anticipated. A
real super nice guy. So I want to give a

(05:17):
little plug to his book in case anybody is interested
in some cool fiction or whatever. It's basically about a
US army like a marshal, basically trying to track down
a killer looking in the wilderness of Idaho. And cause
it was a fictional thing, but there's a there's a
sasquatch section in there. And this guy's name is Thomas Buker,
I know him's Tom. He came in the museum yes ohough.

(05:40):
The name of the book, by the way, is Dust
and Duty. I don't know if it's available on Amazon
or may maybe that tickles somebody's fancy, but it looks
like a pretty slick book man, and he gave me
a copy of it, so whatever that's worth, whatever that's worth,
I want to give Tom a heads up and like
a shout out there because he was the reason he
came into the shop yesterday. Is that this guy is
a pretty rabbit hunter. You know. He's out there all

(06:01):
the time, you know, because some tags are all year long,
like mountain lions, I think, and all that sort of stuff.
And he's always scouting for good elk areas and whatever else.
And he's got a spot not far from where he
lives where a few years ago he started running across
sign that didn't make sense to him, you know, when
he's out there tracking and stuff, and long story short,
over the years, he has come to the realization that

(06:24):
sasquatches are in fact real animals, and there's apparently at
least one in the area where he goes, because every
once in a while he finds some sign. So he
dropped by yesterday and he donated two casts to the museum,
and he's out all the time, and now he's seen
a line of sasquatch tracks that were pretty plain his
day before, and he's finding these other things and now
he's carrying plaster around. So it sounds like ANYBC has

(06:48):
a really good contact out in the Idaho area who
is keeping his eyes on the ground for us out there.
So I look forward to hearing from Tom in the future.
So Tom, if you're listening, hats off to you, buddy.
Thanks so much for the donation, And of course, if
anybody's interested in some cool looking fiction. I'm just judging
a book by its cover here, but it's a pretty
interesting cover here. It looks rat Thomas Buker has written

(07:10):
Dust and Duty. Maybe you guys could check it out
and you know, give him some love. So there you go.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, I'm sure it's available online. I'll find the link
and I'll put that in the show notes too. I'm
sure there's an online place to click through and buy it.
So we'll make sure Tom gets well represented in the
episode description. Fantastic got back from Seattle yesterday. Basically I
did a gig out there with George Norury. Remember George Norris,
the general host of that Coast to Coast AM show

(07:38):
started out I think as the Art Bell Show, and
now George norriy kind of runs most of that stuff.
And I don't know if they still have guest hosts
or not. I know a woman named Connie Willis did
that for a second. But I've been on the George
norri Show a few times. The Coast to Coast AM.
So they did a live event up in Seattle and
Everett actually was in Seattle's Everett, just north of Seattle,

(08:00):
at a place called the Historic Everett Theater, and that
was an interesting show. They had some dude that was
into Atlantis, you know Atlantis, you know, like the Fallen City,
you know, like the new Manure of Earth.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, he was on. He did a talk I guess,
you know, not a talk. He did an interview with
George I guess. And he shows some maps.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
I guess.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
This guy's deal is that he thinks it's in the
South Pacific somewhere. Interesting take, especially since he was written
about in Greek literature. Seems like that's a long ways away.
But I don't know, I don't I'm sure he's written
a book. I can't remember the guy's name.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
There.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
There's another guy named Matthew. That is his titles an
AI cosmologist. He seemed to be more like an AI
philosopher to me. I think that you can tie in
cosmology or whatever to whatever you want, but he seemed
to be more of a philosopher because I think the
big takeaway from that guy that in his interview with
George Nori was, you know, AI wouild will kind of

(08:55):
show us what it means to be human once the
humanity of so much as strip away. And he was
advocating for like a higher consciousness sort of thing with
in tangent with AI helpers or something. And it's like,
I don't know, whatever, whatever, it's not my gig man,
I'm too busy looking for Bigfoot. And then I of

(09:15):
course talked to George for about twenty minutes on stage
or something like that. I brought a few items for
show and tell, like the butt print. Everybody loves the
butt print, and luckily George asked, I said, what do
you have in the box? It's not Bigfoot pooh is
it or something like that. I oh, next, best thing,
it's like pre Bigfoot Pooh, it's the butt you know.
So yeah, so I brought the butt cast out, which

(09:35):
everybody loves, of course, and a few footprints and that
kind of thing. I had a good conversation with George.
You know, I don't George is in a Sasquatch Specialists
or anything like that, so his questions are pretty pretty
you know, basic in a lot of ways. And then
I of course took questions from the audience, and one
of our members came up and did a little in
the microphone as we started, so I knew, you know,

(09:57):
I knew what was up. He gave us the high sign,
So thank you very much to that member. I really
really appreciate it. And took a lot of other questions,
and of course, you know me, I'm out there, you know,
buwling the china shop, you know, knocking things over, saying
that these things are just perfectly normal mammals. And there
are a lot of people coming up, and I remember
one guy asked me what he thought would be a

(10:17):
challenging question, saying like, I'm a portal guy, So where
do they go? You know, Like like it's like, well,
that's that's not going to stump me, Like, what do
you mean where do they go? It's like the answer
isn't like portals. The answer is they just go off
in the woods because you don't follow them. Yeah, they
go everywhere that humans aren't, which is like ninety nine
point nine percent of the forest at any given moment,

(10:40):
you know, because there are not humans everywhere, and human
eyes don't see everywhere. So it's really not that hard
an equation. Yeah, yeah, man, I had one. I had something.
I don't know what it was, a bear of bigfoot
and elk, something close to me. This is past week.
And I never saw what it was. I still don't
know what it was. And I wasn't that far away,
like one hundred yards away, one hundred and fifty yards
away at the most. Yeah, And I have no I
ever saw it, tried to see it, never saw it

(11:01):
at all, and don't know what it was. So they
don't have to go anywhere in particular, and they especially
don't have to go through a portal. So there's that.
But yeah, it was a good time, good gig, a
lot of fun. I didn't know this, but between if
you go to one of these live events, George Nori,
in between all the interviews, comes out and does a
love ballad. I had no idea that he sings and

(11:23):
whatever else. So it was just a fun show. And
of course all the George Norri listeners came out of
the woodwork and came and really enjoyed the show. And
a lot of really eccentric, wonderful weirdos out there at
a really good time. I was in basically backstage at
the Muppet Show, hanging out with a bunch of weirdos.
It was great, very much in my element. I really
enjoyed it. A lot of great people, a lot of

(11:45):
great conversations.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
I would expect nothing less from the Northwest. I mean
I only lived there for three years, but they were
very formative years. I mean I always say, like born
and raised in southern Appalachia but forged in the flames
of the Pacific Northwest to and there's definitely a Pacific
Northwestern type of character, you know, like that that you
see parody in the same way that I would say

(12:09):
there's a Southerner type of character that I see portrayed
on like sketch comedy shows or in movies or that's
sort of like satirized. It's like, yeah, I get it,
I know people like that. But then when you go
to other parts of the country and you see people
there that are like the living examples of the parodies, Like,
there's definitely a Pacific Northwestern type of weirdo, you know.

