Plastic Plesiosaur Podcast
Plastic Plesiosaur Podcast
The Last Shadow Of The Yeti - Featuring Darren Naish
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This episode is all about the Yeti.
Monster Quest goes out on a special 90min adventure to find the Yeti, so we follow in turn and devote the whole episode to the Himalayan giant.
Welcome to the Plastic Please Restore Podcast.
SPEAKER_01We are your hosts, Trey the Explainer.
SPEAKER_03And me, Miles Grebb.
SPEAKER_01A podcast about the natural world.
SPEAKER_03Things that people claim are part of the natural world.
SPEAKER_01And things that used to be.
SPEAKER_03Okay, Trey, we are back with another episode, and this one is a special one, my friend.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yes, it's a special hour and 30-minute long episode of Monster Quest. They got an extra, extra 30 minutes here for us of worth of investigation.
SPEAKER_03We won't have any extra stories this time because we gotta dig deep into one of the core foundational cryptids, the Yeti. And uh Monster Quest had an hour and a half long episode on this guy where I think, you know, we talked about some of the new Monster Quest show last time, right? And how they just like are just telling stories with a bunch of AI videos and not actually questing. And this episode, for what it's worth, they do quest. They do try. We we'll talk about how successful that try is, but you know, they get out there and you know they they do their best.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. Like uh and and this is a this is a big cryptid, you know. Like this is like one of the most the most famous cryptids, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's about six to eight foot tall.
SPEAKER_01So the big gosh darn it. Gosh darn it. Miles, you're always super sharp. You're always more sharp than me. You're always able to make a quiff faster than I can I can like think it. Gosh darn. I was like referring- there's there's the big three, right? There's Bigfoot, there's Loctus Monster, there's Yeti. Um, and like Abominal Snowman like shows up in movies, right? You get like Monster Monsters Inc., you know, he shows up in there.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Yellow Snow joke, even.
SPEAKER_01Yellow Snow joke. So yeah, it's like I guess I understand why they invested so much. And they don't return to the Yeti either, right? It's not like Bigfoot or Luctus Monster, where like they're they come back to it, they're like, actually, we're not done with it. Actually, there's a little a little bit more questing. Um, but yes, but yeah, yeah. We have a special guest today, too, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um you want to introduce yourself? Drumro. Hello. Hi.
SPEAKER_05Hello, my name's Darren. And uh Yeah, Darren Nash, yeah, that's me. And um, thank you very much for having me. Um uh look forward to talking to both of you. It's an honor to be.
SPEAKER_03It's great to have you on the show. We had you on for the Greenland Shark episode last time, which is kind of a random one for you, but you know, we do them in order, and you were available, so that's what it was.
SPEAKER_05Uh yes. And yet, uh yeah, Yetis. Who doesn't, you know, if you know if you know a bit about monsters, you know a bit about cryptosology, you're almost destined to know a set of things about the Yeti.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05I have to say that I always feel guilty for there's a set of things about the Yeti that I don't know, and every single time I go and try and find out about it. The actual origins, this uh peculiar crossover of mountaineering history and uh Europeans desperately wanting to go to the, you know, using the Yeti legend as a kind of like a hook to inspire interest. Yeah, alleged sightings that start very, very late in Victorian times, like you know, pretty t close to 1900, and then the whole theosophy, mysticism, orientalism, uh kind of sort of spiritualist take on the Yeti. It's like where does it actually it's like the vision of what the Yeti is meant to be like from the Western flesh and blood um culture? When does that actually come in? I I think that's really hard to pin down, and that's the thing that I always feel a bit guilty about. I wish I should know more about that, and I don't.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's difficult, as we'll get into. Um, a lot of people try to be like, well, this is the origin of the Yeti. It comes from this culture or this word, or it's translated as this, but actually, it's so many things.
SPEAKER_01Um it's even murkier than like Bigfoot, you know. Like Bigfoot's pretty murky already, your Sasquatch, where you go look at like where does the origin of the word come from? And like Yeti is like even worse. Maybe it's the the remoteness of the region or something like that.
SPEAKER_05Well, I'm sure you know there's a but there's a bunch of Yetis, aren't there? So there's like the Yeti is supposed to be there's three or four uh Tibetan terms, mete and another one, pet uh big I think it's big into P, and the Yete is meant to be kind of a corruption of the middle one of those. So there's there's kind of like this um yeah, this uh vague set of terms that describe very vaguely defined animals of differing sizes, and it's it's not clear what they are. And certainly in the you know, like ancient lore and um uh paintings on monastery walls and stuff, they are not depicting a hominid, they're not depicting like the classic Yeti that we air quotes believe in today. It's more kind of like a vague bear-like predator that might that might be capable of bipedality. Um and and yeah, so like yeah, I I think it's the um as is as is common for so many cryptids, the flesh and blood version of it that's been um you know is now canonical in cryptozoology, you know, is made real by but Hoovermans and whatnot in the 50s. Um that's uh a specific as an extraction of a specific part of a larger and blurrier, more nebulous um yeah, lore.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think I think we have largely two different spheres of influence, right? We have like this this sphere of influence, which is like the Himalayan people and the people like down towards the valley that have their traditions and cultures of different wild and hairy man stories or like trickster men stories, which you know are common throughout the world, um, like even like down the valley, but you have the Nanoku stories, right? Which are like these um, they're almost like Looney Tune type characters, they're like these large hairy people that do things like the opposite of humans, right? They have all these stories we can get into later, or you go up the mountain, we have a lot of the um uh folklore that you just mentioned, and then you have the separate sphere, which is like the post-Darwinian European, let's go into the unknown and discover animals. And if there's any hints of stories, they probably point to you know flesh and blood creatures that we can find and discover. And it's like this uh shrinking land of the lost type um escapade um to explore the unknown. And as they come in contact with the culture from the first sphere, they want to, you know, what I always call white or fitting those cultural stories into this post-Darwinian like look into the unknown. And so it gets messy because that first sphere influence is wide and you know, folklore is and they aren't actually talking about the same kind of thing. And so you have this, oh, these people talk about the Yeti, but it's like what Yeti? What does that mean? There isn't one Yeti and there never was.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Like it blew my mind realizing that that Yetis, uh like even see that's the thing, is there's so many different types of Yetis. There's like the pop culture yeti too, that is like a white, a white furred creature, and it's just like nothing support. Like there's there's no there's no like actual like sources that that support like a white yeti.
SPEAKER_05Rankin' Rankin Bass Yeti.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Which is massive.
SPEAKER_05Is that the right am I thinking of the right? I'm thinking of the Rudolph. Yep, that's Rackin' Bass.
SPEAKER_03They've got the the Christmas specials as well as um Last Unicorn and The Hobbit and everything.
SPEAKER_05There you go. That's that one, yeah. Because I I think I think I've seen it said it might be in the Loxton and Prodero Abominable Science. So someone somewhere has said that like, yeah, there is no that that hairy snow beast, white snow beast version of the Yeti until some specific.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's in a um, so like the Donald Duck um comics are more popular in Europe than America, and he is in one of those early, but it is actually post the Rack and Bass one. So it's somewhat probable that the Rack and Bass one did originate it. It's often cited. I I could imagine um like the art direction making the thing white uh because it is in the snow.
SPEAKER_01Because of the snowman, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because it I could I could imagine it happening before, and then the rack and bass one is the first major one. You know, I'm sure if someone did some hard research, they might find it, but it is often cited as the first major successful like white yeti in pop culture.
SPEAKER_01So yeah. Because you're right, Darren. Darren, I was reading your rereading your book, I think it was uh Hunting Monsters. It might have been Hunting Monsters or it might have been the the one that you co-wrote with uh Kosman and Conway. Um and yeah, you you point out that there's like there really isn't a uh yeti isn't a Tibetan word. It's like this weird corruption, and there's in the in like the language, there's like there's you you said then there's dust te or dusted like a big reddish predator, probably a bear, mate, a small, more human-like creature, and then there's like another word that is like miche, like man bear. Um, so there's like all there's like there's all these like different words, and then like westerners seem to have come in and been like, well, all these words mean yeti, or like abominable stomach.
SPEAKER_05Or the or that it's different species, and there's three at least three different species, which I I know uh I I think in um Hooverman's uh 1986 list, he says um well, you know, like these kinds of creatures, there's there's uh there's I mean, how many terms are there for vaguely human-like wild man type, you know, hairy beasts? There's thousands of terms. Oh, yeah. And he comes along and says um that the and I I can I can't remember off the top of my head, but you know, he'll say stuff like oh the the the the chemoze and the migwai of Myanmar are clearly the same animal as the you know zute of Nepal and Tibet, which is the same as the Al Masti of China, but but then the the bagwa of Malaysia is the same as the Nietzsche Poi of Northern India, which is the same as the Orang Darlin of Bangladesh. It's like uh I'm not sure that we've actually got enough uh you know sort of very specific the bits of information you would need to really connect the dots in that way, Bernard Hoovermans. So um yes, uh that's that's a that's a big part of it, isn't it? It's like this this uh uh dramatic uh statement of confidence. Because you're right.
SPEAKER_01I'm like thinking of if somebody did this to like European folklore or something, they're like goblins and and ogres and and trolls and uh pixies are all the same species, like same species or something like that.
SPEAKER_05Uh Charles Paxton, who's best known for his research on uh sea and lake monsters, yeah, he he wrote an article at one point saying that there was a I think he called it like the DD effect, the the Dungeons and Dragons effect, where like there's an approach to yeah, again, these like poorly defined um you know sort of monsters, an attempt to say, oh, that one has got you know this specific you know, and you know, in D D there's like you know, it's it's fighting strength and it's kill power and it's uh fighting stats. Like you as if you can say that for each one of these with with confidence, and if it's not already clear, you totally can't. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well they they do this thing where they just try to collect as much things that could possibly point to it as possible, and then if you have enough in that collection, that must be some kind of evidence.
SPEAKER_01There must be some type of core in there, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But you know, junk in, junk out. Um but they they they didn't learn that. Um yeah, because like even like Monster Quest does this a lot, and obviously cryptosology has done this the whole time. They'll they'll be like, oh, here's a sighting of a five-foot-tall orange um upright creature, and here's a sighting of a nine-foot-tall, uh, gray-colored creature. Um, one of them is killing a yak, and the other one's uh known vegetarian that rips off trees and eats the bark. And those are both examples of a sighting and are both like confirming that there's some kind of ape man, you know, and it's it's like, well, these are pretty distinctive sounding creatures to me. And then they'll come back with, oh, maybe there are two species. So, like, okay, so now you're saying that there's two unknown ape species in this region. And it's like, I don't know. And I it asks for a lot. But um when we when we get into the Geti tray, uh the when you know what I what I like to do is try to tell the stories in order. I always think it's uh pretty interesting because a lot of times, you know, you're born in the 20th century, at some point you already have a lot of the cultural take of this thing's real. Um, you know, pop culture storytellers have gotten hold of it, whatever is the most mimetic becomes sticky and like you know, it develops its like persona and its apologetics over time. Um, but if you look at things kind of uh in the timeline, you can kind of see, well, hey, this doesn't add up or it adds up in an interesting way. And there's like a there's a possible really early hit in this timeline that it's a very, very uh uh Trey-based hit.
SPEAKER_01So you you hit me up as soon as you found this, and I was like, this is like the most me thing I've ever seen. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I was like, well, Trey has to tell this part of the stuff.
SPEAKER_01I was like, oh my gosh, like yeah, there's a claim. So they call there like on some um websites. Um I actually found many sources making this claim too. There I saw NBC News, I saw the Smithsonian magazine, I saw Life Science, I saw National Geographic making this claim that the earliest like the oldest sighting of the Yeti or encounter with Yetis can be traced to uh Alexander the Great. Uh Alexander Darren laughs in the background.
SPEAKER_00We'll get to we'll get to have you heard this, Darren?
SPEAKER_05Let's say again.
SPEAKER_03Have you heard this story?
SPEAKER_05Um I don't know. Oh no, no, continue.
SPEAKER_01I I hadn't heard it until Miles sent it to me like a couple months ago, um, which is surprising because it seems like it would be right up my alley. But it's such a it's such a bad claim that I think not even uh major cryptozoologists believe it, but I'll get into that. Um, yes, there is a claim that that popular science magazines and websites quote a lot. Just when they're in randomly too, when they're talking about like yeti hair samples or something like the developing story, they'll mention that, like, yes, the oldest version of this is is recorded by Alexander the Great, where the story goes and it's very vague and weird in some of the sources, where it's like when Alexander the Great was crossing, he was in invading uh India and he was crossing the Hindu Kush. Um, he demanded to see a Yeti, like he had heard about the Yetis from locals, and the locals captured a Yeti and then like brought it to him, but then it died because it was it didn't like the environment or something like that. Like it it got sick. And I was and when I heard this, uh, I was like, huh? I was like, I this is I've never heard that. And I'm like a big like Alexander the Great nerd. Like I've read all the the historical sources on it, and I have like just straight up never heard the story. So I was like, Where where are they getting this? Because there's nothing that like resembles it either. So like I was a there's like only like a handful of ancient histories surviving of like the life of Alexander the Great, so it's kind of easy to be like a completionist and like read through all of them and know what happens. Um and so like I've done that, and I was like, that's not in there. So I was like, maybe this is like coming from the weird medieval legends of Alexander. There's like things called like the Alexander romance, which were like these um stories written in like the like early Middle Ages to and sometimes to late Middle Ages that were you that like are basically like King Arthur like tales of like Alexander the Great's life that are like really weird, and like have him going up into heaven by like riding a griffon and like fighting giant crabs and stuff. Like it's totally like it's totally like fantasy. It's like it's like Conan kind of like stuff. And I was like, maybe it's in there, but as it turns out, like I found the source, and the source is like everybody's apparently quoting this one blog. This one, this one, like uh, what is it called? Let's let me see. Let me let me find this guy so I can call him out here. History news network, this like random blog that that people are quoting, uh like National Geographic apparently quoted, and then NBC, Smithsonian, and Life Science quoted National Geographic. So like you have people not really checking on like the source. And he the history history news network like quotes it and talks about like how they capture, like in one of the hist in in Arion's history, like one of the five histories of Alexander, they they captured these feral like wild men that have like long nails and like teeth and and are hairy and stuff.
