Dr. Don Jeffrey Meldrum Friday June 20th 2025

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
World unseen, where shadows play.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Tune in, let's drift away.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Midnight whispers on the airwaves, ghostly echoes from hidden graves.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Soon your mind to the spectral sounds, where big food
roams and the mystery abounds. Chasing lights in the midnight sky.
You went those landing and watch them fly. Paranormal truths
wrapped in disguise, where the seekers don't need to be shy.
Take a ride with us into the unknown. Midnight frequency

(00:53):
radio where wildtails are grown, haleens calling to hear the echo.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
From the hills ark Foothills of northeast Darkansas. I'm Carl Richardson,
and this is midnight Frequency Radio. Our guest tonight is
doctor Jeffrey Medrum. Doctor Jeff Meldrum is a full professor
of anatomy and anthropology at the Idaho State University. His
research centers on the evolution of hominin bipedalism. His professional

(01:25):
interest in the footprints attributed to sasquatch began when he
personally examined a line of fifteen inch tracks in the
Blue Mountains of southeastern Washington in nineteen ninety six. Nearly
thirty years later, his lab houses well over three hundred
footprints cast attributed to relic humanoids around the world. Doctor

(01:50):
Meldrum has conducted elaborative laboratory and field research throughout the world,
and has shared his findings in numerous popular and professional
publications and presentations, interviews, and television appearances. Doctor Meldrum is
author of Sasquatch Legends Meets Science, which explores the contemporary

(02:13):
scientific evidence for the reality of this legendary species and
also affords difference to tribal people's traditional knowledge of this subject.
In addition, he has published two field guides, one focusing
on sasquatch, the second casting the net more broadly to

(02:33):
consider the potential of relic humanoid species around the world.
He is author in chief of the scholarly reference journal,
The Relic Humanoid Inquiry, now in its fourteenth year. Doctor Medrum,
good evening and welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Thank you appreciate the invitation.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
Your bio is a mouthful.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
We may have probably should have done a dry run
on that.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
Actually I read it three or four times earlier, but
you know how I teach.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well, those are some of the terms. We should probably
explore them this evening.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yes, sir, how did your scientific background lead you to
the exploration of Bigfoot.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well, the seeds of interest in this particular topic were
planted quite early on. I was a youngster living in Spokane,
Washington when Roger Patterson first took his his sort of
homespun documentary featuring the sixty seconds of footage on the Road.

(03:50):
One of his first stops was Spokane. So as a
as a young fifth grader are about eleven years old,
I convinced my dad that we should go to this.
He and I and my younger brother of two and
a half years went and were right on the third row,
center seat, and it was impressive. I mean, to see

(04:12):
that film in it's with its various depiction, slow motion
and stop action and so forth, larger than life literally
on that big silver screen in front of us, was
really amazing. I mean, it just captivated me. So that
was always rattling around there and resonated with my clear

(04:36):
interests in natural history and all things relating to biology.
You know. I was always always had a real menagerie
of animals, insects and snakes, reptiles and little wayward mammals.
Had a baby prairie dog or a pocket gop for

(04:59):
I guess more more, not a prairie dog per se,
but anyway, stray animals were finding their way home, and
and so my academic interests kind of bounced around in
that area. It was funny. Someone actually was quite amused,
apparently to learn that I came, you know, just that

(05:21):
close to a career in carpentry. All through high school
and college, I worked as a on either a framing
crew or as a finished carpenter doing the finish wood
would work, or cabinet making and cabinet installation and so on,
and just about went into that as a as a

(05:43):
livelihood were it not for a recession that hit and
the building industry dried up. So it seemed like a
good idea maybe to take advantage of a scholarship I'd
been offered and go to school for a couple of
years and see see what that turned up. And my
interest in you know, one of those youthful aspirations career

(06:07):
aspirations was veterinary medicine, and that became more and more
a real possibility, and I did my two hundred hours
of the volunteer work in the local veterinary clinic over
one summer and really really enjoyed small animal practice, although

(06:30):
I was more intrigued. If I had pursued that route,
I would have done my utmost to have made it
into exotic animal zoo veterinary medicine anyway, But all that
was within the much broader, grander framework of the natural sciences,
and so it was an easy shift to emphasis from

(06:58):
non human animals to more or human like animals, if
not humans themselves. And I was became fascinated with the
fossil record of human evolution and especially the emergence of
our habit of walking on two legs. While I was
an undergraduate, there was a seminal paper published on the

(07:21):
locomotive anatomy of lucy Oxtralopithicus a forensis Lucy's species should say,
And this was a time when new fossils were coming
to light, that that that shed new light, new insights
into the emergence of that that rather well for a

(07:41):
long time thought to be entirely distinctive habit of walking
on two legs, although now we recognize a number of
other primate ape like species during during the Miocene that
exhibited some some inclinations for walking on two legs. And

(08:01):
of course, again rattling around in the back of my
mind were still these stories of Bigfoot and Yetti, and
having read Ivan Sanderson's book The Possibility of Other Relic Homonoids,
he didn't use that term. He coined a funny little
acronym ABSM, short for abominable snowmen, to designate these non human,

(08:27):
upright walking manlike creatures around the world in various corners
of the globe. So it was it wasn't a huge
shift for me to kind of realign my focus of
interest and start pursuing a graduate work in first in

(08:52):
animal locomotion vertebrate locomotion generally, but then also and human
human biomechanics. I was at Bringing Young Universe saying they
had a very good uh biomechanics kinesiology program, that the
professors there were always intrigued by my interests in Holland

(09:13):
in bipedalism and so and so that's that's where I went.
I fought pursued that to the State University of New
York and Stonybrook that had an ext live program I
think one of the best in the country at the time.
It was very fortunate to be out in a position there,
to earn a position there and benefited from the tutelage

(09:39):
of some really great professors with they were very research active, publishing,
had access to fossil specimens and museum collections, and it
really afforded a great opportunity to to to look at
this and lay the found so that when the opportunity

(10:04):
presented itself to sort of revisit this question of other
as yet unrecognized species of bipedal primate, I was in
an excellent position to evaluate that evidence, to have something insightful,

(10:24):
something knowledgeable, to say, not just expressing an opinion, but
drawing conclusions based on lots and lots of observation, lots
and lots of comparative data. And so in this case,
the thing that really set the hook was a set

(10:45):
of footprints. I was shown a set of footprints that
were just right between fourteen fifteen inches in length along line.
It was an exceptional example, and this is just one
of many examples where things just kind of were laid
out in front of me. It was it's almost uncanny
with twenty twenty hind sight to look at it, But

(11:07):
you know, it's kind I joke, it's kind of like
my experience with fishing. I really enjoy fishing. I enjoy
eating fish far more than I enjoy fishing, actually, which
is the motivation. But I don't have a lot of patience.
I have to cultivate that that virtue when it came
to fishing. If I didn't have any success in short order,

(11:30):
that I would have to pull up steakes and search
for greener pastures. But if I caught a fish, boy,
then I could. I could stay focused on that spot
for hours and hour hours. So it was very fortuitous
that my first real encounter with you know, firsthand with

(11:53):
some footprint evidence was an exceptional an exceptional case, with oh,
thirty five forty five footprints in this this very fine
silty wet loss. This this glacial silt that is part
of the the soils across southeastern Washington and all across

(12:18):
southern Idaho. You know, a feature that I'm very familiar
with down here in southeastern Idaho gives rise to so
much just but because of the extremely fine particulate nature,
you know, like when a road is put in, or
when the soil is tilled in agricultural you know lands,
the texture is such that remarkably clear footprints. It was

(12:41):
from this region that the first published acknowledgment of dramatoglyphics
came from and no coincidence it was. It was the
because of the fact that the substrate lent itself to
picking up that kind of detail. And then Paul Freeman
was a good enough caster of footprints that he didn't

(13:03):
obliterate all of the fine detail that was in some
of these tracks, especially when in wet, clayey soil that
would hold its shape, its consistency even under the weight
of a plaster, you know, poor. So anyway, Yeah, these
these tracks were so fresh, so clear. As I knelt
down beside them, I could see dramatoglyphics in many of them.

(13:27):
It was stunning. I mean it really it was amazing.
And the animation the signs of You know, Paul had
tried to sort of dissuade me not to get my
hopes of He said, you know, these tracks are good,
but he said they're not perfect. I wouldn't bother casting them,
he said, anymore. I have so many casts that unless

(13:49):
unless it's a really exceptional example, I don't even bother. Well.
The things that he considered as imperfections were all the
signs of animation. They were the tension cracks and the
pressure ridges, and the you know, partial imprint of some
of the extended toes, and the dragouts of the toes
at the head of the of the track. They were

(14:10):
some were inundated with water in such a way that
you know just the details, the contours, the topography of
the step, the angle of step, and so forth. Was
all amazing. You could read what had actually transpired right there,
and basically I reconstructed it, which was different than Paul. Paul.

(14:32):
I mean, he was a good tracker, but he had
read it. I don't, for whatever reason, had read the
scene completely wrong, which in a way was interesting because
had he been responsible for laying down these tracks, you
think he would have gotten the scenario, sequence of events right,
but he had it completely backwards. But I think a

(14:54):
sasquatch had been traveling down through the river gallery forests
there along the Mill Creek and was following the growth
in the brush along the irrigation ditches. Was probably this
was in February, so the snows had just melted off
the foothills. There was fallow grain fields and stubble and such.