(12:30):
And of course you're doing an esoteric, slash, paranormal or
fringe kind of event, you know, strange subjects outside of
the box, of course, you're going to get a gathering
of those. So that's amazing.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
It was pretty fun.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
It was.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
It was definitely a fun list. It's like a whole
theater full of markmer cells, you know, just like good
natured fun people who are into really weird things and
hold these odd beliefs and such, and you know, and
I'm one of them too. I get it. I totally
get it. I'm not slamming anybody man, because from the
outside looking in, I'm a freak too. Like you think
sasquatches are real animals, what's wrong with you? You know?
I get it, I totally get it. We all are

(13:06):
those people. But yeah, it's just just fun. And you
know what's really refreshing for me is because I'm going
to these events and after having these conversations and after
watching the previous interviews and hanging out with the speakers
backstage and and all that sort of stuff, it really
drives home this this unusual idea for me because it's

(13:28):
not reinforced very often, this idea, it really drives home
of how normal I am. I'm not used to being
the normal guy in the room at all. It's weird
when I go because of my family, I'm the weirdest person.
I'm the weirdest person my family's made, you know, and
most of my most of my non bigfoot friends think
I'm freak. My neighbors didn't know what to do with me.

(13:49):
That kind of stuff. I'm not used to being the
most normal guy in the room, but I wasn't. I
wasn't the most normal guy in the entire theater as
far as I could fell. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot
and Yawn with Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back
after these messages. You know, Bobes, squatching season is in

(14:11):
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(14:33):
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(14:55):
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(15:17):
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Speaker 2 (15:37):
Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and
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restrictions and important safety information. That is one of the
strangest things about this particular subject, and it comes up
so often in conversations with people, and I really think
it's born of this idea of like the known versus

(15:58):
the unknown, and that we make all these allowances for
the unknown. Like if you take the Big three, you know,
non human intelligence slash extraterrestrial slash UFOs whatever that phenomenon,
and then the ghost spirit apparitional phenomenon, and then something
like the sasquatch phenomenon, it's like, well, non human intelligence

(16:18):
UFOs space is vast, it's nearly infinite, so to speak,
or at least as far as we can tell or
to our perceptions, and so of course there's all kinds
of things out there that we can't be expected to
know about yet, and so we make allowances that, oh, yeah,
things could come and go, and they'd be hundreds of
thousands or millions or billions of years more advanced than us.
And people have no problem assuming that there are entities

(16:42):
out there that might come, visit or intervene. And then
the apparitional world like, well, of course there's some degree
of reality that we don't get understand or that we
can't perceive, and there's something about consciousness that doesn't seem
to be time or space bound, and so of course
consciousness survives, and the dead come to us or whatever
the case may be. You know, these really sort of wild, unverifiable,

(17:05):
unfalsifiable things. But then the idea that you know, we
know apes exist and there might be one additional ape
on one additional continent is somehow the most taboo, fringe
frowned upon, vociferously dismissed, emotionally rejected. You know, people have
no problem talking about UFOs or ghosts, but you bring

(17:28):
up the sasquatch thing, and they're like, oh, you couldn't
possibly believe that, you know, there's a lot of scorn,
which is so strange. Like in this day and age,
it is much easier for an educated person to claim
either interest in or contact with non human intelligence or
an apparition that it is for a person like that

(17:49):
to come out and say, hey, I think I saw
an animal that science hasn't recognized yet. Like that's the
most taboo of all of those claims, which is bizarre
because nothing about our propositions require any new science or
really any new discoveries.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, and I said it from the stage that the
paranormal model of sasquatches is not it's not congruent, you know.
I said, if you ask ten different paranormal advocates about Bigfoot,
they're going to give you at least thirteen different answers,
you know, And it was true, true, true. At this
gig as well, I had people saying that they went
through portholes. One person said he went to some sort

(18:25):
of retreats where the bigfoots went around in the dark,
touching them or something like that. I had another person
telling me that they were UFO related or some other
biblical people saying that nepheline was involved somehow and interbreeding
with angel and it's like, okay, well proof is in
that pudding there, right, So yeah, just again a lot
of clashing views in the paranormal world, but they can

(18:48):
at least all unite against the one that actually makes
sense and is internally congruent.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
It's a bizarre thing, and that's just a consequence of
I think a lot of the modern state of not
just social media, but media in general, and that a
lot of the barriers have been kicked out and so
everyone has a voice in a platform, which is really
good in a lot of ways, but it also has costs.
You know, every benefit comes with costs, and every pro

(19:16):
with cons And the more that I see the modern
landscape of sasquatchry, it's like the creature, let's say, or
at least the phenomenon that's described by modern sasquatchy bears
like zero resemblance to the creature that's described by history.
Evidence and eyewitnesses like those are two very very different things,

(19:37):
not just the trace evidence and physical evidence, but the
preponderance of eyewitnesses that you can interview in person, you know,
let's take away the anonymous YouTubers, the anonymous podcast guests,
the YouTube channels or podcasts that read, you know, quote
unquote read emails that were submitted by quote unquote witnesses

(19:58):
that don't read like anything one would write. But you know,
like the people that you talked to in person, or
that I've talked to in person, or that most devoted
Sasquatch researchers have talked to in person. Like what they're
describing bears no resemblance to what the Internet is promoting.
And unfortunately, now most people do all of their research

(20:19):
on the Internet, and so the phenomenon that they're researching
isn't even the Sasquatch phenomenon. It's this new weird hybrid,
like you said, like amalgam of every strange thing under
a single umbrella that they could shoehorn into the sasquatch,
you know. And I guess every once in a while
you encounter that in person at an event like that,
which which makes sense again. Coast to Coast has always