SPEAKER_03And I was like I have the I have the caption if you want me to read it.
SPEAKER_01I I have it here too, where and I was like, I was like, oh, I know what they're talking about. Like as soon as I read that, I was like, I know what they're talking about. Like the reason I didn't click is because like none of the version of the story that's gotten out is like where is is is what is actually recorded in Ariane's like in a basis of Alexander.
SPEAKER_03Um Trey of like the Moby Dick story we did where everybody quoted the Mocha Dick store, then nobody looked at the primary source.
SPEAKER_01Yes, nobody looks at the primary source.
SPEAKER_03All these YouTube videos, Nat Geo, everybody just quotes the thing and nobody like the source is there, go look at the source. I don't understand. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_01People are so lazy. Like that's the thing, is like I realize that people are like even like life science writers, like people that I'd assume have some background and I don't know, they went to they went to to get their bachelor's or something to so that they could write about scientific stories. Um just like they don't they don't bother looking into they got deadlines to meet, they got deadlines to meet. It's lazy.
SPEAKER_03What does it say?
SPEAKER_01Okay, it's okay. So, first of all, the incident in it is it's it's okay. There's the three things. It does not occur in the Hindu Kush. So I don't know how that aspect wrinkle got in the story. Um, it doesn't even involve Alexander, and then there's they're not Yetis. So, like, so here's the thing is so so Arion's uh history of Alexander, it quotes a lot of lost histories. Um, like that's the thing, is all our histories of Alexander are just quotations of of other people's histories. There's no really contemporary account that survives. So, like Arion's is like this hodgepodge of all these histories that are now lost to us. So he is quoting um Nearchus's Indica, which is a book that was written by Nearchus, who was Alexander the Great's like admiral, and one of like the few generals to survive like the successor wars and to like sit down and write a history. So he's like a very like in the ancient world, he's treated as like a very great source on the life of Alexander, in particular, like India itself. Like like later, later Roman historians quote him a lot, like that this type of plant is grown in India, or this the the kings in India are this and the kingdoms look like this, like that type of stuff. So Arian is quoting his voyage back, where they're following the close the coastline. Um and on the coastline of like modern day Pakistan, there's like a barren stretch that Nyarchus says is inhabited by a people called like the Ichthyophagi, the fish eaters. And like the in and you'd see it on on old maps that that because the world was not really well known, you would they would just label this region as like fish eater region. And so, yes, they I'll I'll narrow I'll narrate what he says here about the fish eaters. They got past the country of the fish eaters. Um the fish eaters live on fish, and hence their name. Only a few of them fish, like yeah, yeah, very creative name. Oh, and for the most part, um yeah, they they have boat, they they only have a few popper boats, they have any skill, uh they have skill of catching fish. And here's the thing is like they eat them raw just as they take them from the water, they dry them in the sun till they're quite like like soft, and then pound them into flour to make bread from them. Um they feed fish, these fish cakes to everything, their flocks are fed on fish. Um, the country has no meadows and produces no grass. Those of them who inhabit the desert parts of the country, treeless as it is, and with no cultivated parts, find all their sustenance in this fishing. Uh I'll keep on going. Yeah, but here's like an interesting part. The richest among them have built huts. They collect the bones of any large fish which the sea casts up and use them to in place of beams. Doors that make them doors that the doors they make from any flat bones which they pick up. Um, but the greater part of them and the poorest sort have huts made of the fish's backbones. So you can kind of like see that the this is not a Yeti, you know, like this are very clearly not yeti. These are of people that that Nearchus encountered in a very remote part of the world, a barren stretch of the world that rely solely on fishing.
SPEAKER_03And because the one passage that they like to point out a lot is uh 24.9 when it says, Um, those captured were hairy, not only on their heads, but the rest of their bodies. Their nails are rather like beast claws, and they use their nails, according to reports, as if they were iron tools. When they tore asunder their fishes and even their less solid kinds of wood, everything else was cleft with sharp stones. For iron they did not possess. Their clothing they wore skins of animals, some even the skins of their larger fishes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. So so there, yeah, like that's where like that's where people try like that. Was the misquotation where somebody has taken that quote and removed the aspects of it that talk. About like animal skins, and then mention like huts and and tools where they use like nets and fishing tools and stuff. And they they they they and they take the hairy all over, and they're like, Oh, that means they must have like long hair, but maybe they're just like particularly hairy, you know.
SPEAKER_03And so past and past this era, even in the monster quest themselves, they show a lot of the tapestries, like the ML different MLA culture tapestries, and they show um the creatures on there that they call Yeti, and they often have tools, but they'll they'll sometimes be dressed and have um different weapons or holding skulls and stuff, and they call those Yetis. But you know, that's really not the creature that people seem to look for or think might be real.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so to try and to make Yetis out of that uh ichthyophagy account is very odd because the the the supposed yetiness there is the like the least important of the traits, right? Right, like because they eat fish, you know, yeah, and like build huts out of uh I mean, you know, you can imagine that well that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, you could imagine that is maybe inspired by reality, but the the hairiness is interesting because um now this has been referenced in a TV documentary about the Yaren, not specifically about the Yeti. Um peoples of all kinds, like we all know, different people around the world vary in hairiness, how much body hair they've got. And if you are part of a group of people that often doesn't have much body hair, and you see some like you know, insanely there are there are groups of people like Europeans that can be insanely hairy. Like imagine if you're you know, imagine if you're from some like very smooth skin, naturally smooth skin race, and some one day you discover there are these like shaggy bear people, which they really are. Um you might actually describe them as unusually hairy.
SPEAKER_03I'm not sort of saying that's that's but I'm I'm a bit of a shaggy bear person myself.
SPEAKER_01Miles, miles. You ever see the you ever see like the the uh wood cuts of uh of Japanese people meeting like Portuguese for like the first time? Yeah, and they they look like like the I think they called them like dog-faced men or something like that, or hairy dog men. I think that's the word that Japanese people chose. They're like, wow, these weird hairy guys. So like, yeah, yeah, it's it's kind of clear that these are just like a different group of people that Greeks just didn't have didn't encounter yet. And they and that and live in a very like more simple mode of society that doesn't have metallurgy or um like much farming and stuff, like it sounds like they're pastoralists, you know.
SPEAKER_03Largely a ridiculous hit for them being uh Yeti. Um but an interesting one, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Uh and and here's the thing is it in most cryptozoologists like I I I don't know, I saw Lauren Coleman call this out where he just like this is a kind of like people that really don't know their cryptozoology seem to say it. But here's an interesting thing, Miles. On Lauren Coleman's blog about it, he was like, it might be a relic Neanderthal, though. And I was like, Oh no. I was like, oh no.
SPEAKER_05I'm surprised it didn't go down the have you have you read the Murbeings book? Oh by um Oh, we haven't.
SPEAKER_01We we talked about it briefly. I've not seen the Murbeing book.
SPEAKER_05Oh wow, that's okay. We should we won't talk about that now, but that that takes anything to do with uh, you know, like vaguely peoply shaped things that might wear a skin and fish to like are like are they not surviving oreopithocids that have adapted to you survived from the Miocene, this aquatic group of apes, and and they don seal skins or the skins of you know various aquatic animals and even augment them with like venomous spines, like jellyfish spine, jellyfish uh stinging cells and bioluminescent stuff. And um sounds believable to me. Uh there's a lot of stuff going on in there. Uh Lauren Coleman and yeah, sorry, sorry, go on.
SPEAKER_03You're fine. Uh Trey came up to my house recently and I showed him that band TED Talk with the aquatic ape woman, and we uh we had a good laugh at that.
SPEAKER_01We got Elaine Morgan. Let me see. What was her name?
SPEAKER_05Aquatic Elaine. So it's not uh the the aquatic ape proponent is the late Elaine Morgan, but I did what is it was it her?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. She has like a band TED Talk on it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and we were watching it. Remember, we were watching it, Miles, and like she was making these claims, and even in even us who are like not like super experts on it, we're like, what are you talking about? Primates don't have body fat.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, she's like, primates don't have body fat, and like only an aquatic species would have that.
SPEAKER_01I was like, I saw a fat orangutan once. Like I'm pretty sure I saw that.
SPEAKER_05All of these claims about human exceptionalism, um, it does not take much knowledge of non-human primates to yeah, to find that that's never been true.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and we've known Yeah, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. So yeah, certainly all the aquatic ape claims, yeah, compl now well known to be completely bogus, but um, but it's true of like a whole bunch of other things about about primates. I won't start talking about them because I'll go off on a tangent.
SPEAKER_01Miles, also people have used like some very desperate people have used Pliny the Elder's natural history um for Yeti stuff too, where there's like a single line in Pliny where he talks about how there might there might be satyrs in the mountains east of India, and they're they're very swift, they run on all fours, and then sometimes stand upright. Um and it just it kind of sounds like I think I think most people think it's some kind of like gibbon or ape or something. But then again, it's also like Pliny the Elder, and it's like he has all kinds of stuff in it, you know, he's got like like one-footed men and and people with with faces on their chests and and wind feeders, so it's like he's not describing anything that he saw, you know, he's describing weird, weird tales. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I've run into that guy all the time in my historic research. I'm always like, oh, this fucking guy. But anyways, back on the Yeti. So that those are like some early possible counts. You know, I don't think we can detail um some of the uh like people in cultures around the Himalaya stuff as well, because it's not as well documented in like Western sources. But needless to say, there are a lot of different cultural traditions um about these creatures, just like there is anywhere in the world for dragon stories or wild men stories or impish creatures or even fae stories, right? Like cultures tell folklore, right? And um folklore being wild men is is nothing new, you know. Welsh stories have wild men. It I don't think it means that there are wild men um on the island. So but for some reason when they are away from these cultures, they tend to be believed by Europeans to be more likely to be true, which I can understand because they're like, you know, it seems exotic to you, but I don't think it gives it any more scientific credence. Um but then we get the time when Europeans actually start actually writing and claiming to see this creature and start reporting evidence in like journals and papers and stuff. Um do you want to begin the story when this starts to happen in the 1800s, Darren?
SPEAKER_05Oh. Um well, like I say, I'm a bit vague on the exact origins. I know that there's uh there are a couple of accounts from Victorian times. There's one from I think 1899, where um yeah, it's it's very much connected to romanticism about the exploration of the Himalayas and thereabouts, isn't it? The the fact that yeah, there's there's these eternal snows, there's these uh giant summits that no person has ever summited, and um, yeah, there is some kind of uh wild man that um yeah, people say they see its prints. It's standard stuff, who doesn't know this? Yeah, they say it's they see its prints, they might hear its cries, and they might see this uh shaggy beast um yeah, somewhere somewhere up in the somewhere up in the mountains, and of course um that really becomes, I would say, internationally well known, certainly by the thirties when you got the first uh efforts to scale um Mount Everest. Uh yeah, it's they they they're clearly you know the list of famous mountaineers um who who are themselves. Like I have to say as a side thing here that mountaineers are a really interesting group of people because they're not just like kind of hardcore, you know, explorers that have got all this kit and go on these ridiculous and dangerous missions, but there's a long tradition of um European in the broader sense of the term, mount mountaineers who you know work with the the Sherpers and and have like this this they tend to be very, very wealthy and very well educated, learned people, and they've got this like massive interest in the hi the history of everything about you know montane exploration. And I think that also connects to the writings about the Yeti because every mountaineer is um they're not all men, but mostly men, you know, h that he is also like gen generally a uh a historian of the subject and writes about you know all the exploits and all the stories that come from the locals and all the mythology attached to the peaks and stuff.
SPEAKER_03So um yeah, it seems the mountaineers are a bit more of um a wizen group than like the Percy Fawcett type characters. Um their writings seem a bit more informed.
SPEAKER_05I think, yeah, like so someone like Percy Fawcett is obviously using tall tales to just spin yarns about like the the great adventures he went on. And when these guys, your Eric Shiptons and Edmund Hillary's and whatnot, when they're when they are mentioning that they're doing it in a more um you know, sage sort of prosaic way. It's like there's the possibility this creature might exist, and we do take seriously, you know, these local claims, and um it's still a poorly known, uh unexplored region, and who knows, you know. Um we we do have these tales of um people seeing um yeah, possible pieces of evidence. And and we all know there are certain famous people, and I'm thinking of Sir David Attenborough in particular, who who like you know, make out that the things that have been seen, and here we're moving forward to like the 50s. Obviously, 51 is the the famous Eric Shipton uh footprint um and alleged track way that's alleged to go to the footprint, but totally doesn't. Um that's we'll we'll get it we'll get into that in a minute. Yeah, sorry, spoiler. No, it's all right.