(15:20):
But they were also in some of these little little
box canyons, box valleys right up against the steeper parts,
the uncultivated parts. There were abandoned orchards, plumb and apple orchards,
and I think it was down there gleaning some of
this frozen fruit flying out. And this would have also

(15:41):
been the first weekend that you could negotiate that this
steep hill that as this thing circled back around to
head up Black Snake Ridge towards the watershed and the
wilderness area beyond, this would have been the first night
someone could have taken the four wheeler before we'll drive
up that grade and you know, partied or had a

(16:06):
on fire, who knows what. And I think they were
returning in the wee hours of the morning, and this
creature was confronted by headlights. Probably this is me recreating
the scenario, because it suddenly whealed, literally wheeled around, you
can see it in the footprints, and began walking briskly

(16:27):
back towards the only cover that was available, which was
the tall brush along the you know that wasn't cropped
down completely along the irrigation ditch some distance away, and
every second right step was angled out forty five degrees
as it looked over its shoulder to assess the progress

(16:49):
of these headlights I'm imagining or whatever coming down the hillside.
And then I think it realized it wasn't going to
make it at that pace, and it took off running.
And there was one of these tracks where the dynamic
is so clear you can see it was angled out
forty five degrees, but then clearly decided to take off.

(17:10):
It pivoted back to the left, and then the four
foot slid, the toes digging in back across the midfoot
and left these long tracks of the toes and then
the step length doubled as it left just half tracks
running with its heel up into the cover of the

(17:33):
brush across running across the fallow field with its very
soft substrate, and so the tracks were impressed quite deeply
along that stretch and then and then they were lost.
It probably jumped down into the into the you know,
the irrigation canal. But anyway, so it was it was amazing.

(17:57):
I mean, the fact that we can sit and talk
about this and clearly, you know, as I pointed out
details of anatomy and dynamics, the animation that was so
evident you could just tell, not that it was lost
on him. But he there was not the recognition that,
you know, if he had planted these things and was

(18:19):
seeking affirmation from me as the gullible pawn, that wasn't
this case at all. It was more like when I'm
explaining something quite technical to a student and they kind
of get it, but not quite and that expression on
their face of a little bit of bewilderment. He certainly

(18:40):
was not responsible for that. So so yeah, it was
all the more amazing. So the hook was set. That
was the beginning where I, I, you know, literally had
this little conversation, as I've often recounted as much kind
of like two little imps, one on each should and

(19:00):
the one saying, because I just come from doctor Cranis.
And I was always, you know, ever since I had
read his books, was aware of his career and interest
in this subject. I was also very conscious of the
ridicule that he endured the Flack, And in his own

(19:22):
book he talks, you know, rather cynically about the scientific
establishment and his mistreatment and being passed over for promotion
for years and et cetera, et cetera, things that I
can relate to personally now with having reached this point
as well. But the one little imp saying, you really

(19:46):
want to do this, you really want to get involved
with this, and the other IMP's going, look at these
this evidence, look at these tracks. I mean, how can
you sessquatch actually walked by here last night? You know that? Now?
How could you walk away from this? Of course, it's
clear which one out the debate?

Speaker 4 (20:08):
My apology the studio. Do you have a set of
criteria that you use when you assess the credibility of
the footprint cast or any other physical evidence?

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Well, sure, I mean there are lots and lots of
factors involved and each each case, because it's not like
we're pulling a static bone out of a museum drawer
and slapping calipers on it to take a series of measurements.
We're dealing with the documentation of a very dynamic process,

(20:43):
and the cast represents a snapshot that is a composite
of the entire step process, which, in turn, which you know,
it incorporates all the dynamics of that behavior. But also
remember a footprint is a record of the interaction that

(21:07):
dynamic process with the substrate, and so the conditions of
the substrate have tremendous influence on the appearance. So I'm
looking for a number of things. I mean, there are
some very fundamental distinctions between a sasquatch footprint, say, and
a human for example, or the other likely miss apprehended

(21:34):
candidate would be a bear, another animal whose hind foot
is largely planted grade and pentadactyl five toad and so as,
compared to all the other animals that are out there
in the woods, which have four toes, like the canids
and felids, or you know, unless we're looking at smaller

(21:55):
animals like a raccoon or a possum, you know that
have the more prehensile foot. And then you get to
the ungular grades, the ungulates, the hoofed animals, and there
there you have typically two we don't have many one
hoofed wild animals, just the just the horse and the
pasture in the barnyard, but wild pigs, wild the deer,

(22:20):
deer family and so forth, have have hoofs. They walk
up on their nails, modified nails, ungular grades. So so
you know, basically we're looking, we're trying to rule out
is it is it? Is it a footprint versus just
an artifact, a pothole, a puddle, you know, a blob

(22:45):
of snow that's fallen from the tree into the snow field.
And then if it is a footprint, is it human
or is it a bear as opposed to a sasqua,
And so again we look at very distinctive characteristics with
the human Humans typically have a range a normal range

(23:10):
of breadth to length ratio. They have a well differentiated
ball and heel pad because of a longitudinal arch that
places weight at the fore and aft ends of that
arch support. They have a rather distinctive configuration of toes.
Most people at least a ground here. Most people spend

(23:34):
most of their life in confining their feet in shoes,
and so the toes show the consequences of that like
a common a very you know, ready tell is a
little toe that's literally pushed in and almost turned on
its side, so that the nail what's left of a nail.
Many of us have very little nail there to clip

(23:57):
on any regular basis. Uh points on almost directly lateral
instead of upward, and that's a you know, immediate giveaway
if the toes have that appearance. If it's a bear,
then the toes have kind of a parabolic distribution and
arch distribution across the central three or are usually quite webbed,

(24:19):
and so they kind of look like a triplet. Three
nice oval pads that are quite close together. Not a
lot of splay, but more play in the fifth, which
is often the longest, or may appear to be the
biggest because of that play, kind of rolls a little bit,
and it's the bear's inner toe, what we call on

(24:42):
the human foot. The big toe is not so big
in a bear. It looks more like a thumb. It's
shorter it just as our big toe has just two fulangies,
two bones, as opposed to the other digits which have three,
and so it's a little bit shorter. So it almost
looks like the bears walk with its feet crossed, you know,

(25:02):
like a catwalk model with a real cross step. But
then the course, the other complication with a bear is
their quadrupeds not bipeds. They walk on fore legs, not
too and their forepaw has a very distinctive abbreviated shape,
much as if we walked on our hands, if our

(25:24):
fingers were much shorter like the digits on a bear.
Bear often show claws, not always. That's not a fool
proof method of identifying. But bears can dig for their
food and wear their claws down through use, especially in

(25:44):
the springtime, but sometimes the substrate doesn't pick up the
the contact with the claws very clearly doesn't preserve it
as well. I've had many an experienced hunter show me
a footprint and they were just convinced it had to
be a sasquatch because there were no claw marks, no

(26:05):
visible claw marks, and they weren't willing to acknowledge all
the other characteristics, you know, the other eight or nine
that clearly made it a bear, and acknowledge the fact
that claws are not the only So there, you know again,
it's not really rocket side. There's a certain art, a
certain knack that you can develop with practice and familiarity

(26:34):
so that you and you know an understanding of the
underlying anatomy and the distinction so that you can interpret
the impression in the ground. But you know, I try
when people people send me tracks on a weekly basis,
I mean at least two or three or four examples,

(26:55):
and they fall into those categories I mentioned. Some are
just innocuous, ambiguous, un you know, unidentifiable potholes, probably not
a footprint at all. In some cases it's quite clear
it's there is no anatomy to be observed. It's just
a divot. And then, like I said, there many others

(27:18):
are are I've either human. And that's further complicated with
the popularity of toad running shoes now, which have have
confused observers on some occasions. Usually the tread and the
logos on the tread of the running shoe are distinct

(27:41):
enough that they show up under under better conditions of
soil of substrate. But the other one that I've gotten
is just just to add one last little thought here,
that because because I've had literally in the last three weeks,
I've had two example sent to me. And this also

(28:04):
goes to a feature that is often really grossly overstated
when it comes to sasquatch tracks. First of all, a
long line of tracks as such as eye witnessed, as
I alluded to, is really unusual. It's not very often
that you have circumstances where there is sufficient substrate and

(28:29):
the inclination of the track maker to follow that substrate
for any considerable distance. So oftentimes we are unfortunately dealing
with maybe one or two very clear footprints. Now, a
good tracker someone who has really mastered the art of
tracking it. And there's a difference between you know, someone

(28:50):
like a gym halfpenny or a Paul Resendez or a
baker that you know, where you supposedly can follow mouse
across a cement driveway from the little overturned devils and
so forth, well, which I find a little I'm a
little incredulous about it. But but I mean that following

(29:12):
the the little overturned stones and the bent blades of grass,
or the or the snapped twigs that have been stepped on,
that that is a real skill, that that that borders
on rocket science in my opinion, that you have to
really practice and really hone that skill. But on the

(29:33):
other hand, if there's a clear footprint to be seen,
I can interpret it on the basis of the anatomy,
sometimes much better than the skilled tracker who hasn't been
exposed to that aspect of the footprints to the depth
that I have. You know, It's like one time I

(29:54):
was kind of challenged on my opinion, my interpretation, and
I said, well, my opinion, I said, excuse me. You know,
you don't think you're going to equate your opinion with
mine unless you have also dissected hundreds of human categoric
feet or dissected dozens of the grade eight feet, dozens

(30:19):
of monkey feet. That unless you have spent hours observing primates,
locomotive taking video, turning those into you know, diagrams and
tracings that you've done, track beds that you've done X rays,
you know when you've when you've done all of that,

(30:40):
then you can equate your opinion with my conclusions that
are drawn upon upon years of scientific investigation. I said,
there's very real difference, and this is why sometimes I
butt heads. Some may know Joel Harden was a Washington