(20:41):
been a big catch all for the strange and the weird.
It was a wildly entertaining program. I remember hearing it
many times in the nineties and early two thousands. I
think one of the first interviews I ever heard you
on was that two thousand and seven interview that you
and Moneymaker did. But yeah, I mean coast to coast.
I would imagine that attracts a certain kind of crowd,
so to speak.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
And I love it. You know, it sounds like I'm
dissing them or whatever, or it may sound like that,
especially if you're touchy about that kind of thing, But
I am not. I am not. I love freaks and
weirdos and people who think way outside the box, you know,
as long as they're not you know, mentally ill and
aggressive or something like that. I just love weird ideas.
And I don't have to accept ideas. You know, I

(21:23):
can hold an idea in my head and not think
it's real. I think that's great.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
I love.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
That's why I love Tom Powell, you know, Tom Powell.
I considered it. Actually his name was brought up. A
woman came up and mentioned Melbourn, Ketchum and Tom Powell
and somebody else. I forget who, you know, kind of
challenging my idea that these are animals as opposed to
whatever these other folks think they are. But yeah, say
what about there or whatever I say. Well, Tom Powell
is a close personal friend who's been at my home
many many times, and I've been at his home many

(21:48):
many times. I love the guy, and I just don't
agree with him at all. But the great thing about
Tom is that he's very rare, in my opinion, amongst
the paranormal folks, and that he doesn't take it personally,
you know. And that's something I struggle with too, because
I do take it a little bit too personally sometimes
and because I'm so close to the subject and it
means so much to me, so I kind of have

(22:08):
to remember to keep it light hearted. But Tom, in particular,
like the best quote ever from Tom as far as encouragement,
and you know, and Henry Franzoni, by the way, who's
also put on a pedestal put on a trading card
by the paranormal people, said the same thing to me basically,
and maybe not in these exact worders, but the Tom
Powell quote is, Ah, Cliff, I'm glad you're doing the
ape thing. That means I don't have to, you know,

(22:30):
and that's great, that's great. And Framzoni said the exact
same thing to me Yeah, he was thrilled that what
I'm up to and the and the finds that I'm
getting and all that sort of stuff. And I would
share with him very openly when he would come to
the museum and hang out, and he would love to
see what I'm getting at. Because both those guys started
out as flesh and blood, both those guys. But I

(22:51):
think I think that they either found. In Tom's case,
I know that he found he encounters some stuff that
couldn't be reconciled, and so he started going parent normal
and basically started getting the results that he was looking for,
you know, things that I think a lot of it
for both those guys, it was just more fun to
go do the other weird stuff, you know. I think

(23:11):
that's what's behind a lot of that. It's just more
fun and it's fun to get weird results you can't
explain and then try to explain them. And yeah, that
kind of thing, because both those guys are brilliant. They're
super super smart and love to theorize about stuff and
just see like, hey does this pan out? Okay, Well
that's some pretty shaky evidence at best, but it does
support it, you know, Like, and I think that either

(23:33):
of those guys. And I know Tom. I've seen Tom
speak several times and he says this. It's like, yeah,
it's not the best evidence, but that's the kind of
stuff you get when you're looking into paranormal stuff, the
fact that they just do it because they love it
and that's where they ended up. I see nothing wrong
with that. But yeah, Cliff, I'm glad you're doing the
ape stuff so I don't have to That sums it
up because I feel the same way about Tom. Yeah,

(23:55):
good man, I'm glad you're having fun with it because
I think that stuff's ridiculous and I don't that would
that means I don't have to look into it.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah. The frustrating thing about a lot of those debates
because I agree with you about Tom and Franzoni. In fact,
I only met Henry once, but I was just pulling
up the message he sent me afterwards. I gave a
presentation about origins and ancestral candidates and what I thought
were the most likely candidates and why, and he sent
me a nice message and said, I attended your presentation today.

(24:23):
I thought it was a wonderful likelihood analysis, sorting through
the plausible explanations to find the most plausible one we
should talk And so I was like, oh, thank you
very much. You know, because I met him, I didn't
expect him to sit in the presentation, but I would
have guessed like, oh, he's not going to agree with
me or like this very much. But he was very
kind and that was a thoughtful thing to send. And

(24:43):
so yeah, I mean there's a lot of people who
have strong beliefs who don't necessarily use that as a
prerequisite for any social interaction, where it's like, well, you
have to agree with me wholesale or else we can't
be friendly or even have a conversation or a dialogue.
But you know, Henry was very well researched, as is Tom.

(25:03):
The frustration that I have with a lot of people,
and it's not just in the sasquatch phenomenon, it's many
of the subjects I'm passionate about. Is I encounter people
very often who have done very very little research, but
they have like a preconception or a strong commitment that
drives there again their social interactions and the way they
treat people. And so I'll try to talk to them

(25:26):
to learn about like where are you coming from and
you know, what is it that led you to those conclusions?
And so you see very often that they just haven't
seen any of the information that you've seen, or contended
with any of the data that you've contended with. And
I try to tell them like, look, we can't have
you know, you think you're having a debate, but we
can't have a debate unless we've both seen the exact

(25:47):
same information and then arrived at two different conclusions. Like
in lieu of that we're debating you know, the quality
of a movie that only one of us has seen,
or the contents of a book that only one of
us has read. Like that's that's not a debate. It's
not very helpful or useful. And you know, it's never
easy to navigate those things. So I always appreciate someone

(26:09):
who's able to say like, oh, I don't care if
you agree with me, just here's what I think. Okay, great,
because I don't care if you agree with me. You know,
we can still be friendly and have a good time
without having to you know, battle over bringing one to
the other side.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah, and you know Tom Powell in particular, and again
I'll harp on him because I'm closest to him if
I think of all the paranormal people, and I love
him so much, and I just consider him such a dear,
close friend. I think at the root of much of
what Tom has maybe experience, but certainly what he has
shared with me is a is a wonderful sense of humor.