SPEAKER_03Spoiler, Yeti may not be real. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05That's that's when you've got the claim that yeah, people may be seeing stuff that's like legit, man, and um yeah, this and and oh, and and it's connected to things that we know for definite existed, like Gigantopithecus, which uh uh was obviously known, well well known scientifically today, but you know, was known scientifically by the 50s.
SPEAKER_03They're sure they're sure happy that we found uh Gigantopithecus Blackie. Like it's it's very useful for them. Like that and the cilio can't, they just can't shut up about yeah. Um but yeah, so uh what is often cited as like the first like Western report, other than Alexander fighting one with his bare hands, of course. It's the um 1832. Um there's a report of basically it's um the tapas goes, religion has introduced a native monkey into the central region. Uh this is sorry by B.H. uh Hudson and it says where it seems to flourish and it's half domesticated and it is it neighbors in the temples and the valleys of Nepal proper. One time my shooters were alarmed by the apparition of a quote wild man, possibly an orang, but I doubt their accuracy. They mistook this creature for some kind of demon and it fled off instead of being shot. It moved, they said, erectly and was covered in long dark hair and had no tail. So that was um basically like a Bigfoot ape-man possible type sighting, although, of course, uh Hodginson didn't seem to believe it, right? And like it's also mentioned that it was possibly a demon and stuff. Um I, you know, so this is in 1832. If you fast forward to 1924, like the Ape Canyon story, which is kind of like the predecessor for like um Bigfoot Ape-man type things, and possibly in the Americas, you know, they have like demon kind of aspects too. So like the the the creature being like this totally like naturalistic post-Darwinian thing isn't fully ingrained into the myth at the time. Um, you know, so so we we can get to the um uh Eric Shipton thing, but just a couple dates. The Eric Shipton thing is in the 50s, but you know, like I said, we have the Ape Cane story in 24. Um, and then um, of course, the scaling of Everettus happens in the 20s as well. And there's the possible um sighting um up on top of the mountain at like 1,500 feet um with human like features, but you know, we don't have any photographs of that. Uh 1933 King Kong is released, which I often bring up as being important in the hip, you know, I'm not the only one, but uh I think it's important in Hypno history of cryptozoology. And um uh eventually, like you have books like on the track of unknown animals, um, and uh do Abominal Snowmen of America really exist that come out in the 50s and 60s that like you know they mention Yeti but don't mention Bigfoot. So in this time period between the 20s and the late 60s, like Yeti really is the thing people are looking for, not Bigfoot. And I think that mostly comes back to the mythology of Sasquatch not being fully set up yet, but also like these footprints of Shipton being like the most compelling evidence. And uh after the um the Gimlin video, I think it's like the the second most um cited um positive example of a eight-man.
SPEAKER_05Um so I think there's I'm sorry, there's a a couple of things that and again this mustn't go off on this tangent, but there's a few indications that early belief in Bigfoot is because um the fame of the Yeti is such that people start asking, why don't we have one of those over here? We should have. And then people say, Well, wait a minute, we actually kind of do. Um Rene de Hinden, you know, one of the four horsemen um who's Swiss. And I seem to remember that his uh introduction to Bigfoot, he says that um he just heard about you know uh abominable snowman fever, you know, reading about it in the newspapers and said, you know, why don't why don't why don't you guys got that kind of thing over here? And someone's gonna be able to do it. We do. And there's a there's a book, there's a really thick book on the origins of um Um Bigfoot in California by a guy called Dustin Seavers. It's and it's called The Abominable Snowman of California, and that is uh about the mythology of Bigfoot before it's called Bigfoot, and certainly before the Saskatchewan Sasquatch uh term comes in from uh Canada. So it's yeah, I haven't read that book, it's thick and uh weighty, but um yeah, there seems to be this idea that like people want abominable snowman in North America, and so yeah, it's the this this universal international fame of the Yeti that drives uh what what might happen elsewhere.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because like like I said, on the track of unknown animals doesn't have the word Bigfoot in it, right? And like that is one of the landmark cryptid books, you know. So it just shows that like this wasn't in the conscience yet, like Yeti was.
SPEAKER_01I I like I like I I did not I kind of didn't realize that that like yeah, like the word Bigfoot in Sasquatch had to be like focus group tested, you know, like like oh shoot, we don't really have a good name. Uh abominable snowman of of of America, and you're like, oh, that sucks, it's a terrible name.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, well, Bigfoot itself, again, the tangent, but yeah, Bigfoot starts out as two s as the two separate words Bigfoot, kind of like it's a joke. So, yeah, before it's uh I don't know, there's this big argument about historical Bigfoot, isn't isn't there uh people claiming that there is such a thing, but um no, I think it's pretty clear that yeah, those those stories um from Northern California are people making a yeah, making a joke out of um yeah, claiming to find big footprints.
SPEAKER_03Speaking of people making a joke, um so 1951 is the Eric Shipton Photos. Now, like I said, this is probably the second or third most important bit of cryptid evidence there is, you know. So like yeah, it's very iconic.
SPEAKER_01Like the thing with Bigfoot is Bigfoot doesn't have like the footprint, you know. Like if you go like right, like is there not like a the, there's not like a the Bigfoot footprint. We have the video. Like with bit with Yeti, you have like the Yeti footprint. Like this is the Yeti footprint. Yeah, so I would say we saw it in that uh the Harry and the Henderson's. It's in the background.
SPEAKER_03That's right. This this footprint, the uh Bigfoot video, and the surgeons uh photo of Nessie are like the three pieces of evidence, I think. Uh I think the other two are widely debunked, and we've debunked them, I think, pretty well uh on the podcast. Um so this is the one we haven't really talked about too much yet. Um do you want to start Darren talking about the Shiptons photo? What are what are your thoughts about this? When when's the first time you saw it, actually? Do you remember that?
SPEAKER_05Uh no, because uh because it's like always been there like a like a sick ape huddle in the corner of my mind. So, like, you know, if I think of my favorite monster books from childhood, I'm a kid of the 70s and 80s, and so if I think of like you know, monster books like the Osborne Book of Monsters from like 1981 or whatever, um, it's got it in there as like this is this establishes the reality of the Yeti, it has a foot like this, you can tell it's a primate foot. Yeah, you can tell it's uh yeah. So I've always known about it, and um it's it's the first image, actually.
SPEAKER_03Like the version that I had of the the world of unknown monsters, the first image on the upper left side is mysterious footprints.
SPEAKER_05Right, yes. And I I've thought for quite a long time that um I think we can explain it. And I okay, so a little bit of background. I'm currently working on a book that involves analysis of as many famous cryptid photos as I can get, and I by complete coincidence finished uh this week the ship to 1951 Yeti footprint photo, so it's it's relatively fresh in my mind, and um yeah, it's it's intimately tied to the history of Himalayan exploration. So a team of mountaineers are aiming to summit Everest, and I'm sure you know this is this is of interesting interesting to some people. There's this claim that it should be pronounced Everest based on the guy it's named after. Anyway, they are they're approaching it from the the north side, they split into two teams, and Michael Ward and uh Eric Shipton, they uh are they're about um fifty-ish miles to the west of Everest, I think. And they they probably cross a border and go illegally into Tibet, which of course is owned by China, they didn't know that, they keep that quiet. And on Menlung Glacier, they discover a trackway. Uh and a trackway is a series of footprints. And uh, whenever I talk about this, I try not to use the word track because that can mean either a single footprint or a whole line of footprints. So that's trackway, is multiple footprints. Footprint is obviously as obvious what that is. Um they and they photograph this trackway um twice, and it's made by a single animal, and then they say that at the end of this trackway uh this animal with very clearly, you know, hominid feet has um, you know, sort of like um left a really clear footprint, and obviously that's the that's the best uh the best print you can get. The best photo they got, they only took one photo no, they took two photos of the actual individual print, one with Ward's boot for scale, and one with an ice pick uh for scale. And um, and yeah, and they're like, oh my god, guys, we've we've done it. And the the other team, so the team that split uh from them, they said that and and the guy who's best known from that group, he's called Bill Murray, but it's not the same Bill Murray that most of us know.
SPEAKER_03You say that, I believe Billy.
SPEAKER_05I I generally call him like WMT Murray or whatever his initials are, so to not have to explain this. But um Bill Murray found Bill Murray saw this trackway. Oh, that's a crazy trackway.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if it's gone very impression. Very good.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. But but that that separate team, they didn't see the like the best footprint. And so in all the descriptions afterwards, everyone thinks they're talking about the same thing. Um but okay, so I have to skip do I do I skip forward to the like spoilery bit?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, you can spoil it. Um I uh breaking news, uh Yeti likely not real.
SPEAKER_05The so the trackway prints um are made by uh some kind of largish mammal that's got rounded feet and in one of the footprints, uh sorry, sorry, in one of the photos of the trackway, the prints look like they look very hoofy. They look like they were made by uh like a um There's three kinds of big shaggy mountain hoofed mammals up there. There's there's yaks, there's the baral or blue sheep, and there's the tar, which is a kind of goat antelope creature. And this these are probably like yak or baral um like uh um footprints. They and they can bear no resemblance whatsoever to a primate print. And um the lone uh Eric Shipton um I keep saying lone, I keep forgetting there's two photos. The the two photos of the close-up of the foot, it's clearly nothing to do with those trackway prints.
SPEAKER_03That's what's so strange, right? So you you see the the long list of snow impressions that they show, and you know, they look they kind of look like a butt almost. They're like a Pac-Man, right? They're like kind of rounded, and then there's a little like part that goes in, and then there's like a long series of them. They don't look like like you know, foot, couple feet, foot, couple feet, foot. Like you might draw if someone asked you to draw like like basic footfalls. Um, they're all like very like unison. And then there's the close-up photos, one at the boot, one with the ice pick for scale, that look very different than those. So I I've been confused by that for I don't know, 30 years now.
SPEAKER_01Well, and there's the fact that of the up close, there's all they take this picture of the same footprint, right? Like it's the it's not like they're not like taking a series or anything, it's like the same exact one.
SPEAKER_05It's like yeah, and and I and I've always said if you if you want to demonstrate to someone that a footprint you find is a footprint, well, you're supposed to take 10, 20, 30 um photographs of okay, they couldn't do that. I'm sure they were limited, but they should have taken a couple of couple of photos and they didn't. It's the it's the same one. Now the photo is often shown cropped, so you can't show you can't see what's around it. And uh if in the uncropped ones, it's important that you see the to its um like uh uh uh in front of it and to its right, and behind it and to its right, there are two other depressions that basically look roughly the same size and shape, but without the sharp details, without the sharp toe impressions. And the sharpness is important because the best the yeah, the the the footprint itself doesn't make any sense because it's super amorphous and shapeless in the middle, as if it's been subjected to a lot of melting and it's not fresh. But some of its edges and the toes are like as sharp as as could possibly be, like they've just been made.
SPEAKER_01They've been chiseled, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Like they've like someone has literally just jabbed their own fingers into the into that print to to make them, basically. And and and I think that's exactly what happened. I think that that um so ward has always defended um like the authenticity of these tractors, like they were legit, and I know I'm talking he was a he was actually like a trainee surgeon uh based at a London hospital at the time. And he was like, Oh, you know, I know anatomy, I'm it's I know what I saw, man. And uh Shipton was notorious for being like a bit of a joker. There's a list of various f of various silly jokes that we know he did play on other people and things he wrote about that are just stupid. He just wrote stupid stories.
SPEAKER_03His contemporary quoted as saying he's well known to take the Mickey out of people, is his contemporary for describing him.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so I I I did uh an article uh Tetword Zology in like the early 2000s saying, I think I've cracked it, I think it like like shipped and actually took one of these amorphous hollows, jabbed some of his fingers in, you know, made it look like a sort of footprint. They took they took a picture, they didn't really or two pictures again, they didn't really know that it would sort of go viral as it were. It did, and then it became almost impossible to back out of it. And I've since learnt that um, you know, in view of what we're saying about mountaineers being super into like history and everything, that other mountaineers that have written like there's a biography of Eric Shipton by a guy called Peter Steele, um uh Eric Shipton Everest and Beyond. And in that book, and in reviews of that book, and in articles about that book, and in articles about that whole 1951 expedition in general, other mountaineers have written at length about this, and there's a bunch of them that have come to exactly the same conclusion, and have been really quite pointed in saying that there's basically no doubt that Shipton did fake um that footprint, and it's got no connection to the the trackway prints. Ward might not have known this because the print is supposed to have been discovered by Shipton and Ward like stumbled al you know along, who knows, five, ten minutes later or whatever. So, oh gosh, look at that. Um, and then they told the second team, the one the team they split from, the Bill Murray one, they told them that hey, that line of that line of tracks you saw, uh, that was the same um yeah, made by the same animal. So they then all thought that they'd seen uh the same thing.
SPEAKER_03Another thing about the photo is if if you look at it, um the the upper right part is like broken off, right?
SPEAKER_05Like of the corner of the snowy bit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so like you can you can see like um you can see the depth of the if it's like ice or snow at the time, and like there's like rock beneath it or whatever the surface is, it's different colorization. Yeah, so it's like totally different context than the entire trail. The trail looks like it's like a flat snow that's like I don't know, a couple inches tall over the the frozen dirt there, and then this is like on the corner wherever this is, it's almost like cut off. It's it's a very different context than the other photos. So it's yeah, it's strange.