(31:02):
State Border Patrol tracker and who was called in by
the for Service to offer his assessment of some of
the tracks that Paul Freeman had found, and he concluded
that they were human, that they were almost certainly hoaxed. Well,
when you read his report, it's quite revealing. He looked

(31:26):
at these tracks and all tracks through the lens of
one trained in man tracking. He doesn't know the distinctions
that are associated with, say, the fossilized footprints of the
flat flexible foot of an Australia pitthesne. He's never dissected

(31:46):
the musculature and ligaments of you know, of this spectrum
of the subject that I alluded to before. He's not
you know, he's not looking to radiographs. He's not looked
at the joints. He's not done, you know, osioligamentous preps
to quantify the range of motion of each joint in

(32:08):
the foot. You know, I mean, it just hasn't. That's
not part of that training. Ye, And it's there aren't
many people who are afforded the opportunity as I have
to have access to those kinds of materials to do
that very thing. So I go through his list of
all these things that he's noted while looking through the

(32:31):
lens of a man tracker, and he argues for things
that were inconsistent with a human trackway. For example, there
wasn't the topography with differential pressure beneath the foot and
the ball, Well, no, because it walks with a flat,
flexible foot, not an arch foot. He noted that when

(32:53):
it went up an inclient that the step length was
remarkably consistent even when there was an increase in the
inclination of the slope. Well, that's because it's walking, not
with a stiff legged gate maximizing step length which can't
be maintained on an incline, but with a compliant gait

(33:17):
that smooths out the differences between walking on the flat
versus walking up slope and down the slope. So the
point without you know, without without belaboring it, every single
point of his report in which he criticized these as
being hoaxed, as being inconsistent with what he expected in
a man track, are exactly the features that I would

(33:40):
expect in the contrasting nature of a sasquatch, big heavy
biped walking on flat, flexible feet with a remarkably thick
soule pad and a compliant gate, with flexed hips and
ankles and knees. I mean that that's that's the difference. Yeah,
you know, so much depends on your point of view

(34:03):
that he was just marking up the wrong tree. And
in fact, by his observations, he made it quite clear
that what we were dealing with was not a human hoaxer.
It was it was something else altogether. So anyway, I've
never had the chance to meet him and discuss these things.

(34:25):
I published some remarks and reactions to his early report,
and I think it was in one of the issues
of Daniel Perez's Bigfoot Times newsletter, just to get it
out there and get the conversation. And then he published
his book and devoted a whole chapter to the Bigfoot tracks.

(34:49):
And I have been meaning and meaning to write a
review of his book to get published, you know, in
one of these outlets. But and I would go into
much more detail in into that particular chapter, especially obviously,
but I haven't had the chance yet, and it's kind of,

(35:09):
you know, it's kind of disappeared into the sunset. I
don't think, you know, his I don't think his chapter
has had a huge influence on it on a lot
of people, and even those who are familiar with the
history and the evidence from the Blue Mountains outside of Wall.
I mean, it's a fascinating place. Yes, it's an exceptional

(35:31):
place because of the because of the nature of the substrate,
combined with the fact that until recently especially, I mean,
it's changing as more improvements are made to some of
those Forest service roads. But for the longest time, when
I'm in my first years decades there, the roads were

(35:54):
tertiary roads. They were just graded roads, no gravel improvements,
which was for someone you know, it makes it challenging
when the weather is not great, and it's also problematic
up there. The snow drifts can linger well into late
July where you can't get around the north sides of

(36:16):
some of those those high roads and limiture access. But
it has produced an inordinate number of footprints and an
inordinate number of cases of repeat appearances of recognizable individuals

(36:37):
because of the high number of footprints. I mean, the
only other place that has even come close were the
real dusty and newly bulldozed roads around Bluff Creek back
in the fifties sixties, and there we have numerous repeat

(36:57):
appearances of individuals. I mean, it's just documentation of repeat
appearance besides the documentation, and you have to have someone
there to and it makes sense if you've got a
limited number of individuals, and I maintain they're extremely rare
in a given geographical area where footprints are found repeatedly,

(37:23):
than the odds of those repeated discoveries of footprints representing
one of a few individuals is much higher than you know,
when you have herds of deer and elk and things
like that, large numbers, and you can recognize those feet

(37:44):
based on their proportions based on the toe configuration. And
it's a remarkable testament. And you know, because then the
devil's advocate would meet to step up and say, oh, well, yeah,
those are just because there are tracks made by the
same stompers that are dusted off every few years. Well,

(38:06):
if that were the case, yes, it'd be very straightforward
to take a photograph or a cast of one and
put it alongside another and see that yes, they don't vary.
I mean, we did this exercise when in the smaller scale,
when Cliff Berrickman had cast literally hundreds of the London Trackway,

(38:31):
a case where there was a long trackway on these
drawn on a drawn down reservoir artificial lake. Then in
the mudflats there were just long lines of tracks as
something traversed these mudflats, and so he got lost and
lost lots of casts, and he carefully photographed them on

(38:51):
a gridded background and then had those photographs on a
CD and on a visit to my lab, brought that
with them and we sat front of the computer together
and went through picture. We did a frame by frame,
side by side, and went through picture by picture by
picture and looking to see if we could find a

(39:11):
single example where the distance between the toe tips varied
any and that in that one and twenty casts as
not a single divergence. They all lined up. I mean,
the only differences were due to depth or distortion due

(39:32):
to the imprint of the false foot into the sloppier
areas of the mud. Yes, about as far as as
demonstrating any animation, any mobility of the toes, zero examples,
that's pretty condemning observation, pretty certain that they're a static,

(39:58):
prosthetic foot stomper. So you know, we have multiple examples
from the Blues, for example, where you can see pressure ridges,
you can see tostplay, you can see you know, as
in the case of mind. This is why it's so
clear that they couldn't have been stompers. In some instances,

(40:21):
the toes are extended where it's walking on the flat,
you know, when it took off running those toes dug
in they flexed really tightly and impressed so deeply in
the mud that you could actually see a side profile
of the digit and see all three segments and the
joints between indicated, you know, and the flexion creases and

(40:43):
so forth. As the toe kind of abducted and pressed
into the sidewall of this, you know, two inch deep imprint,
lots of animation, lots of mobility in the toes and
flexibility of the midfoot, half tracks and pressure ridges and
toast slides and so forth. It was I mean, it

(41:05):
was just like I said, they do exist. Yeah, it
was a real aha moment.

Speaker 4 (41:13):
In your book, Sasquatch Legend Reads Science, you critique to
dismissal of sasquatch evidence. Why do you think the mainstream
media is still so resistant? Are the mainstream science?

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Well, the mainstream well, yes, and there's an important distinction there,
and sometimes one influences the other, and you hope it's
you hope it's usually the science influencing the media. But science,
this was something that puzzled me. I mean, it was
aware of the treatment that doctor Krantz received, and I

(41:46):
knew that doctor Krantz was a bit of a maverick,
you know, he was considered even if you go back
to Sanderson. Sanderson had a reputation. He was all into
fourteen topics, and so one of the books that also
fascinated me that he had written was that I'm trying
to remember now in pursuit of mysteries. I think it

(42:08):
was which I read several times, which had both you know,
biological entities, but also archaeological phenomenon, different things relating to
UFOs and so on, and and ancient astronauts kind of themes.
So it was but because of that, see he when
he then he talks about absms, it just gets lunkeed

(42:32):
in with everything else. It's kind of one of the
unfortunate consequences of roping the subject of sasquatch under the
umbrella of cryptozoology. You know, Cryptosology has always been the
ugly stepsister that you know, the Cinderella was never afforded

(42:54):
a place at the table.

Speaker 4 (42:55):
It was.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
It was an illegitimate pseudoscience, a fringe science if even
if you know, if it even earned the moniker science.
You know, so I knew, I was aware of that,
but I thought, you know still why I mean, I
don't didn't have that reputation. I and when I brought

(43:17):
this evidence to the table, the altar if you will, uh,
it didn't. It didn't have the impact I expected, didn't
have the reception. And then as I started contemplating and
digging deeper, you know, and I tell my students this,
you always have to consider ideas, especially controversial ones, against

(43:40):
the backdrop of what is conventional wisdom at that time,
what is the what is the current paradigm?

Speaker 1 (43:50):
You know.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
And back when I was an undergraduate student, Thomas Khon's
book Scientific Revolutions was making all kinds of ripples and
all all kinds of discussion, you know, because people were
I mean, it's sort of chipped away a little bit
at this perception that science was this unassailable edifice that

(44:13):
you know, the only truth is uttered there. It just
I mean, if history, if you're a student, and this
is why it's important to teach the history of science.
When when we don't do that with students, then as
they say, those who don't learn from history, what are
bound to repeat it? They make the same mistakes. And
so if you're aware of history, you know that there

(44:38):
has constantly been shifts in paradigms. And sometimes it's a
you know, what's his name, No, I just went back
from Jurassic part the mathematicians. Sometimes it's a you know,
discovery can be a violent process. And Malcolm Malcom and

(45:03):
so in contemplating that, see I came in just at
a time right on the cusp of a shift in paradigm,
and in the sixties, heyday, in the sixties and you know,

(45:23):
casting its shadow forward over the seventies was what was
called the single species hypothesis. This was a notion where
the niche concept which had of ecology, which had in
turn been internalized from the competitive exclusion principle from microbiology,

(45:47):
the notion that there could you know, a creature can
make a living in one way, but only one species
can do that. Otherwise, if there's competition, one will do
it better than the other, drive the other two extinction eventually,
or drive the engine of evolution. And there is character

(46:10):
displacement or niche partitioning, but there's got to be some
way to reduce competition between the species. Well, anthropologists looked
at that and thought, well, the hominin niche are human
ancestors and close relatives since the divergence with the other

(46:31):
tail less apes, the chimpanzees in particular, our closest ally.
That evolution or excuse me that, yeah, that evolution occurs
in a rather exclusive niche. That is increasing brain size,
tool use, material culture, and bipedalism. The habit of walking

(46:54):
on two legs, and so there can be only one,
you know, to borrow another movie line, there can be
only one. And so human hominin evolution, even from its
earlier emergence from the adaptive radiation of great apes, was

(47:15):
seen as this single file, single species process, one continuous species,
with you know, morpho species or chronospecies along the way,
one giving rise to the next, giving and supplanting giving
rise to another, and so forth in succession. But it
was a single file process, so there could be only one.