(26:44):
Right Like, let's see, oh, okay, the Chehalis project. You
know that he details pretty heavily in his book The Locals,
and then goes on and tells him behind the scenes
stuff in his other book, Edges of Science. I think
it's called Edge Edge or of Science, either one. You'll
find it, you know, I can't remember. But anyway, he
so he goes out there in like the year two

(27:06):
thousand and he's out there at this habituator's place or
long term witnesses place, and he's doing It's like, well,
they supposedly knock on tree. I'm going to try that.
Because that's how long this was, Like it wasn't widely
known that sasquatches knock when when this with a situation
is going out up in Chahli's and he's up there
and he's knocking on trees and trying to do what
he can and he's in Jalis is like a two
or three hour drive for him. Probably I'm going to

(27:28):
say three hours, because it was a long ways up there.
And so he's up there knocking and doing all this stuff,
and he gets eventually gives up, and I think he
climbs in his car at like midnight or one or
so in the morning, and I think it's one in
the morning. And again this is all detailed in his book.
Fact check me, please, but this is approximately right. He
drives all the way home, and of course Tom lives

(27:48):
in rural Clacamus County. He lives out in the woods
as well. So he drives all the way to his
house and he gets out of his car and he's
going up the steps on his rural property and as
he's one at the steps, there's a there's a wood
knock from the back of his property. And he goes, oh,
and he starts basically starts laughing to himself, going like,

(28:10):
I spent how many hours in the rain knocking and
I come home and there's a knock on my property,
you know. And there's a certain humor in that that
Tom revels in, of course, because he's a wonderful speaker,
and of course he's a great speaker. He taught like
middle school science, so of course he's a great speaker
for anybody in the audience. But the fact that he

(28:32):
brings that up and just laughs about it, and to me,
that's just the cosmic giggle, you know, And maybe people
don't know what the cosmic giggle is, but it's that
idea that the universe has a fun sense of humor,
or the coincidence has happened in a sort of way
like that or whatever. You know, look it up, cosmic giggle.
It's a thing that I think is a very very
amusing But to me, it's a cosmic giggle. But for

(28:52):
Tom Powell, that was the Sasquatches playing a trick on him,
you know, like communicating through what he calls the coconut Telegraph,
which I believe is a tip of the hat to
Jimmy Buffett, but I could be wrong about that. So yeah,
and that's what I love most about Tom is that,
like his sense of humor guides him in many many
cases to these these proclamations and thoughts and of course,

(29:16):
man his new book. I know we've had him on
the podcast a few times, but I think he brings
up the word sasquatched once or twice in the whole thing.
The rest of it's about the pyramids and the moon
and just crazy stuff, like I said, as a tour
de fource of the entire series of In Search of
in one book. So it's pretty nuts, man. It's awesome.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.

(29:39):
Will be right back after these messages, you know, And you.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
You brought up a good point earlier about the fact
that like he doesn't take things personally, and that's such
an important thing to keep in mind. And I'd never
understood that element of a lot of the alternative contril
sasquat proponent, you know, i e. The WU crowd, who
can be really emotionally hot and very vocal, confrontational, almost

(30:12):
like battlesome in a way about their views where it's like, well,
why do you care what I think? Really? I mean,
does it matter that I don't agree with you? Or like,
what would it change if I did agree with you?
Is because I don't really care if you agree with me.
And that's why I love an outlet like this podcast,
is that I kind of see a podcast or a

(30:32):
YouTube channel or my book or whatever. It's like a storefront.
You know, there's a sign above the store that tells
you what it is. If you're interested, you are free
to walk in. If you don't like what you see,
you're free to leave. You don't have to stay. We're
not going to lock you in and shut the doors
and make you buy something that you're not interested in.
So I really never understood that element of like people

(30:55):
walking in and then being angry, complaining, wanting to fight
about what's inside the proverbial store, when it's like, well, hey,
you could have just kept walking. You're not obligated to
listen or agree, and if you disagree, that's fine. I'm
not obligated to listen to or agree with you. And
I do see that, unfortunately, more from that particular faction

(31:18):
of Sasquatchry than I do from anywhere else. That's where
a lot of the like insults and ad hominems and
anger and vitriol comes from, which is really unfortunate. So again,
hats off to Tom for having the right kind of
attitude about like, hey, I don't care if you agree
with me or not. You know, I know some of
this stuff is kind of weird, but hey, you know,

(31:40):
and I love that about him. I respect Tom like
I have no problem with any of his views just
because I don't hold them, you know. So we could
all learn a lesson to be more like Tom Powell
in that regard, for sure.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Oh I think, yeah, the world to be a much
better place if we're all just a little bit more
like Tom Powell.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
I mean, I wouldn't. I would not go attend an
event that was discussing a subject that I A wasn't
that interested in or B was interested in but didn't
agree with the speakers and then make it a point
to go to their tables or stand up in the
Q and a's and hurl insults or arguments at them.
Like that would never occur to me. It's just not

(32:17):
that interesting. So there are certainly people who I've seen
do that at these conferences, in these events, and it
gets a little strange because you're like, well, there's nothing
you could say to those people in those moments that
are going to alleviate the problem. You know, even if
you said, oh, I agree with you wholeheartedly, like, I
still don't think that would. I don't know what it

(32:39):
is they want, you know, maybe they just want to
be heard. Who knows. But there was a gentleman who
came up to me in at Squatchfest the first year
that I did with you, in twenty twenty four, and
he came up very angrily, and basically, he angrily and
directly asked me if I was aware of like a

(32:59):
certain case, certain area, and I say, oh, yeah, I'm
I'm familiar with that case and those claims. And then
he angrily told me that he had designed and built
the device that opened the portal that brought the Sasquatches
to that location.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
Oh yeah, I remember that. I do remember that.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
It was like this sort of angry, fiery delivery. And
all I could say was like, oh, good for you, man.
What do you say to that?

Speaker 3 (33:23):
You know, I don't know, Yeah, I designed the machine
that opened the Yeah, it doesn't make yeah, yeah, what
do you say? A lot of times I'm left speechless.
I don't know what to say, and it's probably best
that I don't say anything oftentimes, but I rarely get
in trouble for things I didn't say.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Oh yeah, well, I'm not going to say, oh I
believe you, and you know it's not going to go
very well if I, Oh, that's all bs, because you know,
clearly this person, I think, to some degree believed what
he was saying. Hints the emotional content of the interaction,
and so all I could say is, oh, good for you, you know, congratulations.

(34:02):
I don't know what else you are looking for here.
It's a very difficult situation. I just don't imagine that
there are very many ecologically or biologically oriented people going
to WHO or paranormal conferences and saying how familiar are
you with the you know, like the phylogenetic continuity across

(34:23):
the Asian wood ain't blind? Huh? You know, Like I
just don't see that happening.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
Yeah, And you know what Bob goes my mind is
like why does my opinion matter to people? I'll never
quite understand that, because I mean, a lot of times
my opinion doesn't even matter to me, Like, why would
it matter to these other people I've never even met.
And I know that they're looking for authority figures and
they for some reason see me as one and whatever.
I get that. I get that, but it's just like
when you bring it home, man, I don't I'm nobody special.