SPEAKER_05It's it it's it looks like it's the edge of like a snow cliff. If you imagine a snow drift that's I don't know, like a few feet tall, and yeah, you're right, you can see that the broken bits of it are are at a lower elevation, not not by far, by tens of centimeters than the layer with the with the footprint on it. And if you look at the broken off chunks at lower elevation, they've got tread on them, like boot tread. Oh yeah. So so someone has clearly like walked around the edge of that bit and and and broken it off. And their story is that they lost the footprints when the they sort of followed the trackway and it kind of disappeared, they lost the sort of like um fidelity, the shape of the tracks in a sort of like blocky, lumpy, slight ice field. Um, but yeah, yeah, you're right. That's like it's not consistent at all with the look of that photo. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Also, I don't know how much a Yeti weighs, um, but it doesn't seem like a six to eight foot tall, three hundred and fifty-pound footprint to me.
SPEAKER_05Um I think that's legit, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, again, I I I've never weighed a Yeti. Um but it doesn't seem right.
SPEAKER_01It's really uh it's interesting the type of stuff people will say about the print. Um, because in this episode, because uh because you didn't see the episode, Darren, but they have uh Jeff Meldrum on and to talk about the the uh the shifted footprint, and and yes, he think he he thought it was authentic, right, Miles?
SPEAKER_03He was like yeah, Jeff Meldrum believes in it. Um, you know, I I just recently put the video on YouTube of our discussion with Jeff and listening to back to him talk about the footprints. It's uh it's pretty interesting. I I find the footprint evidence of of all these phenomena of of large bipedal apes to be not very convincing, you know? Yeah, and and the fact that he find so many of them that do not look morphologically that similar to each other to be convincing has always concerned me.
SPEAKER_05Well, yes, yes, so yeah. Sorry, Troy, go on.
SPEAKER_01Oh no, yeah, that's the thing is in the episode, he bases like it was kind of weird where as as as Darren says, we only really have the the two photos, and uh they had say Jeff he examined a reconstruction form of the print in 2008 that like they reconstructed in three-dimensional form from the photos, which is like how like how reliable is that? Like, because it's not a cast, it's it's like you took the photos of like and these are photos of the same exact perspective.
SPEAKER_05And you I'm upset that I didn't get my notes together for this, nor is my memory good enough. But um, it's uh so we should say first of all, for our RIP Jeff Jeff Meldrum uh a sad, sad loss, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he he he did his very best to bring honesty and professionalism to cryptozoology, which it's in dire need of. And though we may disagree with him, we do respect him, and that's why we had him on the show. There's not many believers we would welcome on.
SPEAKER_05So I've I've just I've just said on the the Tet Zoo podcast idea with John Conway that like uh this is a historically, uh culturally, like a really interesting loss because he was their one guy. Yeah, like that whole field doesn't have anyone, anyone that's in that position. Yes, they have a few academics that are interested, yes, they have a few people that have published or contributed to the technical literature and stuff, but yeah, no one that is uh that's like was trying to lead a charge like like he was. So uh yeah, but yeah, I was always surprised by his um uh his his book the Sash Sasquatch Legend Meets Science. He says in there that um there's uh a track again as a footprint, I think it's just one from a 1972-ish um expedition in somewhere like Pakistan, where those guys um photographed a track and and Jeff's like, yeah, this is evidence for the same kind of foot. And it's so not, it's nothing like it at all. It's like the vaguest similarity. Uh but there's a paper that was this is you know another interesting thing about cryptozoology, and also uh something that some people got some spelling in to do. Like in the past, people could get like a one-page, a two-page paper on my reconstruction of the foot of the Yeti, like into like nature, and that happened. There's um there's and I've I've forgotten the name of the author. There's a there's um it's it's a Russian name, like like Chernowsky. Um there's this this this paper that says that based on the the 51 photos, um we can say the Yeti's foot is like like this, and they provide a anatomical kind of reconstruction. It's weird because I think that the shapes they actually reconstruct for uh the two medial toes, the hallock or the big toe, and the s and the second toe, the shapes they propose for those are kind of like weird bent human finger and like uh your thumb and and and first finger. Um, they're sort of like way slimmer and sort of pointier tips than what I actually think is the case in the the Shipton photo. And that reconstruction is the basis for a plaster model that was made, and that's the model that Jeff is talking about. So there's this again, this kind of like canonical view of the body of evidence that we have, which is basically a series of you know, has a house of cards because it's all based on you thinking that the Shipton photo is real, and that it looks the way that that person reconstructed it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's quite strange. You look at this photo, like um, it doesn't look like an orangutan foot imprint, right? Because orangutans have their big thumb like their big toe like all the way down deep into their palm, like and out to the right, you know? So like it's it's not an orangutan. So I don't like and as far as I understand, like you you you would suspect somewhat of a similar morphology from uh Gigantopathe's blackie, which is like always the thing they want to point to. So I don't know why it would have a foot like this. It doesn't really look like a gorilla foot. Gorillas do have it pointing to the right, but it's more up and like large and out to the right. So like that doesn't look like this either. This looks like a human footprint with a really big toe. I guess maybe more like a baboon, but baboons point more at the bottom. So like I don't like what does this look like? This doesn't look like any known um ape footprint in existence. So maybe that's the point. Oh, well, it's made up, but like where is it coming from? It has to evolve from something, you know, like what's what family is this?
SPEAKER_01Like, well, and Miles, you're so right, because we have like if if you're saying that this is like a relic hominid, like like something that's closely related to us, right? Like a homo erectus kind of situation.
SPEAKER_03Which is what Jeff believes, right? Like he believes that.
SPEAKER_01We know like what Australopithecus footprints look like in Homo erectus, and they're they're like us, they look like human footprint. Like, you know, they don't look like this.
SPEAKER_05They do have a more uh uh so the conventional deal for obviously anthropoid primates as monkeys and apes is to have an abducted halluc. So yeah, the the halluc, the big toe, is projecting uh almost 90 degrees to the relative to the log axis, as would be your hand if you pushed your hand into the ground with your thumb sticking sticking inwards. So, yeah, that's what you would expect. So, in the fact that they're saying it doesn't have that and it's got a more human-like configuration, well then if you're saying that it's got uh uh a non-uh abducted uh hallox, the uh the hallox has become in line with the other toes, then are you saying that it is a hominin close to us, closer to us than maybe like Ostropithecines are? Because as you've just said, Trey, we've we've got the Latoli uh trackways of um Ostropithecines, we've got some idea of what's going on there, or is it like a convergent adaptation that they've evolved a human-like foot from uh a more conventional anthropoid configuration? Or, and we mustn't forget this is again a crucial part of cryptosuality, this like whole creature-building spec bio kind of take on it, or is it that the the conventional understanding of evolution is completely wrong? And that in our Hooverman's who so Hooverman's this always th this always surprised me, but now I know a lot more about it. Hooverman says in the 50s that probably the human type foot is the ancestral one, and the foot of uh apes like orangutans is the super specialized one that has evolved from a human-like condition. And now I know, thanks to the uh you know that Hooverman's book with Porsche Nev, um L'Homme de Nyandata toujours vivant, the Animal Man's Alive Today, that has now been translated into English. So we know from that that um Hooverman's and various other cryptozoologists were actually of this like alternative school of thought where they thought that um like there's there's ancestral marine vertebrates that give rise to the terrestrial ones, and the ancestral marine vertebrates are little humans, they're homunculi, and they give rise to little animals that look like us, um, that have got you know like human-like feet and are erect bipeds with large brains and stuff, and they give rise not just to us and to Yetis and to the Minnesota Iceman. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01But also that they don't want to throw Piltdown Man in there, too.
SPEAKER_05Like Ah, come on, don't be silly. I pilp down where we've got to put a limit somewhere. Um, yeah, that um that all of the other mammals and probably all the other terrestrial vertebrates are the descendants of um homunculus animals, so like the human body form is ancestral, like for most mammals. This is the initial bipedalism hypothesis, and um therefore, if an animal like a Yeti has got a human-like footprint within that model, that's actually what you expect. It's retained the ancestral configuration, and if it's got like a monkey foot or an orangutan foot, that would be a specialized, you know, descendant foot from the more human-like one, right? So never forget that is in there as well. There, there is this like um yeah, the the this love of alter like you know, if you explain that to someone in mainstream uh primatology or mammalogy, they will, you know, what are you smoking? What are you talking about? Where is this coming from? But it's like that is that is inherent to a lot of the cryptozoological project. I mean to write about that because I don't think this is well known enough.
SPEAKER_03Hey guys, this is Miles interjecting a little bit after we recorded the episode. When I was editing it, I was doing a little extra research, and I actually found that the original shipped-in photos were auctioned off a few years ago, and within them contained the actual envelope in which the original photos were sent. And I'm going to police a picture of this envelope um in the YouTube version of the podcast if people want to check out the videos. But um, in my opinion, if you look at this envelope, it's a very intentionally comically drawn envelope. Like it says pictures of the abominable snowman's feet on it. Um the word pictures is spelt wrong on purpose and then crossed out. Um the word show, it says abominable show man's feet, and then the word show is crossed off, and then snow is written. Um the word feet isn't crossed off and written again. I can't make out why. Um they there's like comical footprints um drawn. It's a very crude, simple drawing, like a doodle almost. Um in to my mind, it looks very comedic, which would track with the hypothesis that Shipton was a funny, tricky kind of guy. So, you know, interesting bit of evidence that I I was not aware of on the recording of this podcast that I thought should be mentioned. We we talk about this in a lot of in relation to other cryptids, um, but like I think like the whole field of cryptozoology is basically a hundred years in the past. But like like their their versions of what the things would look like and what you would expect is all like a hundred years old versions of like morphology. Like that's you know, you you you see some kind of dinosaur in the Congo, what does it look like? Hundred-year-old version of a dinosaur. You know, like w what would the eight people look like, you know, decades-old version. Like they don't have the they didn't keep up with uh, oh, we know this morphology, this kind of fossil, this footprints, we can track these things, we we have expectations based on evolution, all that stuff just isn't part of their theories because it just wasn't there in the beginning.
SPEAKER_05So yes, it's uh that there's certain areas of human thought that are museums of ideas. And I I I think a good argument, yeah, like you you've hit the nail on the head. Yeah, cryptosology is a museum of ideas.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's like you know, I always say like post-domanian world, things become popular, things get mainstream, they get sticky, you get like um literature people starting to to to f make fun versions of those. What would we see, what would we expect, and like you know, it's a pop culture version that gets people's heads, and you get a clever guy in a bar or clever explorer guy who aren't scientists start telling stories, and and then you know, you just get cryptozoology coming from that, and then people who are more serious try to let latch onto it, but you know, I I think it's kind of um it's a dated thing, it's it's a relict um school of thought. It doesn't mean it's not interesting, but oh totally.
SPEAKER_05I yeah, culturally and socially, yeah, super interesting. But yeah, I I think it's often if you're you're you're a clever person in the pre-internet age and you want to know about uh you know proto-humans or dinosaurs, what what are you gonna do? You're gonna you're gonna go to like the encyclopedia that your dad owns or something, and if and if that's in 1950, that's gonna be a book from 1915.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Like, you know, like when I was a kid, I I grew up in a uh sort of you know bookless culture, and uh based on my my my relatives and parents and stuff, you know. If I want to know stuff, I'm looking at like old encyclopedias, and I think that you would think, of course, that the knowledge from books of decades ago, you don't have any reason to necessarily think that things have moved on a lot, and um yeah, so I think that the cryptozoologists were often smart and well-read people, but because they weren't specialists keeping up with thoughts on you know whatever that concerns, you know, new new finds of hominins in Africa or or dinosaurs or whatever, new thoughts they are yeah, decades behind and not knowing that it's it's very strange to see, you know, I don't want to pick on him in particular, but Hooverman's talking in the 50s about things that are known to be decades out of date when he's writing about them in the 50s. He's like, dude, that was shown to be completely wrong in 1936. How did you not know that?
SPEAKER_03Um I think it's worth mentioning that so uh Bob Gilman, I don't know if you're familiar with him, Darren. Um very popular YouTuber on cryptids and the weird stories, has a very popular video on the Shipton Yeti Prince where he argues Oh that Bob Gimlin.
SPEAKER_05Sorry, I thought you said Gilman. No, yes, my name is.
SPEAKER_03Bob Gilman was probably awesome. I love that's a cryptid I wish people believed in. I wish we could have an episode on the Gilman. I fucking love that guy. Um Shape of Water, great movie. Um, anyway. So he has a video that is often cited as like the apologetic on these footprints and is quoted by a lot of people, some of whom are more reasonable cryptozoology people, that like this is. A good argument.
SPEAKER_01Um, I like I like the title of this video, Miles, The Shift in Yeti Prints and Why They're Probably Real. Gets to the point. Gets to the point.
SPEAKER_03I I find this video I don't really want to be rude to Bob, but I I find this like to be a very juvenile argument. Um like I he he has a lot of.
SPEAKER_01We watched we watched a whole bunch of Bob Gimlin videos when I was over at your house, and we we had a similar kind of takeaway where we're like, oh, these are such bad arguments.