(47:37):
So if and we are it currently, so there can't
be Bigfoot, there can't be YETI. There can't be a
ring Pendet, there can't be a Yawi. You know, there
can't be These non human bipedal hominids just can't be.
Doesn't fit the model, doesn't fit the paradigm. Well, now

(47:58):
that paradigm fell apart in the seventies and eighties, and
as more and more fossils in Africa and elsewhere we're discovered,
and that single file march now turned into an adaptive radiation,
a bushy tree with lots and lots of contemporaneous branches
and intriguingly the stuff of headlines species persisting until remarkably

(48:24):
recent times. You know. So you've got sites of Neanderthal
occupation that are suggested to be ten thousand years old,
even though most texts we know stay they went extinct
between twenty three thirty two thousand years ago. You've got
Homo erectus in Southeast Asia, some of the islands like Java,

(48:45):
possibly as young as twenty five thousand. You've got a
homohilbrigensis outside of Beijing that I had the privilege of
looking at examining because as remarkably complete foot skeletons that
tentatively is dated between twelve and twenty thousand years ago.
These creatures were walking alongside Homo sapiens for probably fifty

(49:08):
plus thousand years in East Asia, and on and on.
You know, the Orang pandeic the homofloresiensis when it was
discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. Initially the date
was somewhere between thirteen and eighteen thousand. Now that's been
pushed back a little bit further to about fifty thousand,
but still fifty thousand. I mean, this is you know,

(49:31):
you could take a time machine back, go back fifty
thousand years, step out in East Asia, and there's any
of at least half a dozen different homininms you might
bump into along the way across the landscape. So the
paradigm changed. It went from a single file, single species
hypothesis to now I like to call it the multi

(49:52):
species the persistent multispecies hypothesis. And you can't say they
can't exist like you like it was uttered previously. I mean,
they still some people still say it, but you can't
defend it. You cannot say they can't exist, therefore they don't.
You can you can question the probability that such a

(50:16):
creature or the remains a living creature, let alone the remains,
I mean, the remains have been discovered a fairly recent vintage.
But the you can you can argue that the likelihood,
the probability that such a species might exist under our
noses is pretty meager, pretty slight, you know, not very convincing,

(50:40):
especially in the absence of some bones or some teeth,
you know, a skull or a living living specimen.

Speaker 4 (50:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
So so that's kind of where we find ourselves. I
think that's why science basically turns it back around. And
in spite of this evidence, I mean That's what someone
actually said to me and a co author, not to
our faces, but to our backs. They can't exist. Therefore
they don't exist, and then added this, and therefore it

(51:13):
doesn't matter what evidence they think they have. When does
evidence not matter? Well, when you're not scientific, that's about
That's about how it boils down. You know. Michael Shermer
used to love to say, show me the body. Once
you have a body, then the science starts. And I

(51:35):
can't imagine a more inane statement. The science starts as
soon as you ask a question that will lend itself
to testing or to observation. That's how you address the question,
how you generate and test hypotheses. That's when the science starts.

(51:57):
You know, the body is the conclusive evidence. Sure, but
we're supposed to say it's like you're getting a whole
bunch of stuff here. But I was taken to task
by one of my nemesis is on Well, if I
don't really have a nemesis. One of my detractors on campus,

(52:17):
who was an instructor in the physics department, and of
course he was a devotee of Michael Shermer and loved
to rehearse that line, the science starts once you have
a body. This individual also wrote a fairly regular column
in our local newspaper, which isn't saying much, but he

(52:38):
had an opinion on everything, and I though was an
easy target and so a frequent subject of his columns,
and so one time he was taking potshots. So I
wrote back and I said, you know, it just really
amuses me that oh and his I think one of

(52:59):
the reasons I was little more incensed is that his
department chair in the physics department jumped on board and
wrote wrote his own letter to the editor berating me.
I said, I said, it's kind of rich that two
physicists are here on this soap box about the science
starts once you have a body. Let me see Show

(53:22):
me an atom, show me a string, show me a
black hole, show me a quark. You know, I go
your whole much of your discipline, at least a theoretical physics.
You know. Note the name relies on the discussion of

(53:43):
phenomenon for which you have no body. There is no
corpus delecti. But rather you're measuring the influence. You're measuring
the the trace of its existence, its interaction with the
surrounding environment. I said, doesn't that sound kind of like
what I'm doing as well? The footprints are the trace,

(54:06):
the eyewitness encounters are interacting observations of behavior and anatomies
and so forth. Hair scat, you know, I just you're you're,
you're a kettle calling the pot black. It just it
just doesn't doesn't hold up. And that kind of shut

(54:29):
it down a bit. They're both ones retired and one
had gone to another university, so I don't I don't
hear from them anymore. But most people, most people, I mean,
the editor of the paper loved it because tons and
tons of people would write in and response, so that
meant readership, you know, and so he loved it. He

(54:49):
would trot out things on a regular basis, you know,
even even not contemporary items, to to stir the pot
a little bit every once in a while. And you know,
and I didn't mind. It's it's you know, stimulates conversation,
gets people thinking. But many, many, you know, came to
my defense, not that I need their defense, but I

(55:11):
mean it was it was gratifying that they were not
duped by this inane, illogical position that these physicists had
adopted and anyway. I mean again just also the the
ridiculousness that these two physicists were going to tutor me

(55:34):
and the analysis of footprints. It's like, I mean, I
know my place obviously, they don't know the area definitely.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
And I've seen this amongst other people, like some of
my past guests, just you know, the opposition is is
like you say, it's sometimes steady.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah, yeah, well, well you know, and I always try
I mean, I can find myself on a particular side
of an argument, and I try to always reflect and
on these kinds of experiences, and so that I that
I make a conscious effort to be not not sympathetic,

(56:20):
but to be empathetic to different points of view and
ask myself, so where are they coming from? What is
their background? Just like I described earlier, when you know,
when you try to account for this almost visceral rejection,
well you know, they're they're not operating with all available information,

(56:43):
and as a result, their paradigm is potentially obsolete, a
little outmoded, and it's not giving them it's not providing
them with the foundation for their argument that they think
it does. And so I you know, I always try
to bear that in mind. And especially when working with

(57:07):
amateur and enthusiasts investigators. You know, I take my position
as an educator very seriously, and I try to use
these as teaching moments, you know, So when someone sends
me something a footprint, I don't go, ah, come on,
I mean sometimes I have to admit sometimes I might

(57:30):
grow a little impatient after many many times admonishing people,
for example, to put a scale in the picture. You know,
even if it's just a dollar bill. We all know
that a dollar bill is six inches and one quarter long.
So if a dollar bill is flat in the picture,
then you've got a scale, you know, not your boot.
I actually tied to one person because he stood next

(57:52):
to it. How am I supposed to know what size
your boot is? Two weeks later, in the mail arrived
his boots in a box, like, come on, if you
want these back, you better send the return posts because
I'm not covering.

Speaker 4 (58:08):
All right, We're at the top of the hour here.
I'm gonna gonna break. It's about seven minutes long. Stuff.
You need to fetch your coffee or drink, and we'll
be by right right after the break.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
That sp.

Speaker 5 (01:01:00):
And this is dark matter news. I'm Joshua Stark. A

(01:02:30):
team at the University of Toronto had reported what they
call negative time in a quantum optics experiment. Physicists led
by Daniello and Gulo and Ephrium Steinberg used ultra cold
rubidium atoms and finely tuned laser pulses to measure how
long photons spend exciting atoms. To their surprise, the average

(01:02:54):
dwell time sometimes came out below zero, implying that in
the statistical sense, photons appeared to be leaving the atomic
cloud before they arrived. How does that work? In quantum mechanics,
events aren't fixed in time, but spread across a range
of possibilities. When measuring the group delay, the effect of

(01:03:17):
transit time of light through a medium, these researchers found
instances where the calculated delay was negative. In plain terms,
a hypothetical quantum clock would tick backwards under certain conditions,
but our experiment, observing that photons could make atoms seem

(01:03:37):
to spend a negative amount of time in the excited state,
is up. Steinberg wrote in a post on x about
the study, which was uploaded to archive on September fifth
and is now awaiting peer review. Co author Josiah Sinclair
explains that the effect stems from quantum superposition. A photon

(01:03:59):
may enter with an atom or pass straight through, and
until measured, it effectively does both. Sometimes the calculation yields
a minus value for the excitation time, a direct consequence
of how weak measurements and group delay work in quantum theory.
The Seti Institute has announced a major partnership with SkyMapper,

(01:04:21):
a decentralized global astronomy network. This collaboration will provide real time,
continuous astronomical data to scientists, educators, and enthusiasts worldwide through
programs like laser SETI cams and unistellar. Users will be
able to send observation requests and attribute data to a secure,

(01:04:44):
blockchain verified global database, ensuring transparency and accuracy. SkyMapper will
also give SETI access to its massive data archive for research, AI, training,
and scientific analysis. Key features of the partnership include twenty
four to seven global sky monitoring, real time data sharing,

(01:05:07):
and community driven discovery, inviting participation from citizen scientists around
the world. This is dark Matter News.