(34:50):
I just have a little bit more experience, and then
and then people get mad at me for saying things
like you asked me a question and then I give
you an answer you don't like, and you're mad at me. Now,
don't ask man. It's like, don't get mad at me
for answering the question you asked. I had some guy
on social media just recently tell me that he'll never
forget the time that I told him that sasquatches don't

(35:10):
climb trees, which is weird because I think they do.
I don't know why I would have said that. Maybe
it was a long long time ago. I don't really know.
But this guy was so mad because you lost my
vote that day permanently, is what he told me. And
I looked him up. He follows me, Yeah, he follows
me on social media. It's like, like, what did I lose?
What vote is this? I'm not running for office, dude,
Like what vote could you possibly have that I lost?

(35:32):
You still follow me on social media? That's the only
vote you get. I just don't understand people. But you
know what's oddly funny is like, while we're having this
conversation right now, I think it was pretty funny that
I just got a text from Maria Bay or actually
from Expedition Bigfoot, right. She just happened to text me

(35:52):
right now while we're on this conversation about if maybe
I have a few bins to talk about possibly doing
a presentation, maybe some event or something that she's involved in.
I don't know what it is. I haven't talked her yet.
I don't know anything about it. But Maria is a
good friend, you know. I don't talk to her a
lot or whatever, but whenever on gigs together, you know,
we hang out. We talk about biology and apes and
all that sort of stuff. It's fun. So I said, hey,

(36:12):
I'm on a podcast, let me call you back, and
she goes, oh, yeah, I should have known that, because
you know how I can. I'm a remote viewer, And
of course she put the joking emoji. She's not a
remote viewer, of course, but she thought that was pretty funny.
Kind of again once again heckling, lightly, heckling the paranormal folks.
But so, because we've talked about how difficult it is

(36:33):
to keep things grounded in science when everybody wants sasquatches
to appear and disappear interdimensionally and all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
So you should ask her if she has an hour
to spare right now, and we'll do a bonus episode
with her. Since has showed on us well, I can
certainly rope her into being a podcast guest. I mean,
you and I have both on her show, so she
kind of owes us one right. Absolutely, But No, to
your point about people's oh kind of word this, I'm

(37:01):
really trying to thread the needle here and not just
like piss off everybody.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
Everybody can't piss everybody off. You're not that good. No.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
I mean, I think most of our audience knows where
we're coming from. Again, they've the sign's been on the
door for a long time. They've walked in knowing what
to expect and what they're going to get. I just
think there's something to be said for like the idea
of strong beliefs loosely held because so much I wrote
about this in the book, and this is a recurring
conversation I have with people, and it rubs a lot

(37:30):
of my friends the wrong way, but I still think
it's the right way to think about it. Is that
so much of what we are engaged in is belief based. Again,
for the listener, Like, the definition of belief is to
accept a statement or proposition as true, and so much
of what we engage in, you know, is dependent on
the acceptance of statements or propositions is true that we

(37:53):
can't directly verify or falsify, and that opens up a
lot of doors. A it makes you a lot more
humble when you realize, like, well, some of these things
like I don't know, and I can't know like any
given sasquatch case, I can't know what really happened. It's
not possible. Do I believe this witness? Do I not
believe this witness? Do I believe that this evidence was

(38:15):
collected in the way that it was claimed to have
been or was found in the place and in the
conditions that it was said to have been found? And sure,
but it also makes me humble because I realize a
lot of that those are just beliefs. And it also
makes me more forgiving of other people. And so I
will readily say, whereas I used to really shrink away people,
do you believe in Bigfoot? Well, it's not about belief,

(38:36):
it's about evidence, and it's about what's convincing. And I
have no problem with saying, yeah, I believe that the
Sasquatch exists. I accept that proposition. I don't know in
the sense that like I've not seen one in daylight
at close range, like you know that I think would
be the absolute knowledge, like that direct knowledge, short of

(38:56):
getting like you know, picked up and thrown by one
or something like that. But I can hold a lot
of these things loosely. If any given case that I
think is true right now we're overturned and proven to
be a hoax, well that's fine, Like it wouldn't shatter
my identity. It wouldn't. It'd be a bummer, depending on
the case. But none of that has anything to do
with like, Okay, well I had a strong belief loosely held.

(39:19):
There's other things to pursue and to look into related
to this subject. And so it's not like a house
of cards where you pull out one thing and the
entire system comes crumbling down. But for some reason, a
lot of people in this faction that we're talking about,
you know, their beliefs and their identity are sort of
one and the same, and so to question a belief

(39:40):
and half of them aren't even beliefs, they're just really
like unexamined assumptions, you know, untested presuppositions, that kind of
thing that they do take it personally, and they do
see it as sort of like an insult, or they'll
vice versa, use our beliefs as insults. You believe this,
then you must be you think they're just apes? How

(40:02):
stupid are you? On and on and on where it's like, well, yeah,
that is what I think, and could I be wrong? Like, oh,
well of course, but if there was some other phenomena
behind the sasquatch phenomenon and that was demonstrated, Okay, fine,
that's great. I would love the answers. But none of
that I don't think would be like identity or life

(40:24):
shattering in any way, shape or form. And so it's
usually this faction that we're describing that has that, you know,
instead of strong beliefs loosely held, they have like loose
beliefs strongly held, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
That's funny, that's great. Yeah, which I guess is the
need for science, because I'll say it again, I say
this in a lot of my presentations. Science is not
a body of knowledge that is tightly held by academics
in order to keep us all in line. It is
not a way. Really, it's not something that they are
hiding from us and all this. It is a process.

(41:01):
Science is really kind of a verb in a lot
of ways. It is a process to find out what
is real. You think something is real, you design a
test for it. Does it pass the test. If so,
you design another test to see if it passes that
one too, and you share with your friends and they
can do similar tests. If it does not pass the test,
then you guess again. You know, that's basically science. It's

(41:22):
a process of testing your beliefs, beliefs against the evidence
that you find, especially in well designed experiments, to see
what is true it is not. You know, this works,
that doesn't period. Believe me, No, it's not that at all.
It's the questioning process to get to that place. And

(41:42):
then that's what science is really all about, which is
why I'm glad we have good thinkers. There's a small
number of really good thinkers in this field, and of
course the whole Derby thing as well. By the way,
Darby is going to be speaking at the museum this
coming Wednesday, and only if you are a member of
the podcast or the museum, are you allowed to come.