SPEAKER_05Do you know he got on do you know he got on the Joe Rogan show?
SPEAKER_01I I just saw that right now, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um so you know how like ancient aliens be like, if you couldn't explain this, and then if you couldn't explain this, well then how would you explain this, right? Yeah. Well they'll they they like build this premise, and it sounds logical, but it's like, well, okay, all these are unfounded premises, right? This is basically what he does in this video. And he's like, Oh, you couldn't explain this with snow melt, blah blah blah blah blah. And it's just like he doesn't really take into account all the other arguments that people make, and he builds his case, and he has a kind of serious sounding tone that's also passionate, so I think people go along with him. But you can watch that video if if you don't agree with our take on these footprints, but uh I I do not find them compelling. Um, if this was a footprint of an unknown animal, um, the same footprint has never been found again. So I think that is a pretty good argument. Um if there are unknown animals leaving tracks and they are very rare, you would expect very similar bits of evidence to show up every once in a while, especially when people spend money to look. And every time we do find a hit of a Yeti, they're always different. It's different looking, different size, different shape. And that to me uh is a cultural phenomenon and not a uh a zoological one. So that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01And and you're right, Miles. It's funny to get to get into the the cryptozoology brain with some of this stuff where they're like, well, the reason it looks different, the reason this these don't match is because with the with the Eric Shipton foot in the Monster Quest episode, they're like, it's a result of macrodacty. Like it's a it's a valid foot, but it's a it's a special, unique, rare condition. Um that we're able to and that it like that's so weird. It's similar with that that uh Bigfoot uh uh cripple foot. Cripplefoot, where like, yeah, like it's like the the Jeff Meldrum was like, yes, it's an authentic foot, but it's of a you as a unique individual, so therefore it's I know it's valid somehow. You know, you should you need to have the typology. You need to have the type, you need to have like the the the idea of what is a valid footprint and then contrast it with what is not a valid footprint. But like it seems like they're just like, you know, like this is this doesn't contrast that because it looks different, because it's a rare genetic condition.
SPEAKER_03If they did that, if they did that, Trey, they wouldn't have a field of study, so they can't do that, right?
SPEAKER_01Okay, that's true. Yeah, that's true.
SPEAKER_03Um but yeah, just just to give if if if you do want to watch that video, you're you're definitely welcome to uh like I said, I I I don't find it very valid, but it's there and people will cite it.
SPEAKER_05Um I kind of find his stuff entertaining. I have I have enjoyed watching a lot of his stuff. But uh yeah, I I don't want to be mean to him, but um, but yeah, I like the the actual arguments the arguments uh boil down to isn't it cool? Wouldn't it be cool if so like I seem to remember his argument from from that video is doesn't this look like a real primate foot to you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and he has somebody draw you got the you get the the the the narration done pretty good, Tyrant.
SPEAKER_03We he had one we watched Trey and I watched together where it's like this is the best Bigfoot evidence there is, and it's a photo of like a brown blurry thing in the bottom right-hand corner, and he tries to like analyze it, and his analyzing is just actually wrong, like factually wrong, like for how like the photo would work. But it's just like how does that get you anywhere? Like, how how does how do these photos get you anywhere? It's just I don't know. It's anyways, regardless of that. Um this was in the 50s, and then obviously, of course, um Bigfoot isn't quite a thing really to like the late 60s, 70s, then it like really pops up. But the Yeti has always been around, but it seems like uh at some point uh Bigfoot mythology in North America kind of overtakes the Yeti as more popular. Of course, the Yeti's still around, yeti's in Disneyland, right? Um the Matterhorn. So he's still there. Uh but you you get less sightings, I think. So like like we have um uh the Reinhold sighting um in '86, he eventually decides that he saw a bear, right? He was a mountaineer, he's like, Oh, I saw Yeti. Now I was a bear.
SPEAKER_05Uh Reinhold Mesna.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yes, yes. My quest for the Yeti or whatever his book is called.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, and and then the there's actually a sighting by the Indian Army. Um, and then they eventually decide that was a bear. And then there's the uh there was the DNA thing.
SPEAKER_01Miles, Miles, you're talking about the Indian army and this this border, and I'm imagining like those, you know, those like shield walls that they form with like the Chinese government. I'm picturing like a Yeti showing up when they're doing the crazy like border border like fights. It's like, holy shit, there's a Yeti. Stop the fight, stop the fight.
SPEAKER_05Uh Ryan, can I just like cover Reinhold Mesner briefly? Because I find his um I th I am not a fan, and and I uh you two will be on side with me, I'm not a fan of kind of like automatic knee-jack skepticism. Yeah. I I I think that there's quite a lot of uh people that call themselves skeptics who are very science-y, and they think think that all this stuff is instantly nonsense and you should never take it seriously, don't even think about it, it's just instantly nonsense, and there's a tendency to want to jump on what looks like a skeptical uh in the in the positive sense, you know, like a good skeptical explanation for a given phenomenon. And I think that among skeptics of cryptozoology, there was too much piling on to piling on to the wrong term, because that's meant that's a negative thing. There was there was too much latching on to the right Reinhold Messner's like bear hypothesis when and obviously there is some truth to the the bear explanation, there's some truth to it, but but Mesner like has been so woefully inconsistent on what he has and hasn't seen and what um he what experiences he hasn't hasn't uh has had and hasn't had. I think he that book um makes out that like it explains everything, and he saw bears like walking around, like that there's a kind of bear that walks around fully bipedally and whistles in the air and stuff, which that's borderline encrypted. It's like we all know that bears walk bipedally, and I'm sure bears can make all kinds of weird noises. I don't know about whistling, but this claim that there's like a Yeti-like bear that is a biped and whistles and stuff. And um, what confuses me is that I know, or I okay, I've been told by people that know Mesner that he changed his mind, and he hasn't written about the change of mind that he had. So the actor Brian Blessed, famous for his Am I allowed to shout? Yeah, um uh Gordon's alive.
SPEAKER_02Um I I must say, you know, I did the Tarzan film uh uh uh three or four years ago, the animated Tarzan film, and I'm Clayton in it, the villain. You know, it's only for about two years. Uh and um uh and Disney was there and all of them. And uh finally we finished the film, um, and I'm leaving, and the guy who plays the villain in Ghost, the film, was the voice of Tarzan. He has that strange voice, or a rather strange voice, which is rather good for Tarzan, rather innocent. And he's the man who's the villain in Ghost. Anyway, I was leaving. They said, Well, John Brian said, said um Disney, Brian, you've done a great job. The car's outside, you're going to the airport. And then I heard the Tarzan doing the yogel. And and he he was going, uh-huh, uh and he couldn't do the bloody yogel. And the Americans are very worried. I said, Well, look, I said, when I was a kid, we went to the Johnny Weasel in the films, and we all give the yogel as little boys. No, Brian, Brian, this is gonna be a real problem for us.
SPEAKER_05Brian Blessed is a mountaineer and knows uh Reinald Messner and is a massive Yeti proponent, like believes in the Yeti. And there's an interview with Brian Blessed where he says, Um, oh, of course, Reinald Mesner, he's like the best mountaineer in the world, and he's seen the Yeti five times. And the interviewer says, But I thought Messner has dismissed the uh Yeti as a bear. And Blesy said, Well, not till he walked into one, he was he was going along the walking along the um Chungchunka Jima Pass near uh Deepak Morale. Oh yeah, the details aren't quite accurate here, and he literally walked into a Yeti and he said it was seven foot tall and it had slanted green eyes and it smelled terribly bad. And it's like Brian, um did R did Reinhold Mesner really say this to you? Is this actually it's is published, it's like on record. Um he said at other times that he has obtained Yeti carcasses, I believe more recently than he published uh the book. I'm not going anywhere in particular with this. I'm not saying that any of this demonstrates that sorry guys, Yetis are actually real, and uh the story of Reinhard Mesner's um one is legit. I'm saying that that yeah, some of the latching on to Mesner was probably uh too hasty, and um there's a there's a uh some amount of um elasticity in how reliable he should be, uh his claims should be. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I also don't love the st um oh it's a bear, oh it's an eel thing.
SPEAKER_01It's too easy, too easy.
SPEAKER_03People do that with Lochness, you know, like they're like, oh, it's an eel, it's confirmed to be an eel. I'm like, no, that's not that's not how people weren't just seeing an eel for all these sightings. That's not what happened, you know. Like too simple.
SPEAKER_01Like, like that's the thing. Like I get that with um or older stuff, Miles. Like I've seen people take there's like Irish sagas or something that talk about like a great elk and great bulls, and they're like, well, those are Irish elk, and those are orox, and that's about mammoth, or um, gosh, the one that's like griffins are protoceratops skulls or or something like that. And I'm like, uh, like it's too simple of an explanation, and then also it's like untestable, you know.
SPEAKER_03I I also find they're not necessarily needed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sometimes they're not, yeah, exactly. Sometimes they're just not needed. Like, why can't somebody just make up something out of whole cloth as opposed to I I do kind of buy the Cyclops elephant skull thing a little bit? Whoa, really? Come on, you're joking. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03I see I see them, and I'm like, it's you hear it so much. Like, that's the thing, is like in like there's just no need for the explanation.
SPEAKER_01There's no need for the explanation because people people can have birth defects and be born with cycloptic babies. Also, also animals.
SPEAKER_03Uh people have what's called uh creativity. And uh what if what if what if what if one eye isn't actually that creative? Right.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I I I forget where the there's a point in history where the cyclopeanness of the predatory giants gets mixed in. And um yeah, the the the the the explanation that it might be based on elephant skulls is like a lot of the people that are supposed to have been fooled by that would have would have actually known elephant skulls um due to their familiarity with uh stories from India and northern Africa.
SPEAKER_03Homer would have never fallen for that shit.
SPEAKER_05It's called it's called geo mythology, isn't it? This this uh effort to explain stories this way. And of course it's most famously associated with Adrian Meyer. Uh that's the the um I was talking about this just recently with Mark Witten, uh one of the authors of the the pushback paper to Adrian Meyer's um uh gri Gryphaceratops, I think is the term they're now using for the grip Protoceratops is the origin of the Griffin myth. And of course the the the evidence is pretty good that it's not, it's like it it does not have a clear.
SPEAKER_03It just doesn't the the it doesn't offer any extra explanatory power, is the thing, right? Like to the to the extent that that ever happened, fine, but it didn't need to happen, and like the it's used to describe so many different things, it just seems unnecessary to me. Yeah, um, but uh what was I saying? I was uh oh, also like I I can believe like the owl is the flatwood monster, like the Joe Nicholas explanation, because that's like a single sighting, someone sees an owl, because there's not like a bunch of flatwood monster sightings, really, right? So like I I can believe it as a one-off thing, but like as a massive cultural misunderstanding of identifying bones and then therefore monster. I just don't think it's needed.
SPEAKER_05I'm pretty sure there's an episode of Ancient Aliens or something, which says how there's um they they talk about the uh the flatwoods monster, and then there is there's a claim of some entirely separate weird reptilian aliens that are seen flying around on discs that they sit on. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01Surely that's the flatwoods monster, but without the that's not that's not ancient aliens, that's Monster Quest.
SPEAKER_05Oh, that's Monster Quest.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it's next season. Oh, oh sorry.
SPEAKER_03Head start not quite spoiler again.
SPEAKER_01The the secret the secret in it, the secret like control that MonsterQuest has is like starting that that myth that myth, like, oh my gosh, the connection. That's so funny. That's notorious.
SPEAKER_03Um spreading a bunch of doubt about the Yeti because these footprints and the sightings aren't good enough and nonsense about morphology and evolution. But you know, all of you skeptics are always wanting, well, bring me a body. Well, guess what, you two? We have a hand and a skull of the Yeti.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's and that's proof. So what do you say about that, skeptics?
SPEAKER_01We got we got we got Peter Byrne, who is uh he I I looked him up. I I never really heard him before. He's considered one of the four horsemen of Sasquatchery, um is John Green, Grover Cranz. And then in my notes, I said another guy I don't remember. Renee Dehndon. And when Darren said his name, I was like, oh, okay, there he is.
SPEAKER_05Yes, yes, Peter Byrne was the last of them to leave us. He was alive most recently, yeah. Yeah, and funded for years by Tom Slick, so he um yeah led this kind of like vague uh expedition of the Pacific Northwest, constantly looking for uh Bigfoot evidence and was a kind of like uh in that weird um professional game hunter but also kind of conservationist sort of field. And and so did travel a lot aro around what was the British Empire and um yeah, so would have gone to to India and uh and thereabouts. And so what's his connection to so the the hand is the Pangboshe or Pangbosh monastery hand, which as for as long as it's been reported, it's it's obviously like primate skeletal remains.
SPEAKER_01Um he he in the episode he talks about oh, he was in the 60s, I think, he was shown the hand and allowed to photograph it, and then was permitted to cut off a finger. And he has like a very uh fun story about how he he smuggled it out of the country, Miles. Remember this? We recreated this when I visited you in Seattle.
SPEAKER_05In a lingerie box.
SPEAKER_00In my lingerie box.
SPEAKER_03Um Jimmy Stewart and his wife helped smuggle this out, which um I condone, by the way. I think it was awesome. And uh the idea was you know, the this monastery had this artifact almost like uh like a reliquary, like this like saint thing, right?