Speaker 6 (01:05:16):
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Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Whispers in the silence shadows in the night stories.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
That they tell of beings from the light in the door.

Speaker 6 (01:06:37):
They come alive, taking souls away underneath the story veil
where truth and dreams decay.

Speaker 5 (01:06:48):
A flash of light.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Then a body goes still, voices echo softly.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
Bending to their will.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Was in their rooms, caught in a trance, a moment
of sweet terror, an unspoken.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Dance, memories or race like dust in the breeze. What
happened in that hour? Oh, they beg and they pleaded,
emotional scars that grow so deep, awaking in the daylight,
yet unable to sleep.

Speaker 6 (01:07:22):
Second, all the.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Stars unlost in the haze, and a cosmic naze, the
craze in the shadows with their haunt seeing eyes period.

Speaker 4 (01:07:30):
In some must sorry go back for doctor Medro And
I had another question. You analyze the stupum tast and
other evidence, is there any particular piece of evidence that
you can consider the most of compelling?

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
Well, for me, again coming at it with my experience,
my frame of reference focused particularly on adaptations for bipedal walking,
and particularly the foot The footprint evidence embodies for me

(01:08:06):
the most compelling evidence, especially the composite. You know, I've
got nearly three hundred, as you mentioned in the introduction,
over three hundred footprints attributed to relic hommonoids, not only sasquatch,
but Asian counterparts of sasquatch, also the Russian Almahs that

(01:08:28):
may be a relic Neanderthal. We've got the ring Pendic
which may be a relic Australipithesene, and so on, even
some other possibilities. So the story that the footprints tell
is an extremely compelling one, especially to those who can

(01:08:51):
appreciate the evidence. And that's part of it. I mean,
to really appreciate and understand and appreciate means means much
more than it just occurred to me. Because I teach
human gross anatomy and to graduate physical therapy students, and

(01:09:11):
and I used to sometimes tell the students, you know,
you need to appreciate the architecture of the muscle. You
need to appreciate the the insertions, their positions, and the
nature of the connective tissue. What what's the disposition of
the tendon so forth? You need to appreciate this, and
they go. Finally a student says, doctor Mildurn, what do

(01:09:32):
you mean when you say appreciate and so? And I'm
not going to be able to rattle it off here
I from from memory, but it has a significant meaning
that ties in closely with careful observation and the you know,
the noting of detail and so on, and and appreciation

(01:09:54):
and understanding the significance of relationship and so on, kind
of along the lines of comprehending, but some more subtle
meanings as well. So when I laid that out for them,
then they started to realize. You know that the instructions,
when the instructions in the discussion guy said to appreciate

(01:10:15):
this or that, it didn't just mean, you know, to
be grateful for it. It meant to comprehend it in
all of its details. So in order to appreciate the
footprint evidence, it takes more than a single picture, a

(01:10:36):
single cast in front of you. Again, those can be
can convey a very static impression of the impression to
make a pun there, it's important that you have the
variety within an individual, between individuals, between regions, between different

(01:11:01):
potential types of relic homonoids to understand. And that's that's
what's so amazing. You mentioned the Skukum cast when it
was found. You know, it was quite sensational. I mean this,
a body imprint is a rare privilege, a rare opportunity,
and a lot of people don't really understand the circumstances

(01:11:22):
or what the skukam cast is they've heard an elk
wallow or a mud bath or you got to realize
again that these soils tend to be very clay because
of the fine particulate nature of the sediment when they're wet.
It's not like I mean, if they're they're moistened, they

(01:11:44):
have a very clay consistency. And so we'll pick up
because of the very fine particulate nature of the substrate,
will pick up fine fine details, you know, details that
are nearly on the order of the scale of the
particle side. So that's how you get skin ridge detail
or other skin texture, the kind of orange peel of

(01:12:08):
skin that has the pores or the hair striations of
hairy's skin like you know as the sasquatch seems to
have quite a lot of air covered body. So the
Skukum cast was fascinating because this creature had apparently reclined

(01:12:30):
to sample and enjoy the fruit baits that were left
on the edge at the edge of a puddle. So
what we had was a large depression in the middle
of a turnabout on the side of a forest service road.
That puddle had shrunk, the water seeping into the ground

(01:12:54):
and As it did, it left behind a halo, so
to speak, a circumfert of very moist, clayey soil. So
the creature and the investigators had chucked the remains of
that day's baits, some apples, and a couple of cantalopes,
I think that is what they said, this or that

(01:13:17):
onto the mud. They're near the puddle. So this creature
had apparently approached that fruit and then had reclined, resting
on one forearm and on its butt, rolling onto its
hip as it pushed with its heel to reach over
and grab a piece of fruit, which then proceeded to

(01:13:38):
kind of process. Sometimes these apples have very very tough rines,
tough peelings, and they're not the preferred part, especially if
it's a big apple. You know, the inner meat of
the apple is what's a and they'll bite off the
peeling and let it drop. So there was a little
pile of discarded peelings in a sort of triang shape,

(01:14:01):
which which if you reconstructed the imprint properly, seemed to
be right between the thighs, just below the cross. You know,
well what was stunnying. I mean, it was very easy
for me to look at this and people, you know,
I get so tired of the of the naive and
superficial criticisms that are leveled. Because the very first thing

(01:14:22):
we did, Owen Caddy had had created, had printed a
large roll out formatted color image of the imprint itself
in the ground, and the cast the resulting cast, and

(01:14:44):
we went to game parks and zoos. Here in Pocatella,
we have a zoo that only hosts endemic species and
so with no exotics, you know, so there's no monkey
house or anything, but there's a big paddock that has
ice and prong an antelope, dear help. And we went
to those keepers and rolled these things out and said

(01:15:05):
have you ever seen anything like this? And they go, well, yeah,
of course they're all over in the padd account there
where these animals lie down. And I said, okay, but
does it look just like this? Well, these are a
little different, they'd say, And so we would go out
there and look at some of these. Well, the number
one biggest difference is as you start looking at the

(01:15:28):
details of the anatomy, there's some suggestion suggestive similarities, but
there's more differences than similarities. And then the most revealing
difference is there are no hoofprints underneath the body mass
when it was getting up or getting or lying down.

(01:15:48):
If it were an elk, that's the only thing that
would be big enough to really and in that region
common enough to be likely candidate. There were elk prints
associated with the with the quote wallow, you know, with
that turnabout, but they crossed over at the edge, not

(01:16:13):
not even found within the perimeter. As I remember, it's
been a while since I've looked at it. Of the imprint,
you can't just levitate and bring your legs underneath you
off a few feet from the center of mass. You've
got to bring your legs under the center of mass,
plant your hoofs, and stand up. It's just that simple,

(01:16:35):
and they weren't doing that. But what was interesting is
when Rick Noel went to the Seattle Zoo and happened
to catch the ape house the ape enclosure at the
time when the keepers were feeding them some apples of
all things, and he videoed this female in exactly the

(01:16:58):
posture that I had reconstructed if you look at my book. Basically,
I got down on the floor and put myself in
the position that I envisioned that would correlate with the impressions,
and had one of my graduatedents and take several polaroids
and then we ship that off to the artist and
he used that as the basis for reconstructing what the

(01:17:21):
sasquatch might have looked like, creating the scucum imprint, and
it was exactly how this gorilla was situated, the exact posture.
And on the video you can see her dig in
her heel, reach across with the arm that isn't supporting
the body weight, take an apple. There was a big

(01:17:41):
pile of them, and then what she would do is
she would bite a piece, let the peeling, the thick
peeling fall between her legs, and set that bitten apple
on the side, making a second pile of apples that
she had marked as hers. Basically, but the exact same
accumulation of peels right there between her legs, the same

(01:18:04):
thrusting in of the heel in a similar fashion with
the scucum imprint. The imprint of the heel is so
distinctive that you can see the achilles tendon, the calcaneal tendon.
You can see the deep hollow in front of the
tendon because of the displacement from the shin bone the
tibia due to the elongation of the heel bone. Okay,

(01:18:27):
and I don't mean to wax too technical here, but
the point is the anatomy is there once again. The
anatomy is there for those who have eyes to see
it and understand it. And it fits our model of
the Sasquatch foot, a central part of which is the
elongated heel. Grover had drawn attention. Doctor Krantz had drawn

(01:18:47):
attention his way back, and unfortunately he sort of he
didn't state it in the best way rather than simple.
I mean, he was trying to describe the fact that
there was a greater distance between the tendon and the

(01:19:08):
shin bone, and in so attempting he said the ankle
was shifted forward. Well, that got all kinds of pushback
from people like David Daglin. Doctor David Daglin, you can't
move the ankle. Well, no, you can't technically move the ankle,
but you can by elongating the heel bone, thereby increasing leverage,

(01:19:32):
you have effectively changed the relative position of the ankle
to the overall foot length, which in layman's terms you
might express you've moved the ankle forward on the foot
and so all of the jibber jabber, that's the only
that's being kind about that came from daglind against that

(01:19:58):
was just was just baseless. It was just absolutely inane.
And I keep catching myself using that word a lot
in these situations, but I can't speak them up with
a better one that's not too offensive. But anyway, Yeah,

(01:20:20):
at one time, John Green, who was so impressed with this,
I mean he thought this was just this was the
end all piece of evidence. How could you how could
you account for this in any other way? But I
mean this was much more to him than the the
you know, the possibility of someone putting on stompers and