(42:04):
So if you want a ticket and you are a member,
go to the Patreon and do what you need to
do down there. So it's not for the general public,
but that's just another benefit of being a member of
the podcast or the museum. But this is a podcast
right now, So if you want to become a member
and attend the Darby Talk at the Museum, go to
the link that Matt Prode we'll put down in the

(42:25):
show notes, and then become a member. It's five dollars
a month. And for that five dollars a month, you
get an extra episode every single week, and you also
get this episode, the regular one with zero commercials period. Nothing,
no hair growth products, no read alouds, no locally piped

(42:46):
in commercials, nothing, just us so and of course a
lot of other benefits too, like when I talk about something,
hey you got a goold cast or this happened or whatever,
we get pictures and we put them up on the
Patreon for people we ask we ask questions, you get
the submit questions for member episodes, and also every once
in a while you get to come to cool special
events that nobody but the members get to come to,

(43:07):
like this thing, So if that's you, If you want
to come and you want to buy a ticket, feel
free to become a member. So cool stuff is happening.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
And we do have the best member community of all
of the online Sasquatch communities that I've seen him been
a part of, which is a great many over the years,
this one is the best. Everyone's very thoughtful, you know,
haven't had to kick anybody out or delete any comments
or anything like that. Like, there's a good vibe. So
if that's your vibe, feel free to join. Don't be

(43:36):
the first person I've kicked out. Please, Now that's going
to be Bobo.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
No.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Actually I wanted to bring this up with Bobo on
the podcast, but since he's not here. Not only is
Bobo a member, but I've just noticed he actually has
two membership accounts because he has two email addresses, you know,
two different servers, but the same like user name. So
I can only guess that he signed up with one

(44:02):
and then he tried to sign in with the other,
and when it told him he didn't have an account,
he just created another account. So Bobo pays for two
memberships for himself, and as far as I can tell,
none of our other members pay for two memberships, so
Bobo is our highest paying, single highest paying member.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Well, he must like the podcast more than anyone else,
not enough to show up, but as far as as
far as listening, he must love this podcast. Few well played,
well played Robo Bobo.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
We do miss Bobo? Wherefore ardl Bobio? I guess Well,
that's the great thing is we will get to find
out altogether one day when he hops on next and
tells us where he was and why he missed it.
I'm sure it will be amazing.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
Yeah, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff
and Bobo will be right back after these messages. You know,
one of the things that came to mind while we
were speaking this a little while ago, Matt, is this
idea of being a sasquatch researcher, right, because I've been

(45:13):
saying this a lot, because it occurred to me that
like most Bigfoot researchers aren't really researchers per se. You know,
they're more fans of the subject. They're officionados. They go
to the conferences, maybe they surf the web. They have
maybe a Facebook group or something like that. And I'm
only judging that and for some people, I guess that
would be a pretty harsh judgment to accept. But I'm

(45:35):
only saying that from a cliff centric point of view,
which is from the position I do most things. You know,
very cliff centric world I live in. So for me,
I have this idea of what sasquatch research looks like,
and I'm not sure a lot of people do that.
I mean, I try to live up to my own standards,
and I feel like I fail most of the time.

(45:55):
So I'm curious, because you're very thoughtful gentleman, and you
think about things all the time. You have really interesting
ideas and stuff. What does what does quality research look like?

Speaker 2 (46:09):
I think it is equal parts armchair and field research,
and I think it's equal parts like propositional and participatory.
I've seen a lot of people who are strictly armchair
quote unquote researchers, and there's a lot of value to that.
And if someone was digging into the right materials or
at least what I would consider to be like the foundational,

(46:33):
rock solid sort of canonical materials and that was what
their armchair research consisted of, I think that would be
amazing and beneficial, whether not just within the canon of
sasquatch literature either, but you know, related disciplines, other relevant disciplines,
things about the other apes or evolutionary biology, ecology, behavioral ecology,

(46:54):
et cetera, et cetera. But I think there's a number
of people now who's entirety of armchair resoarch hich is
solely restricted to network television, sensational YouTube channels, and you
know podcasts, not really you know, being hosted by other researchers,
but just by other enthusiasts. And then I've seen the

(47:14):
flip side where there are these people that spend all
their time in the field of whatever amount of time
that is, but all of their sasquatch allotted time is
you know, in the woods, whether hiking, camping, searching, whatever
the case may be. But who flat out refuse to
crack the first book a resource. I've encountered that many times,

(47:35):
where people say, like, I don't want to be influenced
by the literature. I want to make up my own mind,
so I don't need to read that stuff, you know,
I don't want to read it, I don't need to
read it, And that to me is equally problematic. I mean,
I've been in organizations with people like that who had
no clue about the history of sasquatchry or the you know,

(47:57):
the best like analyzes of the best physical or trace
evidence or multimedia evidence, and so very often they'll quote
unquote discover things that's still useful information, but they don't
even understand where that would fall in the context of
the history of the pursuit or how it relates to
other finds elsewhere. I've seen people totally reject amazing opportunities

(48:20):
in these organizations because they were so unfamiliar with the person.
And then after the opportunity was rejected, I'd bet, hey,
that was a huge mistake this person. Did you know ABC, D, E, F,
and G. And they, well, how am I supposed to
know that? I'm like, well, if you were a real researcher,
you would know who this person is and what their
accomplishments were and why it would have benefited you to

(48:42):
take this opportunity with them. And so I think you
have to have equal parts of both. But I do
think the term has been so bastardized in the modern
culture to sort of be an identity. It's almost like
there's a a costume, you know, like well, I get
the backpack and the headlamp and the hat and the

(49:03):
camp chair, and now I'm a sasquatch researcher, you know.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
What I mean?