SPEAKER_01Like yeah, it's it's I think Buddhists have um I don't know if they're incorruptible in the same way that like Catholics they don't rot, but Buddhists do have like uh skeletal remains of like uh of of people that are that were wise and keep them in the in the monastery.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well the skull, for example, was said to be of a Yeti that like helped um one of the guys from the monastery and like like healed him and everything.
SPEAKER_05Well, it's not a skull, it's a scalp, right? The cut scalp. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, just yeah. Don't people think it is a whole skull.
SPEAKER_03No, no, not not a whole skull, just a scalp, yes. Um, I'm sure a lot of people have seen pictures of it, you know, brown, rounded, uh uh reddish brown fur on it. Um anyway, so Jimmy Stewart.
SPEAKER_01Uh you know, honey, we gotta smuggle the Yeti hand out.
SPEAKER_03It's the Yeti, see? It's the great white beast of the North. People got a right to know. Listen, darling. I know it's delicate, but we're gonna need to use your delicates. People gotta see it. Solid. Anyway, uh so so they they so uh the story is often that they stole it. Uh you know, there's some talk maybe they paid a guy off to get it, but probably stole it. Anyway, they they they take the the fingers, they they put it in Jimmy Stewart's wife's lingerie, they get it through customs, but actually when they get back off the airport and everything, it gets lost. Which is crazy. It gets lost, and they're like, oh shit, we lost the proof of the yeti. Uh but luckily uh, you know, bureaucrats figure out the paperwork and they get it back, and actually nobody opened it. So they were able to smuggle it out, and then they test it and um doesn't appear to be a Yeti.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's the thing is in the Monster Quest episode, the Monster Quest episode had outdated information because Peter Vern claims scientists such as primatologist Osman Hill got a hold of it before it got lost and said all they could say is that it was not human, the doctor died, and no one knows what happened to the finger.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I don't think this is true at all. I don't I don't think it was ever lost. So it was it went to yeah, Osman Hill, really well-known primatologist, produced like tons of like really respected work and did loads of measurements and stuff on it. And I think he said so so Peter Burner said in some interviews that he clipped it off and replaced it by wiring uh connecting by wiring like a human hand to a human finger to the the Pangboche one that he took. And it went to Osman Hill, who took measurements of it, and he there's uh comments from him uh here and there where he says that its proportions are like those of uh a human. And then that would that would have gone Oseman Hill was based at one of the London teaching universities, I can't remember which one. And uh that is the specimen that has recently been uh genetically tested in the wake of um oh dear, what's his name? Um geneticist uh Sykes, I think. So yeah, and and that said, yeah, it's it does it's it's human. Um Dr. Rob Ogden Ogden? That's not who I'm thinking of, but um but is is that is that someone associated with the um the genetic tests, the more recent ones.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Uh in and they said that the mummified reins were held in the Royal College of Surgeons Museum in London since the 50s.
SPEAKER_05Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah. So if it's in the 50s, it's been there the whole time. It's not lost. Everybody's just like the people that knew it was there knew it was there, but they probably weren't asked.
SPEAKER_01People like lost stuff, people like Oak Island like stuff where yeah, yeah, yeah. Lost tapes. Lost tapes, lost tapes.
SPEAKER_05So the Jimmy Stewart connection, I mean, so uh in our world, it's I think it's quite well known that Jimmy Stewart had this kind of like weird um sort of semi-appocryphal connection to to this subject. Uh he he's also, of course, claimed to have been the real owner of Frank Hansen's Minnesota Iceman. And there's a claim that um Stewart was deliberately like buying up or obtaining um things relevant to anomalous primates, crypto primates, um, either because he like had a real secret interest in it, or there is a claim that he was um one of those like evangelical, extremely right wing weirdos that you guys have, and that um and was and was buying up this stuff to destroy it. So I looked into that and found that while I believe he was a God-fearing man, um, he wasn't of that kind of little cult or sect that like actually believes that stuff, you know, that that would want that that would think that you should be destroying fossils or yeah, I don't think that quite started yet, that version of evangelicalism.
SPEAKER_03Um it's more of like a 70s post thing.
SPEAKER_01Because we had like Scope's monkey trial, like conservatives, but you're right that they're not they're not as the same as like the young Earth conservatives, right? And they weren't as like organized.
SPEAKER_03Well that they they were responding, they have to respond to the order of evidence that makes it out through SICOM, right? So like like there's not enough to be overwhelmingly convincing in the public in the 40s and 50s during the Scope Smokey trial, it's all very academic explaining evolution. But like as the body of evidence grows and science's ability to communicate it or put it in the media grows, they have to change their tactics, right? So like that's why like they, you know, arc encounter or everything has to show dinosaurs, has to show Australopathicus, they have to recontextualize those things because the visuals are so strong you can't get them out of the public's mind, right? So like every reactionary movement has to have a new apologetic. But but that's a whole separate topic.
SPEAKER_01Um but yeah, the point is the finger is a human hand, it probably belonged to some some monk, right? That yeah, yeah, it was just sort of like a relic, like a saintly relic.
SPEAKER_03But the scalp 100% didn't uh wasn't owned by any human, it's not human.
SPEAKER_01The scalp of of Kumjong.
SPEAKER_03So we can say for sure it's not human. However, it's it's uh from a goat.
SPEAKER_05That wasn't the crazy thing. It's not from a goat. It was from a Himalayan sorrow, it's from a Sarrow, which is not a goat.
SPEAKER_03Okay, it's not a goat. It's not a goat. It's a goat, it's a goat-like mountain fellow.
SPEAKER_05It's an antelope-like creature.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05The goat answer, the Ovi Caprini, yes. So, but yeah, so it's interesting. Now, this is this is cool because the the scalp is uh for some reason stitched in such a way that it's got kind of like a midline crest with sort of like erectile hairs projecting upwards along this crest, and that has become a canonical thing. That the this this idea that Yetis have like a conical head with this midline crest. So we know that uh uh Hooverman's in the 50s again is advising Herge. Herge's like that includes the Yeti in Tintin in Tibet, and that's quite an influential look for the Yeti. And not only does it have shipton uh feet, it's also with the distinctive configuration of toes from the 1951 photo. Herge's Yeti has also got the the midline uh crest, the the conical headed look. So Hooverman's looked at the hair pattern on the scalp and said that um it it can't be that of a primate head, it's got to be that of the hide of a hoofed mammal of some kind, and found out that it was a Sero. Um, and and that's in uh on the truck of unknown animals.
SPEAKER_03Uh I love that this thing is so iconic and important and like it changes the way people do the art. People still draw the Yeti as white, you know, this hair is not white, they're like, ah, whatever.
SPEAKER_01Well, it was crazy to me, Miles, is the fact that this was disproven so long ago. Like, I I saw uh like a zoologist, Marilyn Perkins, in the 1960s, conclude it is not scalp tissue at all, that it's been fabricated from a hide. Like it that that like that's not new information, like in Monster Quest just decides to ignore that. Like he's like showing it.
SPEAKER_05Well, Hooverman's is saying that in the 50s. So in the canonical book establishing the reality, you know, like that the main dossier for the Yeti is in Hooverman's book. Hoovermans himself says that, hey guys, ignore that bit of evidence, it's not part of the canon.
SPEAKER_03Well, I can tell you in the 90s when I went to the library and got all these books that were mostly printed from the 70s, uh, I believed it. I didn't know it was disproven.
SPEAKER_01I when I saw this in the in 2009, I I was like, Well, how come we don't test the DNA of that that scalp?
SPEAKER_03I was like I was like, let's go get that scalp, let's smuggle it out. I don't fucking care. We're gonna find this scalp and we're gonna prove the Eddie, right? That that was my that was my feeling as like a nine-year-old boy reading about the damn thing.
SPEAKER_01Like it's so strange that they that they keep bringing it up after such a long time. Like that's so strange to me.
SPEAKER_03Well, what else are you gonna bring up?
SPEAKER_01I guess. Like, don't you feel like dishonest? Like, don't like I don't know.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think I think it's weird. What what are you gonna do? Like, I think it's fine to say at one time people thought this was legit, but you know, pretty soon they realize it wasn't. But you should say that very early on. Yeah. Certainly mention it at some point in the TV show.
SPEAKER_01Instead of saying, instead of what did they say? Yeah, I was I'm thinking more of the foot the the finger, but yeah, the show doesn't, the show keeps it like, oh, it's uh authentic.
SPEAKER_03So for the last two decades, we don't really have any great new Yeti evidence, right? Um there's there's a video, but it's pretty obviously a hoax video. You can find it on YouTube, not worth discussing too much.
SPEAKER_05Um there's snowwalker footage. Love it.
SPEAKER_03Um I don't I don't think too many people find that compelling. I don't cryptozoology Reddit doesn't even find it that compelling.
SPEAKER_05So Jeff Jeff thought it was real.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, um you know yes, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Say no more.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I I asked Jeff uh if he thought if it if he found a footprint known by a known hoaxer would change the probability if he thought the footprint was real or not, and he said no. So, you know, uh what can you do? Um yeah, and then there's the the polar bear thing with the DNA. I forget the exact you know what I'm talking about, Trey?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that large study, that large genetic study where they sampled tons and tons of Bigfoot and Yeti Yeti supposed samples, and one of them was um polar bear, like a a a rare subspecies of polar bear or something like that. I'm trying to remember.
SPEAKER_05So this is yeah, this is the study I was talking about. It's um I I I it's embarrassing I've forgotten his name because actually he's he's died, but it's Sykes, S-Y-K-E-S, Sykes and another author. And they say that off the bat, and this is partly what inspired me to talk about the Reinhold Mesner bear hypothesis, because they say that they have verified that because they have found that in Yeti DNA samples, um they have found that it's a bear, but it's a new kind of bear, it's a bear that represents ancient hybridization events between polar bears and brown bears that live in the Himalayas, and that this is this is still big news because it's a new kind of bear that no one has found before. And it gets loads of publicity, and in some of the initial um press reports, um press releases and such, press packages, there's a reconstruction by an artist that shows a new kind of like man-bear pig, a sort of like humanoid bear. Like we found, hey guys, we found a bear.
SPEAKER_03So this is the same thing with the the eel, right? They're like, oh, giant eel and ya lock confirmed.
SPEAKER_05And then they realize that was a mistake, and it's like, no, no, guys, we're just saying it's like if it's gonna be a cross between a polar bear and uh a brown bear, even if it happened however many tens of thousands of years ago, even if it's you know relatively old-ish, it should still look like a bear. And so the artwork then gets changed and looks more bear-like. That is then again sort of latched onto by a lot of people, yeah. Like you just said, uh, you know, sort of mist mystery solved. However, this entire endeavor, um their G Wiz thing is like we've we've hey guys, Yeti might not be a giant big monkey, but it is still a big deal, it's still a new kind of bear. Um two separate projects published by two different teams of authors of like normal working technically qualified mammalogists got interested in this and they both went to the gene bank uh uh bear samples that Sykes and a colleague it's annoying I've forgotten the names, but that they used and they looked at the database entries. Show us where you got this, like how did you determine that this was a polar bear brown bear hybrid? And it's like, well, here's the you know, you can find the specific uh samples in gene bank. And they had accidentally read from the lower one step down in the table, and they weren't finding the DNA of like any there was no evidence for hybridization, they kind of misread the data that they were using. And so they found actually bear uh DNA in the Himalayas. They had not they had not found like a new kind of hybrid because like the the polar bear polar bears are uh very closely related to the group of specifically you know the grizzly bear is a subset of the brown bear, right? They've it's and within grizzly bears, there's a subset associated with a set of Alaskan islands, I think the Pribbal Pribilophice or something like that. And polar bears are are a subset of grizzly bears related to those, or at least that's the model that most bear experts think. Not everyone does, but that's a popular model. And where they're saying that we've got bear DNA in the Himalayas that's related to polar bears. Well, it's like that would be uh completely surprising, and uh and in and so surprising because it's a mistake. Uh yeah, two studies both both showing that the you yes, you found uh brown bear DNA in alleged Yeti samples, but it's not grizzly bear, it's nothing to do with Alaskan grizzly bears, it's nothing to do with polar bears, it's like regular uh Asian Himalayan brown bears. And obviously, we know there's a couple of different kinds of Asian brown bears in that part of the world. So, yeah, there's a a fun spin on yeah, that study.
SPEAKER_03Um to the monster quest episode itself. So basically, okay, we've got to do the monster quest thing, true.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we'll finish Monster Quest. Monster Quest.
SPEAKER_03Monster Quest. There we go. Thank you, family.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so witnesses around the world report seeing monsters with a new or the magnetic world science and searches for enterprise on Monster Quest.
SPEAKER_03In this episode of Monster Quest, of course, we're looking for the Yeti. This is what happened. Uh, we see Coleman show up, of course, Coleman, who won't come on our show. Um, he says that they are set to hunt yaks and sometimes people. Um uh they are going to actually go up into the Himalayas and look for the thing. Which, you know, like I said, that's cool. They're going out there, right? Like it's more legitimate than a lot of these shows. Um their basic plan is they are going to send two groups out. One group is gonna go uh up 15,000 feet and take a big helium balloon with a thermal scanner, look around, see if they can get thermal images of, I guess, a bipedal creature, I suppose. And then they have um, oh, and that group, oh cat, cat just jumped on my keyboard. Cat! I'm reading my notes. You don't want this coffee ripple, get out of here. So you can't trust these animals. Okay, I love you, sweetie. Okay, sorry.