(01:20:43):
trapesing around. So so convinced was he, so enamored was
he with this piece of evidence, he was willing to
finance a little excursion on my part. He wanted me
to rent a truck and to take they were already
making very you know, high quality fiberglass and resin replicas

(01:21:06):
of the both positives and negatives of the of the cast,
and wanted me to take these around on tour, so
to speak, and discuss them with various scholars at universities
across the country, and I said, well, John, you know,
if we were going to if I was going to

(01:21:28):
commit to that kind of an effort, I wouldn't take
such an obscure piece of evidence. I mean, there are
a handful of people that will will appreciate this, we'll
look at it with an open mind. But for most people,
even the scholars, it's gonna look like a piece of
modern art you might see on the wall of your

(01:21:49):
dentist's waiting room outside his office. It's going to be
completely lost on If I was going to do that,
I would take a selection, much like I do when
I go on my speaking engagement. Take a selection of
footprints with the provenience provided and illustrating important historical discoveries

(01:22:09):
and anatomical features that were revealed, and the remarkable consistency
of the anatomy, the basis of the Ichno taxonomy, and
the dynamics variability expressed in some of these cases. I said,
that would have a much more impactful result, I think

(01:22:33):
than just taking the scucum cast around as this oddity
that most people will will not understand, not appreciate. But
it never happened. I mean it was it was not realistic,
Nor did I have the time really to undertake such
a such a venture. Quite honestly, it would be it

(01:22:53):
would be very challenging. It would be tough to approach.
I mean, there are some some of my colleagues who
expressed interest, and especially later here of Lake Now, but
at that time especially, there was a lot of a
lot of resistance. There was you know, there were other
like the stories of of Hieronymous and the and the

(01:23:17):
and the Patterson Gibblin film, and uh, you know, other
people that were coming out just making a mockery. Rick Dyer,
for example, and and his ridiculous little mannequin with teeny
weenie teeny weenie weenie. And I only point that out

(01:23:40):
because Rick set himself up entirely. He he during one
of his postings, one of his YouTube videos, he lit
my book a fire, doused it with lighter fluid legimate science,
lit it a fire, had it blazing, had a little
entourage of his cronies cheering him on, and then is

(01:24:02):
it as it burned down, you know, to a crisp.
He then literally quips it out. That's being again being generous.
He exposes himself and urinates on it to extinguish the fire,
and it was quite It was quite picturesque, you know,
right down to the last drop, you know, extinguishing that

(01:24:23):
last little little pink flame. But I but I joked
when when when you see when you see his little
side show mannequin, whoever put it together for him? I
don't know what what served as the model, but the
the male equipment is about the size of your little

(01:24:45):
pinky finger. I couldn't help maybe, but wonder if maybe
Rick was the model for that, you know, after seeing
him on his YouTube video. Uh oh, that's about to
get a reaction from him. But that's good. I mean,
he deserves, he deserves to be piled upon a little bit.

(01:25:06):
I mean, talk about sophomoric behavior. It's just you know,
I couldn't believe. And but the problem was people, you know,
get distracted by that. He he probably laughed all the
way to the bank. I know, I know that he
claims he he made quite a little fist full of
money from his little sideshow carnival side shows. So anyway,

(01:25:30):
how did we get onto that?

Speaker 4 (01:25:31):
Oh, the.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
The most is the footprints. For me, it's got to
be the footprints first and foremost. You know, the Patterson
Gimlin Film. Early on, I have to admit I was
a little reluctant to put too many eggs in that basket,
just because I didn't want it to feel like the
pyramid was upside down, you know, with the APIX pivoting

(01:25:55):
on this one data point, although I mean it's it's
it's much more than one data point the film. That's
the thing that the film is such a rich, a
rich collection of insight and information. Again, if you have
the wherewithal to appreciate it and see what's happened now.

(01:26:16):
As time has elapsed, things have continued to evolve and
to change. Paradigms have shifted and taken shape in anthropology,
and so what in nineteen sixty seven struck the experts
as being incongruence, contradiction, inconsistencies throughout the film that didn't

(01:26:45):
align with their vision of what an early bipedal horminin
or a bipedal primate of any type might look like.
Now it's spot on a fifty five plus years later,
and they couldn't have gotten it better if they'd had

(01:27:06):
a time machine and jumped forward, you know, fifty years
and then and thus looked at and used as an example,
a robust austerlipithesene. What we see on that film screen
is exactly what the exception of the size, and we
can account for that with radiation into northern latitudes at

(01:27:26):
a time, you know, of the mid to late Pleistocene,
when many species of mammal we're expressing gigantism as an
adaptation to more extreme temperate climate fluctuation. Sasquatch, in my opinion,
is the primate vicar of that megafauna plics to see

(01:27:49):
megafauna guild and or guilds plural, and so what you
see on that screen is now exactly what we would envision.
You know, I tell my audience is if I were
to write an introductory text on physical anthropology human evolution,
and I wanted an illustration of the generalized adaptation of

(01:28:16):
early bipedal hominine one that walked on flat, flexible feet
had not yet evolved in arch, had not yet expressed
the tremendous reduction in the muscular skeletal robusticity. You know
that that Homo sapiens exhibits that had a brain that
was barely bigger than a chimpanzees relative to body mass

(01:28:40):
et cetera et cetera, and even other adaptations, unexpected adaptations
of combinations of craniofacial proportions and dentition and so forth,
the lack of projecting canines, for example, the huge premolars
and molars, which then without those interlocking cane you can

(01:29:01):
grind to a greater degree side to side, what's called
the phase two of the cheowing cycle. Anyway, if there
wasn't the stigma, there wasn't the notoriety already attached to
that image, I could take that frame three point fifty
two and stick it in my textbook and it would

(01:29:22):
serve the purpose just fine, say to illustrate a paranthropist
boise in East Africa eight hundred thousand years ago. You know,
this isn't that amazing? How could how could he? You know,
there's no way Patterson could get that ride. If he
had a coach, if he had someone in the wing,
some some you know, like somebody kind of mentoring his

(01:29:45):
efforts to hoax something. They would never guide him in
those directions because they would want the what was on
the screen to be acceptable to the scientific community. If
they were trying to hope you don't do a hoax
with the intent of everyone coming forward saying all that's
obviously a hoax because ABC, you know, you would anticipate

(01:30:08):
the ABC and address it. But at that time there
was no one who had any inkling of what ABC.
You know, even the experts at that time. See, they
were expecting one thing and then instead encountered something quite different.
So yeah, I mean, so anyway, my point being the

(01:30:33):
Patterson Gimblin film is also I mean, it is the
benchmark of photographic evidence. Everything else pales by comparison. It
falls short. I mean, there are a few good ones,
a few interesting ones, you know, both both action and still,
but nothing, I mean just lightning really struck once. In

(01:30:54):
that case, I would love to see it strike again,
I really would. But in this day and age, with
AI and with all the technologies and and instrumentation and
so forth, it's always suspect.

Speaker 4 (01:31:07):
So the thing I could, the thing I like they
did best about that Patterson video was stabilizing.

Speaker 2 (01:31:16):
Sure. Yeah, I mean that was a real boom when
we when we did our project, Bill Muntz and Isaac
Tean and I. And if people are interested in that,
there's published papers paper right now. There's another one in
the works in the Relic Hominoid Inquiry, which you can
google and find an online open access peer which which

(01:31:39):
you mentioned in my introduction, a peer reviewed referee journal.

Speaker 4 (01:31:45):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
And there's also an episode of The Proof Is out
There with Tony Harris Harris or Harrison now I always
kidding his name mixed up, but that episode is really
good and it shows our efforts at optimizing. I don't
like to use the word enhance because enhancement leaves sort

(01:32:07):
of open the possibility that you have altered or added information,
you know, like you see the advertisements for the the
revitalization of old Civil War portraits. You know, the line
goes across the portrait and you're you know, emerges with
this sharp, crisp, colorful image. Well, that information isn't there.

(01:32:32):
It's extrapolating, it's it's adding, it's it's it's doing things
that are within the likely parameters. But from a scientific perspective,
you're adding information that wasn't there. Optimization, on the other hand,
tries to present the evidence the data that are there

(01:32:53):
in the in the best way possible so that all
the information that can be appreciated. And you point out
stabilization is an important part. So there might not be
a huge revelation, but as I point to anatomical details,
the observer can see and can recognize what I'm describing,

(01:33:16):
because it's nice and stabilized and smooth and maybe slowed
down or maybe looped a couple of times, you know,
but the image is easier to apprehend, to comprehend than
it was when it was bouncing all over the screen,
and it's got streaks and scratches and so forth. You know,
that copy might not be a very good copy. But

(01:33:39):
see we combined multiple, sometimes more than a dozen copies
into a single image, frame after frame after frame, and
so that tends to average out and emphasize the real
facts and the artifacts, the scratches, the blemishes, the fading,

(01:34:04):
the motion blur that gets kind of that becomes the outlier,
which is diluted away and leaves you with a much fuller, richer,
more vivid image, now stabilized and played at the proper
film speed. So you can also appreciate the kinematics of
the walk much much better. So it's I mean, we

(01:34:27):
could talk for hours just about the various anatomies, the
various kinematics of the walk, The associated footprints and the
kinematics of the foot see my interpretation again. That's why
I rankle when people say, oh, well, you know the
mid tarsal break, that's just your interpretation, that's just your opinion.