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Like there's a certain look or like cosplay LARPing element
of it, which is the skeptics think we're all doing
all the time. But you know, I think it's a continuum.
There's people who are strictly doing that. So when I
wrote the book, for example, you know, you're trying to
set up these designators for people, whether it's like proponents
and skeptics or believers and cynics. But instead of using

(49:30):
researcher for the most part, I chose to use the
word contender because I think that a lot of us
are contending with the mystery or the proposition or the
question what is behind the sasquatch phenomenon? Does the sasquatch
exists as a living species of animal, whatever the case
may be. Like we're grappling or wrestling with those questions,

(49:52):
and you know, fighting and struggling against trying to sort
the wheat from the chaff and get to these answers.
And so I wanted to use that term so that
the reader would understand that there's a difference between like
genuinely contending with the mystery and just getting a red
headlamp and saying I'm a researcher because you go camping

(50:13):
once a year or something like that. So to me,
good research is participatory, like you're out in the field.
You're doing it. It's propositional. You know, you're not only
getting familiar with the literature, but you're trying to add
to it and expand to it with new hypotheses and
new perspectives and concepts. So it's equal armchair and field
research using sober minded, dedicated methods that you could derive

(50:37):
from relevant disciplines.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
Yeah, you know, the foundational literature has really become a
new focus again for me, or refocus, i should say,
because I mean I've read all the John Green books,
of course, probably this couple of times. I've read Krantz's stuff,
of Meltrum's book. I revisit many of these books yearly, actually,
and I try to branch out and read some new
stuff every once in a while. But there's not a
lot of new stuff in my PA. Of course, I

(51:01):
don't a lot of the books that are coming out.
They're not they're not formatted very well. They're the rife
with the spelling mistakes and that sort of stuff, and
it's like, well, I'm not going to read this. The
person didn't take the time to do it right, I'm
not going to read it. I may have it, but
I'm not going to read it. But the foundational stuff,
the John Green stuff, for example, has become a little
bit more important to me lately, just because maybe it

(51:22):
was through conversations with you, because you and I talk
all the time off when we're not on the air
or whatever. It might be somebody else as well. I
don't remember. But nowadays, if you want to know what
bigfoots are thought to do, you can watch you know,
any number of television shows or YouTube channels and you know,
and get a general idea pretty quick, which makes it

(51:43):
a lot easier to fake evidence. For example. You know,
but if if you find a reference to knocking in
the nineteen seventies or nineteen eighties or something like that,
well that's significant because that was before it was widely
known they did that. And just recently I've been rereading
the John Green like the thin books, you know, like
the skinny ones. You're the Sasquatch and you know, all

(52:04):
that kind of stuff, the softcover ones that he published
in the early nineteen seventies, You're the Sasquatch, all those things,
and I came. I was doing some research for a
new display that we're developing at the NABC about the
nomenclature of a bigfoot and sasquatch and stuff, and Jerry
Crew in particular. So I was reading through the Jerry
Cruse stuff just in case there is something I missed

(52:25):
in there. And of course I'm assuming that all of
our listeners know who Jerry Crew is, but just in case,
because we do have, you know, fledgling people out there
coming into the subject. And you know, I referred a
couple of customers in the NABC today to the podcasts
who you know are just kind of new to the subject.
Maybe they're going to listen. But Jerry Crewe was the
guy who casts the very very first known Sasquatch footprint

(52:46):
cast that is still in existence. There was a police
officer that casts several before that, but all those are
we don't know where they are. They're probably destroyed or
thrown away. But Jerry Crew casts one and it is
still in existence. Actually, a little known fact cast two,
but one of them crumbled when they removed it from
the ground, but one of them survives to this very day.
While reading through the Jerry Crewe Encounters and whatever else,

(53:09):
I found a reference. It's just a short little paragraph
in one of the John Green books that says something
to the effect of an odd We followed the tracks
down to the creek that crossed the creek and started
going to the other side of the creek or whatever,
and they mentioned an odd find of a small I
think three or five, I don't remember how many, they said,
of trees that the tops had been partially broken off

(53:32):
of at about you know, six or eight feet off
the ground or something like that. And I say, oh,
partially broken. Well, that's exactly what we're finding, you know,
out in the woods right now. Basically, you know, I
found a new tree break just a couple of weeks ago,
and most of mine are twisted, of course, not just broken,
but twisted, and several of them have had sasquatch footprints

(53:54):
at the base of them. So I'm pretty confident that
sasquatches are responsible for at least a percentage of the
tracks or the tree breaks that we're finding. But the
fact that you found that in a John Green book
foundational literature, when he was following up on the first
trackway that was recorded in casts ever in all Bigfoot history,

(54:18):
that adds extra weight to that level of evidence to me,
because there was no influence at that time that sasquatches
break trees back in nineteen fifty eight. I don't even
think it was widely known. I could be wrong. That's
where we need a primatologist widely known that apes broke trees,
you know, in stress stressful situations and stuff. Maybe they

(54:40):
did know that, but that was before Jane Goodall and
Diane Fosse and stuff did all their pioneering research. So
there's at least a reasonable chance that privatologists didn't know
that about apes. And the fact that John Green just
had this throwaway paragraph in his book that said basically,
that adds a lot of weight to the tree break
situation to me. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 (55:02):
I think you're exactly right in that it's very important
to find information that describes environmental evidence like that or
things that we can infer were associated with the sasquatch phenomenon,
if not living sasquatches themselves in those earliest times, and
especially in the times prior to the observational field studies

(55:23):
of great apes in their environments.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
I hate to interrupt, but I just found the paragraph
because I took a picture of it, and I think
I might have sent it to you. I'm not sure.
But here's the paragraph itself that we're discussing right now.
And I forget which book it's from. It's one of
the softcover John Green books. And here's a direct quote
from the book as I'm reading it. The track maker,
which is the Jerry Crue animal, had reached the bar
over the log jam and had left. By the way,

(55:48):
this bar isn't a drinking bars, a sandbar. The track
maker had reached the bar over the log jam and
had left to climb the hillside. Most of the area
was rocky or was too hard packed to show print.
Following the line of the tracks into the brush, however,
we were puzzled to find three small trees some distance apart,

(56:09):
each with the top partially broken off about eight feet
above the ground, and then twisted around the lower part
of the trunk. Olthough it was a twist, that's what
I'm talking about here.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
So it's fascinating because, yeah, you know, I've read and
re read those books. I try to read all the
ones I consider to be foundational at least like once
a year, once every two years, and every single time
something new leaps out to me. And if you would
ask me, hey, do you remember John Green writing anything
about twisted trees, especially, you know, during the Bluff Creek

(56:41):
investigations in the early days, I would have said, now,
I don't remember anything like that, even though I've read
those books so many times. Because they're so densely packed,
you can't memorize every bit of it. So it is
really important. And then to your earlier point, like, the
first real observational field study that gets published was George
Schaller's field study is Mountain Gorillas, and that would have