SPEAKER_00No, you're good.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so the expedition is led by uh Adam Davies, who um is a big bigfoot guy. He's on tons of different, you know, he's on Yeti Massacre, Searching for Sasquatch, Sullivan Creek Sasquatch, Unexplained Files, Monster Quest, Is It Real, American Sasquatch, Man Myth, or Monster, tons of stuff, right? Um, I think one of his claims to fame is he has an auric uh pendak footprint, allegedly, um, that a lot of the cryptozoology nerds really like. So you want to say something about him, Darren? I'm fighting my cats right now.
SPEAKER_05Uh uh, I've got cats, my office is a cat-free zone. Um, I know Adam pretty well. I like him, get on with him, but I do think he uh sensationalizes uh yeah, in case it's not really obvious. Yeah. Um so I'm I'm uh and I also think that he's one of these people that is interested in collecting data and then does try and kind of like pass it along to the right parties to have it analyzed. So I'm not aware of an orang pendeck footprint he's got, but I do know that he um collected some hairs that were suspected to be from an orang pen deck and did initially look really interesting. I have the manuscript, uh technical manuscript that was written um on those.
SPEAKER_03I I think the orang pendeck has a slightly better chance of being something than most of these things, for what it's worth. Uh very small chance, but I mean, like, you know, slightly more realistic. Um because it's not so big, I think helps it. Um but regardless. Uh so yeah, he leads up there, and then there's Dr. Ian Redman, who's a zoologist.
SPEAKER_01Um who's always taking his shirt off in the episode, Miles. This guy's like the only one, he's the only one taking his shirt off, too. Like every else's shirt, uh everyone has shirts on, and he's like, I'm whipping it off, man. I don't care.
SPEAKER_05Do you know do you know who Ian Redman is outside of this? Yeah, he's he's very he's very legit.
SPEAKER_01Primatologist, he does like uh research with gorillas.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but I don't know. Have you seen yeah, have you seen um Gorillas in the Mist? Yes, Gorillas in the Mist, yeah. Yeah, he's he's one of uh Diane Fossey's proteges, and uh he's played by an actor in in the movie, but uh yeah, he gives talks on what it was like to work with Diane Fosse and Yeah, he does a lot of great conservation work, but I know I know I I know him pretty well. He um yeah, he's also like a big uh crypto primate advocate.
SPEAKER_03Well, I knew him from because I don't I don't know if you have his in in Europe, but we have those DK eyewitness books, you know?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, we have those.
SPEAKER_03Okay, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05So he did the joining Kennedy's a British company, dude.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I don't I don't know, man. I got him at the local library in California. That's all they are to me. Um, but he he did the one that's the gorillas, monkeys, and ape ones as a kid. So yeah, he he's legit. Um uh after watching this, I think he's a little wild and crazy. But um, so his plan he actually doesn't believe they'll live up like way above the snow level, right? Because he doesn't think that they would have enough vegetation running water up there, because you know, that makes sense. Um so that the expedition goes up to the 15,000 feet. He stays below and like looks at the um area where there's extra greenery and running water, and he runs around there looking for evidence. Interestingly, he finds I know it's not a ram, but whatever the ram species that lives up there looking creature. Um he finds a dead one. And probably the most interesting part of the whole monster quest, he actually eats some of it. Like its bones are there, and it's like classic Ian, yeah. It's like rotting.
SPEAKER_01Classic Ian.
SPEAKER_03He like picks up a bone, it looks like it's like from his roof, and he just starts eating it.
SPEAKER_01He is like a goofy character, like he he's like the real deal, like where he's like like uh like you're right, like he's like a joke character that you'd see on like uh like a TV show.
SPEAKER_03Um he seems legit, but he has a very interesting charisma, I'd say. Um, yeah, and and also interestingly, like they they find some scat and they cut up the scat, and then they're like, Okay, this is obviously like a herbivore, you know, and and not a predator. Well, which is funny because like the and they're like, Oh, maybe this is Yeti, we can't identify it. But like often in this monster quest, they talk about the Yeti killing and eat like hunting yaks and killing yaks, but now all of a sudden he's not a predator, you know? So like they kind of do that with a lot of evidence, so like it could be either or. Like, we found something that must it must be related to the Yeti. So yeah. Um, anyway, so the the crew that goes up north um with with Adam Davies, uh, they have to haul up this giant thing of hydrogen.
SPEAKER_01It looks painful. Yes. Helium, helium can of steel.
SPEAKER_03Helium, not hydrogen, of course, helium. Uh yeah, and uh man, I he could barely lift it. They had like the guys packing it, and it it looked rough. But they actually climb, it looked like you know, they put some work in. But the thing that sucks is they get to the base camp tray, right? Where they're gonna set up this balloon, and and they're they're pumping up all these balloons, and then what happens, buddy?
SPEAKER_01The the helium uh had escaped the canister. There must have been a leak. So they have no helium, and so like they're up there and they're like, we lugged this whole thing up here for nothing. Like and the guy, the guy in the tank, the tank top basically is like, Alright, we're gonna DIY it. And he like gets sodium hydroxide, and then I quote, Nepalese mystery power powder, and like mixes it together inside this canister, and like it starts creating hydrogen, probably with some other stuff. I doubt it's probably like probably some nasty chemicals.
SPEAKER_03A real Walter White solution.
SPEAKER_01I wrote down that this is breaking bad. Like they're up, they're up like like up on the mountain, like making crappy chemistry out of like the random stuff that just happened to be nearby.
SPEAKER_03So, watching Walter White look for the Yeti episode, by the way.
SPEAKER_01I would Walter White would probably catch the Yeti.
SPEAKER_03He would find it.
SPEAKER_01He'd find it. He got it down with the he'd drive his car up there, you know, like the back of the cart.
SPEAKER_03Um but yeah, it's like you have to make like a half-ass version of the balloon, basically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it like barely floats. It like goes like maybe like 50 feet up and then goes back down. And they do it during like the daytime, right? Like it's yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_03It's a big waste.
SPEAKER_01It it wasted everybody's time because like they basically just lifted it up just for it to record them down there, and then it goes back down, and that's it.
SPEAKER_03And no surprise to anyone, they did not find the Yeti or anything really that interesting. Um they do find some uh bear tracks. And uh I like the line it was the most common misfredation of Yeti tracks is bear tracks, which I thought was should have told them something. You know, it's like you might want to think about that a little more, put that together.
SPEAKER_01The the episode I've I won't I won't talk about it that much, but the episode talks about Nazis hunting for the Yeti Miles. If you thought that was interesting at all, that there was like a Ernst Schaefer. This is this is Messer, right? Um talking about this, and it's kind of like supporting his bear thing, um, where there was like a 1938, 1939 Tibet expedition that had many purposes according to the Nazis. Like I think Himr Himmler helped fund it. Um, but part of it was to find the Yeti for either that they believed that Tibet was like the the cradle of human humanity, like you know, that it was like where humans the Aryan race, yeah.
SPEAKER_05The Aryans evolved in the high mountainous sunlight. Yes. And and that so they wanted to take uh they wanted to demonstrate that, and they thought also that uh I must be very difficult not the sorry, must be very careful not to use any of the racist terms that they'd like to use, but they thought that other kinds of people had moved in uh once the Aryans had gone away, and that they could demonstrate that by craniometrics. So there's lots of like measurements taken of uh Tibetan people's skulls and whatnot. And then I think that if the Yeti was found, it was kind of like a fun side project. Yeah, they weren't thinking that the Yeti was kind of like gonna be, you know, uh the ultimate ancestor of like the Aryan race or something.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'm happy you're here because Monster Quest gave that as the the idea that they're they would find the Yeti and the Yeti would be the Aryan, Aryan master race like uh example or something. Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_05I always think it's a bit of a cheap shot. I mean, don't get me wrong, you know, not exactly a fan of the Nazis, but um they weren't like it's pinning Yeti search like on a Nazi expedition doesn't negate interest in the Yeti, which is what again some kind of like uh some skeptical authors have kind of tried to do, sort of in order to straw man it basically.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there's a lot of mysticism in early Nazis and like Eckhart, you know, like really believed in like Atlantis and all this stuff.
SPEAKER_01Miles, I wrote down that they the the I was kind of realizing that this is like Conan with the between the the years between the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Arius. Like I was like, oh like this is their worldview at the time. Like this is before out of Africa and like like Australopithecus fossils became like well known, like this was this was the standard that most people assumed that there was like this weird cultures migrating into new areas and that like they originated in the north as opposed to in in Africa, yeah. And that Atlantis was real, you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, hot hot take, I don't really trust Himmler. Uh in his view, that's a that's a hot take, Miles. Hitler, Hitler's like quoted as saying that like all he does is bring me back mud huts, you know? Because he was like looking for some like special Aryan like clutter. To founding civil qu quote unquote civilization, and like Himmler was not very successful at that. Or anything, really, because he's a little fuck.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But uh but but regardless, uh yeah, they they bring up that and and they do have the other mountaineer on the Monster Quest episode who you know is pretty much like, yeah, there's no Yeti guys. What the fuck are you talking about?
SPEAKER_01Um yeah. That's about it. They they and that was Reinhold.
SPEAKER_03Right Reinhold, by the way, is who said that on the show.
SPEAKER_01They they try saw the like what a like the only other thing I think a note is that like there was a tr there was a trackway, right? They thought it was a trackway in the snow, and it was just like a a thing of snowfall and like a snowball.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was it was a snowfall, and and then the local people knew what it was right away. Um you could tell Adam was very excited when they saw the snowfall, like, oh found footprints, but unfortunately it wasn't, you know.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, that's about it. They didn't find much, they didn't find much.
SPEAKER_03It was an hour and thirty long monster quest, so you thought maybe this would be a very exhaustive one. And and they did put effort in. Like I said, they spent the money, they went on a quest, they didn't find anything. That's not their fault they didn't find anything. There is no Yeti. Uh so you can't necessarily blame them for that. But yeah, it wasn't the most entertaining episode, unfortunately. But I think they tried.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they did try.
SPEAKER_03Darren didn't watch it. So Ian.
SPEAKER_05Oh no, sorry, I haven't seen it. I really wish that. Yeah. Uh so Ian Redmond didn't find anything cool in the lower altitude. Other than a snack.
SPEAKER_03He found a snack. He literally ate the flesh of this dead animal.
SPEAKER_01He ate the flesh of this like rotting, jerky looking thing, and then just and sat there, right? He slept next to it just so he could see if something would come back. All right. That's commitment. It's always a good idea. It's cool.
SPEAKER_03He was trying to be legitimate. He took a very small team because he didn't want to make a lot of noise. He walked along the area where there was like lots of it's not lichen. I don't know what they have there, but lichen looking stuff growing, you know, and like thought, okay, this was a habitat where some kind of ape could live based on his experience with gorillas and stuff, I assume. And you know, he tried. He was quiet and he slept there, looked near streams and looked, you know. Um, he just didn't find an ape. So yeah. But I, you know, I think he I do not think he believes in the Yeti, um, but I think he was trying to, you know, put some earnest work into it.
SPEAKER_05So oh, I've spoken to him about this stuff. I think he's I think he is a believer. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, in in all the in all the classic uh crypto primates. So interesting.
SPEAKER_03I tried to look it up, his uh opinion on the yeti, and I couldn't really find a concrete yes or no.
SPEAKER_05So but no, I only know about this from you know, like Facebook uh chats and and talking about it with him face to face. Interesting. So uh I don't think he's yeah, written anything down.
SPEAKER_03He did he did say in the episode that uh um what what is this quote? It says um if it was just mythology, there'd be no tracks. But uh I was like, well, yeah, but you're putting the mythology on the tracks. Or in some cases, um you're making the tracks to make the mythology, like Eric Sh Eric Shipton might have done. So it's like, I don't know, man. Just you know, I I find foot footprints to be um this thing that looks very objective, but is very is actually very subjective, you know. Like it looks like this really good bit of evidence because it's like, oh, this is a physical thing, you can touch it, you can weigh it, you can measure it. Um so this is like actually relevant, but like it's very impressionistic, it's it's somewhat easy to fake. Um people who uh are experts in footprints, I believe, uh have been hoaxed and believe things you know that aren't true about them all the time. Um, you know, m Jeff Meldrum, for example, said that the dermal ridges could not be replicated, and like 10 years ago somebody showed the casting process could actually make artifacts that could be um uh articulated as dermal ridges, and even Jeff accepted that that was possible. So, like Yes, yeah, the uh he did, yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_05When Matt yeah, Matt Crawley brilliant investigative, yeah, yeah. And I and I understand that um on seeing that evidence, uh Jeff Meldrum actually stood up at whatever meeting it was and said, I I think you've like slam dunked it, you know. Congratulations. Yeah, but then then kind of changed his mind and still supported uh some of the dermatoglyphics as if they were well yeah, legit. But yes, but yeah, I I I I think that's a really good explanation. Um that I does I I've I've seen, thanks to visiting Cliff Brackman in um in Oregon, I've seen the the tracks that that uh include the famous um alleged dermatoglyphics, the wrinklefoot tracks and the dermal ones. Um there's a really uh interesting book that's been published uh late last year by uh two guys called Jamie Lewis and Andrew Butler, who are I think they're like cultural sociologists or cultural historians. It's Bigfooters and Scientific Inquiry, it's called. And um and it's basically uh a really deep and and I'm sorry, sorry, Bigfoot more than Yeti, but it's still relevant. It's uh the first good academic large-scale study of what Bigfooters are doing, like what are they you know collecting, how are they sort of building? It's about like how uh there's a whole uh branch of um the study of science called oh is it it's called like knowledge making or how people make knowledge claims. And that's what they're interested in. It's like how are people building the knowledge they think is relevant to the field? And obviously a huge chunk of it is um people uh who think, breathe, eat, sleep, bigfoot are basically looking at an absence of evidence and finding a way of turning that into evidence. So like hollows in the ground are like an absence of evidence, but if you are working in a paradigm where they have to be footprints, um then yeah, you're working really hard to make that shape into a footprint because that is the you know, that's the paradigm you're working within. And when you if you were to try and um convert bring someone into the fold when they're not you know thinking along those lines, you've got quite a lot of work to do because uh yeah, like the the the the the the the current thinking among Bigfoot proponents is that Bigfoot attracts all of the sort of like you know, not all but a good they think that a big chunk of the sort of like real famous, you know, like Bluff Creek ones and uh Bosburg Kribblefoot and stuff that we were talking about earlier. Yeah, that those aren't those aren't real. That's not what real Bigfoot footprints look like. The real ones are way more amorphous, they're sort of real, kind of like blurry, um yeah, like shapeless c hollows in the ground. In other words, exactly the kinds of structures that exist in the natural world and aren't made by animals' feet.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, convenient.