(01:34:49):
Well it goes further than that. I mean, it's again,
it's a conclusion drawn upon lots and lots and lots
of data, not just what's on the film, but years
and years and years of the study of human and
non human primate walking and footprints and so forth. But
in addition, that interpretation of the footprint is affirmed confirmed

(01:35:17):
by watching the track maker leave the track. So when
I talk about the midfoot flexibility and the heel coming
up first and the foot supporting weight through the entire
forefoot and causing displacement, you know, and this, that and
the other, you can watch that happening before your own
eyes on the film. You don't have to take my

(01:35:41):
word for it. I'm just pointing it out to you
and telling you what it means, what it means in
terms of the kinematics and biomechanics and comparative evolutionary adaptation.
But you can see it. You can see it yourself.
There's no quibbling over the fact that it's happening, you know.

(01:36:01):
And then when I bring in dozens and dozens and
dozens of other footprint examples, I mean, this is one
that blew me out of the water. I mean two two.
I won't go into detail both of them, but I
made a trip to China was able to look at
Yeren footprints, an excellent example, and I'm absolutely confident in
the credibility because you know, unbeknownst to the person who

(01:36:25):
made those tracks, they're almost identical to the tipmus cast
from the Patterson Gilllan film site, the best example of
the pressure ridge of all the ten that he cast
on the side, but there are others, many others of
that ten. Eight eight of the ten, in fact also
show a mid tarsal pressure ridge in varying degrees. Well,

(01:36:48):
then I had a chance to go and look at
the nineteen fifty eight Jerry Krue footprint cast, the first
plaster cast made in the United States States. And when
you see that picture with you know, Jerry Crew with
his crew cut hair and little spectacles, I mean, it's

(01:37:11):
a very distinctive print. If people have seen it, they'll
remember from that description he's holding up a cast. Well,
it was taken with a journalist's camera, you know, with
a big silver dish and a blue globe inside a
flash bulb, you remember those days. Yes, and it gave
a very gives a very stark, harsh flash. When you

(01:37:34):
can see it evidenced by the strong shadow behind Jerry Crew,
he looks almost like a cardboard cutout, you know, there
for a photo to be taken. Well, likewise, the footprint
because of that harsh, strong front lighting, it looks very flat. Okay, well,

(01:37:54):
and that see that fits right into the narrative. These
are just made by stoppers that are carved out of
you know, uh, you know a plank eight inch wide plank? Yeah, yes, yes,
so you can. Well, I had the chance to visit

(01:38:15):
Jerry CRU's one of his sons, John, who is the
current custodian of the original cast which still exists, and
he has it nicely wired into a shadow box with
some other you know, the newspaper article and other things
to illustrate it. Well, he was gracious enough to let

(01:38:37):
me unwire it and lift it carefully out so that
I could take some photographs from various close up angles
and so on. The first thing that jumped out at
me when I saw that cast is it's not flat.
It has topography, and guess what, it has a pressure

(01:38:59):
ridge in the exact location proportionately and in the distinctive orientation.
The sort of speed bump is a slightly canted a
little bit with the lateral side just a little bit forward,
because the two joints that create that flexion, that axis
reflexion are slightly offset. The tailor naviculator is on the

(01:39:21):
inside of the foot and its back of just a
hair from the calcaneo cubevoid which is on the outside
of the foot, So the axis of the speed bump
is inclined just ever so slightly upward and outward, and
it shows that perfectly. So the first cast, the first
plaster cast made in the United States, shows a pressure ridge,

(01:39:46):
indicates documents the mid tarsal flexibility of the flat flexible
nature of the sasquatch foot, and example after example, including
totally unrelated totally unbeknownst to the discover in China, a
set of right and left prints from China from Hubei

(01:40:07):
Province the Shenajia Nature Reserve, cast by mister Yuan a
Park ranger who had a sighting of an orangish burt
brown burt burnt brownish yarin sunning himself sleeping on a
outcrop in the sun, whereupon mister Yuan yelled across to it,

(01:40:31):
and he thought it was a bear, but instead of
a snouted face with ears on top of its head,
it turned and looked at him with a flat face
and ears on the side. Flat on the side of
its head covered with this hair, and slid off and
walked away on two legs. So to his credit, he

(01:40:52):
hustled after it and tracked it, found where it had
squatted beside a spring, as I recall his description, eventually
retrieved some materials to make plaster casts of a right
and the left, and it had as it had squatted. See,
it came up not on the ball of the foot
like we would because of our arched foot structure, but

(01:41:14):
it flexed across the transverse tarsal joint. Just the heel
came up. The fore foot took up the weight, and
that caused some of the soil to be displaced back
into the heel impression, but was still there. So anyway
that you know, you ask for people ask for a
smoking gun, you know, short of a body, and I

(01:41:36):
acknowledged that physical evidency is a prerequisite. We need to
find a body, a jaw, a tooth, DNA, you know,
a novel reproducible DNA sequence, distinct NA sequence, but short
of that, as so many of my predecessors who could

(01:41:57):
also appreciate the footprints, doctor, doctor Napier, doctor, he wasn't
a doctor, but Ivan Sanderson. It was the footprint evidence,
Napier said. He concluded, there's got to be something out there,
because something's leaving these footprints. You know, you've got to
account for it. If you're going to dismiss this as
a hoax, then you've got to explain how we have

(01:42:18):
one hundred years worth of footprint descriptions, encounters and casts
since nineteen fifty eight, So what half century more than
half a century of footprints that all not all? I mean,
there are hoaxes. There's no question things get hoaxed. There
are things that are not footprints that get cast or

(01:42:41):
are just potholes or you know, or our human footprints
or our bare footprints the ear. But there is a remark.
I mean those are the exception. My experience with three
hundred plus footprint casts in my lab. The obvious hoaxes,
the obvious identifications are the exception, there's a remarkable at

(01:43:08):
least in the documented footprint cast collections.

Speaker 4 (01:43:15):
How many how many different countries have they found evidence
of sasquatch or yetti whichever.

Speaker 2 (01:43:23):
Yeah, well this is interesting. There a quick preface. I
was in an airport traveling and decided on a rare
occasion to pick up a magazine that caught my attention
in the little shop, and it had an article on

(01:43:43):
the imperiled status of Asian tigers. But what caught my
attention was a map. The map had the historic distribution
of Asian tigers all across the Old World and the
current fragmented refugia that now still harbor tigers, and you know,

(01:44:05):
just a small fraction, but in this case highlighted and read. Well,
what caught my attention was I had, you know, since
my experience with the Yarine tracks, and you know, I've
been to to the Caucasus Mountains and first hand examined
footprint casts that were there and photos of footprints that

(01:44:28):
were witnessed by an entire village, you know, interviewed, talked
to the sort of town naturalists. That was the professional
guide and outdoorsmen. And anyway, the point is I had
I had over the years collected examples because obviously sasquatch

(01:44:49):
did not evolve here. It evolved in Asia and then
expanded its range into North America, as did so many
other species of mammal. Seventy five percent of the name
native mammals in North America can trace their origins back
to Asia seventy five percent. People don't appreciate the traffic
across and it wasn't always a frozen arctic wasteland. It

(01:45:14):
was often a verdant blanket of mixed deciduous coniferous forest
all the way from China to well to southeast you know, Alabama.
There are plant species, correlated plant species and animals. We've
got fossils of little red pandas the little raccoon. If

(01:45:36):
a little raccoon sized panda bear can make it across, well,
make it that even that see even even that choice
of words, if it can expand its range through available habitat.
In other words, it doesn't have to lean into the
blizzard and brave the wide out. It has habitat that

(01:45:59):
its familiar with. That now is unbroken, continuous stretching across
the land bridge. And if it can, we find its
fossils in Washington and down in southeastern the United States.
I can't remember what state was, Alabama or North Carolina
or somewhere. There are red panda teeth that have been

(01:46:22):
found from the place to see. Why not an eight
hundred pound gorilla. It's wipeople and can you know, can
loc them up quite efficiently. I mean, it doesn't have
to even see. This is another thing people think that, well,
you've got to be this migratory creature in order to
expand into new continents. No, you just have to each

(01:46:44):
each generation just has to extend its range a little
bit into the available habitat. It's like, and it's worth repeating.
One of my colleagues, and one that takes a very
negative view of this whole subject matter, wrote a book
about on the subject of paleoanthropology, and one chapter on
Homo erectus. He dubbed it the migrating eight migrating hominin

(01:47:10):
because and it was denoting the expansion of this now
this hominin that has kind of attained a new grade
of evolution and a degree of bipedalism and longer legs,
that it could march across Asia and end up in

(01:47:31):
Southeast Asia. And I said, you know, do this exercise
for me. You look up the distance from a site
in East Africa to a site with Homo erectus in
Southeast Asia, and then compare the dates and then divide
that time span by that distance and how many miles

(01:47:57):
each year or break it down to each ten years,
so each generation, how many miles does each generation have
to move? And it works out to be like between
six to nine miles. I mean, that's that's your kids
leaving home, finding a mate, moving to the other side

(01:48:18):
of the mountain to get it out of mom and
dad's hair or vice versa, and start and building your
own hut. And then the next ten years your kids
do the same thing and there it doesn't require any
migratory behavior. It doesn't require any locomotive adaptations for long
distance walking or running. It's just a matter. I mean,

(01:48:39):
we don't see those in the red panda deey. You know,
if people would just stop and think, for that's why
I shouldn't laugh at them. But I mean, it's just
the argument is so inane when you think about it, becau,
especially when when they use that then to throw up
in front of a rational discuss of other hypotheses, other evidence,

(01:49:03):
like the expansion of a bipedal giant ape like Gigantopithecus maybe,
or a robust australopithsy and gone giant as it spread
across Asia and made its way into North America. You know,
it doesn't require packing your little knapsack on the end
of your stick and hoping a freight train. You know,

(01:49:25):
it's not like that, that romantic scenario of exploring what's
over the horizon. They didn't care what's over the horizon.
They just cared what their next meal was, you know. Yeah,
So anyway, so that's that's just one. Now I've lost
my trade of thought where we got started down that path?