(57:02):
been in that fifty eight to fifty nine time frame,
and then published in book form in the Mountain Gorilla
Behavior and Ecology in like sixty one or sixty two
somewhere thereabouts. I'd have to pull up the book and
double check that date, but that's roughly the timeline, so
that certainly would have preceded the publication of that book.
So there wouldn't have been some place that they could

(57:23):
have derived that inspiration from. Now, you know, there might
be references to the manipulation of vegetation in Dshaiyou's book.
I think it's called Explorations of Equatorial Africa, in which
DSHAIU in the mid eighteen hundreds officially, you know, discovers
for the western world the lowland gorilla. But I don't

(57:43):
know how familiar you know, Green and those guys would
have been with that particular book that would have already
been almost one hundred years old at that point. And
keeping in mind too that in those early days, Green
is very explicit about this, is that the pardamin in
view that was proposed by J. W. Burns and some

(58:04):
of the other early writers was that the Sasquatches were
some sort of a type of people, and so they
were almost envisioning them as like humans with basically like
loincloths or some kind of clothing and long head haair
running around, barefooted, giant humans, very large humans. But it
took a lot of eyewitness interviews in testimony firsthand before

(58:27):
the image really emerged in their minds that like, oh no, no,
that's not what people are describing at all. They just
you know, pulled from indigenous accounts that referred to them
as another sort of people, and then they transposed or
transmuted that image into what they perceived to be just
large indigenous people. And so you know, Green's very explicit

(58:47):
about that to say, well, look at William Roade described
prior to fifty eight or what Osman ended up describing,
like that didn't quite jib with J. W. Burns's version
of the Sasquatch, but a jib with all the other
eyewitness accounts. And so it's not like even if Green
had the inclination to pull inspiration from something like Paul

(59:09):
Deshaihu's eighteen sixties book, that he would have necessarily transposed
like gorillas or those other sorts of apes onto that
versus trying to look for analogs in the human realm,
you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (59:23):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I like that early. That early stuff
carries more weight now to me. That's kind of a
new a newer revelation. I think I've been coming to
that for a long time, but it's a newer revelation
to me because of the lack of influence that could
have been put on those earlier those earlier sources, you know,
like those earlier reports.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Yeah, they didn't have inspirational materials. You know, they didn't
have podcasts and YouTube channels and network televisions and documentaries
or you know, billboards or jack links, jerky commercials or
you know. The imagistic representation of the Sasquatch is so
pervasive now that you can hardly meet anyone who can't

(01:00:02):
immediately recognize that image and tell you what it is,
even if they don't believe that animals exist. They'll go, oh, yeah,
that's a bigfoot or a sasquatch. Well, what is a
big foot? Oh, it's this big hairy thing lives in
the woods. Some people say they see it. You know,
they move around at night, they smell bad. You know,
people have like a general knowledge because it's such a
cultural icon wink wink to the book subtitle. But it

(01:00:24):
genuinely is versus. At that time, it just wasn't you know,
there was no inspirational material from which they could draw
these points, let alone these finer points. And I think
that just gets more and more important further back in history.
You look, I try to lay out multiple examples in
my book, not only in the indigenous representations chapter, but
the Historical record chapter about what I interpret to be

(01:00:49):
behavioral norms, ecological norms and trends that we now know
well about the Great Apes and the way that they
interact with their environment and not only their physical adaptations,
but more specifically behavioral adaptations to thrive and survive in
those environments. That I try to demonstrate multiple examples that, like, well,

(01:01:09):
the first time you see this sort of behavior described
is actually in the canon of Sasquatch data before it's
described in the you know, known extant Great Ape literature.
And to see so many examples of that, it's like,
there's really something going on there, because again, they would
have had no inspiration to pull that from There would

(01:01:31):
have been nothing, you know, unless they actually saw what
they claimed to have seen.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
You know, I was having this conversation just the other
day with somebody who has some issues with the Freeman casts.
But evidence needs to look be looked at in context,
and you know, I think that's a good topic that
how about if we get off now and we'll talk
about that. How the context of evidence matters quite a bit,

(01:01:57):
lending authenticity or not to whatever piece of evidence there is,
but the contextual thing is very very interesting, particularly when
you come to some of the individual footprints gathered by
the Blue Mountain folks, a couple of them by Paul Freeman,
a couple by West Summerland, other folks. So don't want
to we get off the main episode here and go
over and join the pigeons and see what they're up

(01:02:19):
to there, and we can do our member episode over
there and talk about like the contextualization of evidence and
what that can't show us or can't show us in
some ways.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
I would love to do that, because, Yeah, there's there's
a lot to be said for that. As you were
describing that, multiple examples came to mind that I think
it would be good to discuss. So let's make it happen.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
Right on, very good. Well, before we go, I just
want I know we talked about Tom Powell a lot
this episode. I haven't talked to him in a couple
of weeks. Here. I need to give him a call,
miss a guy, but I wanted to let everybody know
that Tom Powell. I don't think that that's even been
announced yet, but here's a secret for you. Tom Powell
is going to be speaking at the same event as
me in Hawking Hills. I hope this isn't getting anybody up,

(01:03:00):
said aout. I'm announcing this, but Tom Powell is going
to be at the Hawking Hills Bigfoot Festival with me
out in August August seventh through tenth in MacArthur, Ohio.
So if you want to come hang out with me
and Tom Powell and whoever else might are you going
to go to that one?

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Matt, I am not going to be at that one.
I'm doing a different event in Ohio at the end
of September, so my travel days are limited to the
few events that I've committed to, which I guess, speaking of,
it's probably about time that I start announcing. I will
be speaking at the Capitol Library, the Warren County Public Library,
and I'll put links in the show notes in Bowling Green,
Kentucky with doctor Moray Mayer and other speakers there. And

(01:03:37):
that's August first and second. I think first is the
speakers meet and greet VIP dinner sort of thing. So
the event is on Saturday, August the second, where the
speakers will be, but I'll put a link to that
in the show notes.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
Well. Robo Bobo you want to get us out of here,
so all right, well, I think that's the We have
a pretty limited vocabular in the robo bobo, So right
there you go, folks, do what you need to do,
and thanks so much for listening, and until next time,
you'll keep it squatchy. Thanks for listening to this week's

(01:04:12):
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(01:04:32):
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