SPEAKER_01Um giant footprints, I looked up that 2019 uh Indian Army picture. I didn't realize that we're talking about footprints that are like four feet or three feet like long, like that we're talking about like giant, like we're talking like like a giant yeti. We're talking like 20-foot tall Yeti, 10-foot-tall yeti, something like that, right? Like to make you make a footprint that big. Yeah, what are we talking about?
SPEAKER_03So these are real.
SPEAKER_01So well see, that's always confusing to me when there's people that are like, there's there's not just like Bigfoots out there, but there's big foot Bigfoots that are like like nine, ten feet tall. Like, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_03Like what yeah, you of course know this, but the this story gets increased. Some cryptozoology people would actually disagree with you, be like, yeah, it's obviously not Yeti, doesn't fit our profile. But there's the subset, um, and Darren brought this up earlier, of like these group of people who believe in this stuff for like theological reasons.
SPEAKER_00For ne Nephilim stuff.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's a giant, right? Yeah, you know, giant giants prove the Bible or that makes more sense, Miles.
SPEAKER_01That this is this people would use this as Nephilim thing. Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_03Which is just you know, all another pile of fucking yeah, the red-headed giant of candy home.
SPEAKER_01So, Miles, what's our what's our opinion of this Monster Quest episode? What are we thinking?
SPEAKER_03Um, you know, I'm I'm gonna give them an eight for trying.
SPEAKER_01Eight?
SPEAKER_03So this this is why. Um they put a legitimate effort into going out and doing some kind of cryptozoology thing that uh resembles kind of science. They they got you know a zoologist who is is credible in his own way, and he did um almost like a control kind of of the other group, you know, he went in a different direction. And I I respect them for that. Like it's not the most interesting episode, but I I'm maybe I'm biased a bit from watching the new monster quest, which just uh is like a scamp, you know, um, and remembering that they used to go out. But I I respect that they went out. So I'm I'm gonna give it an eight, which is maybe a bit high.
SPEAKER_01You've kind of convinced me you're right that they they did go out of the way to get legitimate people that like the fact they got Ian Redmond um and then they lugged that that that helium tank up there. Um and they actually paid a guy to do it. They paid a guy to do it. Um like I the one thing that I would be upset with is the fact that they're repeating outdated information. I always really don't like that when a series does that, when like the the the scalp thing, like the fact that you're repeating that after like 75 years of of us knowing that that that it's not true. Or not 75, like 50 years or 50 years.
SPEAKER_03If they go to you know the lock, they bring up the surgeon's photo, and maybe they'll debunk it at the 38-minute time, but they always bring it up first. You know, it's like why, man?
SPEAKER_01This wasn't even debunked, too. They just brought it up just to bring it up. So like I that's always I always that's one of my pet peeves when like you because you have to like do that knowingly, right? Like, unless you're just really not doing you're either you're not trying or you're doing it knowingly, like you know, either you're not doing enough research to know that in the 60s and 50s these famous people in cryptozoology are calling these things out as not true and a waste of our uh our time. Um or you're or you're willfully like lying, you know, like you're like you're like obscuring that information. Um but anyway, so I'll I'll take a point off for that. I'll do uh seven bags of popcorn.
SPEAKER_03Okay, and then out of the 76 episodes of Monster Quest, this is right 40th. Um 40th, so it's just right below uh Mystery Ape Island and just above Sierra Sasquatch. So it's in a group of uh ape ones. Um so it's kind of a middling episode for the show. Okay, um yeah, if if you if you look at like the YouTube comments on it, most people just say they miss these kind of shows, or they will say, I know a guy who knows the guy who went to Nepal and he says the Yeti is real. Those are the most common. Or someone makes a Yeti joke, a lot of Yeti puns. So yeah, I think the Yeti has somewhat lost um some hope in the cryptozoology space of being real, and I think most of the interest has looked back to the Americas for Bigfoot, and Bigfoot has kind of taken over. Um I think there's less interest in actually looking in the Himalayas for this creature nowadays.
SPEAKER_05Um I was always disappointed that for something that you think would be more plausible. I mean, I mean, as a sort of naive young person, you'd like, yeah, come on, surely the Yeti is legit. Bigfoot, I can't believe that. But um, yeah, if anything, the evidence, air quotes, that exists for Bigfoot has you know, there's there's some of it, and yeah, Yeti, it's based on the same three things gigantipithecus, the shipped in 1951 photo, and local lore.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and the lore is very quote unquote, right? Like yeah. Because like, like I said, a lot of the stories they do things. Like if you look at the the Nano K stories, they're like they're almost they're like they do things like in reverse of humans, they have like reverse footprints, and you can trick them, and like you know, they're like folktale creatures, right? They're obviously not talking about a real creature. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it I do like that. Sorry, I just I I do really like that story about that young woman. She's not a young woman now, but she was a young woman at the time, who says that she saw a uh a Yeti like kill one of her yaks, and she's been interviewed. Now, this doesn't mean anything. I'm saying I like it, I'm not saying I buy it or I believe it. I I she's been interviewed, and if she's acting, she's acting really well. And there's one documentary where they have someone prank her, like jump out in a Yeti costume or something. And um that sounds mean.
SPEAKER_01What a mean thing to do. That's awful. She's she's really unfortunate.
SPEAKER_03They reenact that in the Monster Quest, of course.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. In the Monster Quest, like they talk about how the thing that attacked her was five feet tall, so it's like a a little yeti.
SPEAKER_03Oh well, yeah. Yeah, uh reddish-brown fur, more like a kind of short for a yeti.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's five feet tall, is the details related to this.
SPEAKER_03And also, of course, there's the Himalayan bears, right, in the area. That's you know, possible explanation, I assume.
SPEAKER_01Um but the idea that I'm taller than a Yeti is kind of crazy, you know? Like that I could look down on a Yeti is kind of weird. Of like, what are we talking about? I guess it's a baby yeti. Is that your argument, Miles?
SPEAKER_05Well, I think I think so. That this going back to the there being several creatures that go by this name. Um, the what so again, Hooverman's on the Chuck of Animals, he says that the canonical Yeti um is the I think it's the one called the Mete, the one that he says suggests should be called Dinanthropoides Nivalis, you know, it needs a scientific name. And he describes that as uh obviously his stuff is translated from the French, and he describes it as youth-sized. So he's implying that it's uh not like a six-foot-tall big man, but that it's yeah, yeah, whatever a youth is. I mean, you know, there can be a youth that's like over six foot tall. Um, so maybe so in some uh corners of cryptosology, maybe the Yeti was imagined as not particularly tall. Yeah, it's interesting. Which is against the canonical view because we're always thinking of it as a giant hulking thing that's nearly as wide as it is.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's just a more artistic poetic version of it. You know, that's what we want. We want there to be like like this Uber man of the wild that's untamed. You know, we want that, and so we're gonna make it into it, regardless of what the evidence or you know, quote unquote evidence says. Uh I find it interesting about like the Bigfoot Yeti divide, is like Yeti has is more probabilistic just like from a Bayesian sense because like it's not in the new world, right? Like there are apes here, like like apes could walk there, apes could be there. Like the whole the whole Bigfoot thing I always and they never really respond to very well other than bring up you know land bridge, gigantic get Japantic at this black egg is I'm like, but there's no new world apes, man. Like, and they're like, ah well, you know, but there are apes in this region-ish, so like it is more probabilistic in that sense. But uh other than that, I don't think they really they've kind of run out of evidence and sightings and arguments, I think. So I guess the Yeti is uh he's on ice.
SPEAKER_00We killed him, we killed him, like we did we did uh Bigfoot.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, I I unfortunately, like I said, like it's kind of the sad part about this show where new cryptozoology a lot a lot of these creatures are very exciting when you're young, and um some people believe in them and then don't believe in them and leave it at that. I think for us, we have continued to find the hunt for them to be informative, the culture around them to be interesting, and I see it as this break between like this this Darwinistic worldview and then like how you go forward with that. Like when there's times like um people without scientific expertise could discover things, and when we were really learning what evolution meant and what like you know, what the natural world, how it could be described, and like people just want to be able to find things without, like I said, like special teas. And like, you know, it's kind of sad, I guess, that it's become more difficult to find new animals, and like this love of cryptozoology is kind of in that place emotionally, and so that's why I think it's still a good thing to talk about and explore. Although, unfortunately, our heroes Flockness, Bigfoot, Yeti, you know, Jersey Devil, whatever, um, they're not out there, but the you know, them being in our hearts is still a good place for them.
SPEAKER_01So I agree, I agree. I like I like the idea, like yes, they're still they still live on in our hearts. So it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um Do you have any final uh uh way to utilize uh you you I can't speak. Um do you have any final eulogy for the Yeti, Darren?
SPEAKER_05Um not really.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I didn't know the guy, whatever.
SPEAKER_05I think it plays it has always played an integral uh we said this already, it play it's always played an integral role in our uh you know, like imagining of what that part of the world is like, which is important. And I I and I I think I I've said this for many monsters already. Um this partly explains the phenomenon of expectant attention. If if a person of our culture thinks of uh a giant rugged mountain range in a wild part of the world, there's a set of things you're imagining, and one of the things is a giant hairy wild person. That's kind of like an inescapable part of of our culture, which is never gonna go away. I think it's super interesting. And then then it's good that the such places as kind of still do exist. And uh at a time when you know, if you look at any information about m the Himalayas, there's all these horrible stories about how there's like 12 tons of human feces left on the side by mountaineers, and there's like 6,000 spent, you know, gas cylinders, all that kind of stuff. Clearly, we have a massive footprint on that environment due to our interest in it. But so long as we still like hold on to the possibility that there might be um yeah, like monstrous unknown creatures there, that is a good thing, I guess.
SPEAKER_03It's interesting because like so, like I know some stories uh but from folklore in this region which I had never known, I would have never looked up or never heard of um if I didn't think there was a large, you know, hairy creature, part man, part ape, living there as a kid, because that idea is just so awesome. And like, so in some way it it you know, some like Western California kid got to learn something about a culture he's not part of. I suppose, you know, there's a little bit of like exoticism going on there, but you know, it is a way for people to get a foothold, um, however imperfect, into learning about different places, which can inspire like actual respect um once you learn about the real thing. So that that can be a possible positive of cryptozoology.
SPEAKER_05So I yeah, I like that as well. I like the fact that um uh there must be a good chunk of humanity that only learned, only got started reading about um you know exotic animals of the Orient and uh apes and fossil apes because of um the cryptids acting as like um gateway drugs, you know, hooks to get skilled to me.
SPEAKER_03The Yeti is the weed of uh anthropology.
SPEAKER_05You don't hear people say that that often, to be actually to be fair. I'm wondering, you know, it's quite common to hear scientists of all kinds say they they became interested in science because of things like dinosaurs and space travel. Where uh whereas are there people that are you know naturalists or conservationists that started thinking about Bigfoot and Yeti? Um, and that that inspired uh further interest. I I'm not sure I'd be interested in checking that out.
SPEAKER_01Me too.
SPEAKER_03Well, regardless, uh, we really thank you for coming on the show, Darren.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Darren, you're uh you're always like a an amazing source of knowledge, like in perspective on this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_05Uh took a lot of crap as well, though.
SPEAKER_03That's all right.
SPEAKER_05Thank you for having me. I've I've I've enjoyed talking to you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03It's always good to have well researched people on. You know, I always just wing everything.
SPEAKER_00Um you know you don't. You you do a little bit of research. You do we both do research.
SPEAKER_03You know, I I'm a novice. You you guys have uh uh bona fetus, I don't have shit, you know. Um but I I I do my best. I do my best. But uh it was it was great having you on. Uh thanks everybody for following this Monster Quest journey with us. Um hopefully, you know, one of you will find an unknown animal someday. If not, at least we have this community. Uh, anyways, good luck, everyone. Goodbye.
SPEAKER_00Bye.
SPEAKER_01Bye.
SPEAKER_05There's a lot of