(01:49:49):
Can you remember if I lost you too?

Speaker 4 (01:49:54):
We changed directions in there in my brain?

Speaker 2 (01:49:56):
I know, notorious.

Speaker 4 (01:49:58):
That's perfectly fine, right, I.

Speaker 2 (01:50:02):
Will we cover some good stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:50:04):
Have you ever encountered any vocalizations or some imaging that Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:50:10):
Yes, yeah, on several occasions. I mean I've heard everything
ranging from a whistle, a very distinctive whistle, you know,
almost almost like whistling through your teeth. Not not really,
I get more the impression it's a whistle that's originating
down in their throat, like a bird call. And I've

(01:50:36):
also heard the you know what, what I would describe
as a banshee call a scream, a long distance scream,
which is more of a I mean, not not like
a blood curdling, a woman being attacked scream, but rather
a long drawn out yell owl. But but but higher pitched,

(01:50:58):
you know, than not like the roar of a lion
or something.

Speaker 4 (01:51:01):
Or it was.

Speaker 2 (01:51:03):
It was pretty dramatic. I mean it was it was
quite some distance because it had a very trailing off effect.
I've heard what I think was tooth hopping where they
bite down hard. Because at first my first thought was
it was two rocks clacking, and I thought, well, that

(01:51:26):
just really seems weird. Why would it bother to pick
up two rocks. I mean, there were rocks in the
in the vicinity where this occurred, there were lots of
cobbles from a stream. We were actually adjacent to an
old stream bed. And but then I read and so
at first I thought that's what it must have been
they picked up. And it was responded to by a

(01:51:46):
second one on the other side of our camp. Yeah,
so there were clearly two, and one was signaling to
the other, you know that you know I'm here. Blah blah. Well,
then I read John Bender Nagel's book and he describes
an eyewitness encounter in which the witness had a very
clear view of the creature as it was retreating, and

(01:52:09):
then it glanced over its shoulder, pivoted the waist a bit,
you know, and glanced back, and as it looked at them,
it clacked its teeth. She said she saw it bite clack, clack,
you know. And it's interesting because bears do that when
they're nervous or anxious or intimidating gorilla's chimps. Baboons do that.

(01:52:34):
Baboons will yawn this big gaping yon to display their wares.
They're putting their arsenal on display. And then they as
they terminate the yawn, they will bite down hard a
couple two or three times, clack click clack with their molars.
And so I'm more comfortable with the notion and that's

(01:52:57):
what was happening. They were clacking their teeth. But I
don't know for sure. I mean, that's just my that
in that case, that is an opinion because it's not
based on that well, it's based indirectly on some comparative
day that put it that way. It just seems more
likely than the manipulation of rocks. Although now, having said that,
there was a very interesting location.

Speaker 4 (01:53:20):
Uh oh, did I lose you? I lost them?

Speaker 2 (01:53:24):
Yeah, I apologize. I my laptops started to slip and
as I reached up to stabilize it, my thumb came
down on the power button. Unfortunately, let's just cut it off.
So let's see we were saying vocalizations, right, And so

(01:53:45):
having said that, I thought it perhaps a little unlikely
that they were using their hands to manipulate these rocks,
because there's there's reason to believe based on hand prints,
based on the knuckle prints that I that I have
a copy of the originals of the thumb is not

(01:54:05):
as dexterous, not as opposable as ours. And so that
fine manipulation, But grabbing a rock is not. That's a
power grip, that's not a precision grip. And the reason
I qualify it is because there's a really, really fascinating
instance of a nest site that was discovered on the

(01:54:27):
Olympic Peninsula. The Olympic Project became aware of it when
a timber cruiser was actually surveying out timber for harvest
and he stumbled on way back beyond a gated road
and probably three miles off the road. It's a real
challenge to get there. I've been there a couple of
times and it's quite a hike and bushwhacking through some

(01:54:51):
dense undergrowth. But anyway, the point is there was a
series of nests. Next to one of the nests were
two cobbles, presumably retrieved from the stream which was below
down a three hundred foot steep slope, and there was
signs of percussion. You know, if you took two rocks

(01:55:11):
with it had a normal kind of finish with a
dark color, and you pound those together repeatedly. Looked at
where you pound, you'd see the points of percussion. You'd
see the chips and the light color where it where
it strikes. So they were found right next to one
of the nests. One can't help but wonder where those

(01:55:33):
You used to make a sound to make an audible
signal to someone else, to another another group, another band,
to other individuals converging on the spot there were multiple nests.
I kind of think it was a birthing event because
there was evidence of small, elevated nest that when I

(01:55:54):
saw it, I mean the first I could couldn't help
but immediately think it looked just like a bassinette. And
because we rarely find nests like this, and so that
begs the question why this set of nests, Well, must
it's almost since they're not showing up regularly. It must
be an unusual circumstance that has dictated this kind of

(01:56:19):
congress of nests. And what could be more likely, perhaps
than a female in labor, giving birth and then taking
you know, benefit from the companionship and support of some
of her conspecifics in that in that region, that location.

(01:56:42):
Interesting interesting case. But so yeah, so I've heard, you know,
some things like that. As far as my experience with vocalizations,
the best person to talk about vocalizations now is David Ellis,
who is a member of the Olympic Project, and he's

(01:57:02):
done some really educated himself, sort of self tutored, but
he interacts with many chat groups, professional bioacoustics chat groups,
and you know, he's he's gotten some online training, I believe,
and and studied widely, and so he can create the sonograph,

(01:57:26):
so you can quantify and visualize a vocalization and make
very precise comparisons on the basis of those metrics with
you know, a library and archive of known sounds and
other unknown, indeterminate identity sounds. So it's a fascinating area.

(01:57:53):
He's in the process of writing a book, and I'm
in the process of upgrading my chapter for my book.
So I've been picking his brain and you know, not
to steal too much of his thunder at this point,
but I've also been badgering him to write a paper
for the Relative Commonoid Inquiries, summarizing the cases he's worked
on so far. And it's I mean again, it's just

(01:58:15):
like with the footprints. You know, if you have the
wherewithal to appreciate those sonograms and the distinctions and what
uh you know biological organism can and can't create with
their vocal track, then you're left with this the same statement.

(01:58:35):
Something is making those vocalizations that aren't readily attributable to
any common form of wildlife out there, So you've got
to count for that.

Speaker 4 (01:58:44):
Yeah, we've been out about two hours. Can you go
a little longer.

Speaker 2 (01:58:48):
I'm about spent. I almost didn't get back on with you,
but I didn't want to leave you hang, and I
thought you could, you could wrap it up and make
my give my goodbyes. But I've I've about talked myself
out too.

Speaker 4 (01:59:04):
I had some more questions. Maybe in a future we
can have you back, yes, in a few months and
continue the conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:59:11):
Happy to do that. I appreciate you well.

Speaker 4 (01:59:13):
I will let you get some rest, and I will
shut things down here. But like I say, it's been
an honor to have you here, and I enjoyed this
topic very much.

Speaker 2 (01:59:23):
Well, thank you. As you can see, it doesn't take
a lot of prodding to get me jabbering on. So
there's there's just so much it's it's hard to do
it justice in short soundbites and so as opposed to
the brief interviews or brief appearances on the television documentaries,

(01:59:44):
these formats give us an opportunity to discuss in much
greater depth. And it's so I appreciate the opportunity, and
I hope your audience finds it informative and interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:59:55):
I believe they will, And I will let you get
some rest and then I'll contact you later on maybe
all right, a few months you haven't met back off,
all right, good night, good luck.

Speaker 5 (02:00:29):
H researchers have unveiled groundbreaking contact lenses that let wearers

(02:01:18):
see in the dark even with their eyes closed. Developed
by a team at the University of Science and Technology
of China and reported in Cell, these innovative lenses use
up conversion nanoparticles embedded in soft polymer. These particles absorb
infrared light, which our eyes normally can't detect, and converted

(02:01:42):
into visible colors like red, green, and blue. During human trials,
participants successfully identified flickering infrared signals engaged their direction. Surprisingly,
perception improved when eyes were closed. The eyelid filters out
visible light but allows more near infrared. Through Earlier tests

(02:02:07):
on mice confirmed infrared vision two with brain scans showing
activity in visual regions. These lenses don't need batteries and
they're worn like regular contacts, making them far less bulky
than conventional night vision goggles. Lead scientists Professor Yan Chu

(02:02:28):
says the tech holds promise not only for nighttime visibility
in fog or rescue missions, but also for helping those
with color blindness by translating visible wavelengths into hues they
can distinguish. There are still challenges. Current versions struggle to
detect low natural infrared or resolve sharp details, so researchers

(02:02:54):
are now improving nanoparticle efficiency and clarity. That's it for
dark matter new Just catch up with us on the
Midnight Frequency Facebook page. From Memphis, Tennessee. I'm Joshua Stark.

Speaker 4 (02:03:55):
Welcome back, Thanks Terry. Wanted tune in this evening with
our guests, mister Meldram. Next week, I guess will be
Jason McCleod. Topic will be paranormal and spiritual realms. We
look forward to seeing you. That'll be next Friday in
June twenty seventh, nine pm to eleven pm Central daylight time.
Jason McCleod. So everyone next week. Until then, explore the

(02:04:19):
unknown

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