Big food and be on with Cliff and Bubo. These guys are your favorites, so like to say subscribe and raid it live star s and me.
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And listening watching Lin always keep its watching.
And now you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Bubo Fay, Hey Bobes. What's happening?
Hey Cliff? How much? How's it going?
It's going alright, just be another beautiful day hanging out. Gonna talk to a great guest today about a great subject I'm kind of excited about. But we should probably let Darby talk about that. So why don't we just bring Darby on and we'll start talking. How you doing Derby?
Hi, I'm doing well?
How are you good? All right? Pushing forward? So thank you so much for coming on, and you have such an exciting project here. But before we get going on that, I was looking up. I was gonna try to familiarize myself with your biography. And the nearest I correct me if I'm wrong, but the nearest I can figure is you're kind of You're a librarian of some sort. You're a research of a variety of subjects, and it seems like you're a facilitator more than say an instructor or
something like that. Is that is that correct? That a good way to categorize you. Well, I am an instructor as well. Yeah, I'm on faculty at North Carolina State University. My primary faculty appointment is as a librarian. But as as you know, Cliff, not not doing the sorts of things that most people think of when you think of
a librarian. But also I do teach, and I am very much involved with research and my work as a librarian, especially for many many years, my job has been to help put together and support highly interdisciplinary research teams to tackle really tough questions. So to put together the right people and to help translate between feel in such a way that people can deal with real world issues that require expertise that's coming from a number of different areas.
Now that is this is this is your role here needed Because the disciplines don't tend to speak to one another.
That is sometimes the case. Experts in different disciplines oftentimes either don't know how to speak to one another or sometimes don't realize that they're asking questions along similar lines or about similar subjects in ways where they could be working together and getting further that way. Sometimes they don't know how to speak one another's language, and so I play this role of matchmaking and translating and facilitating.
For you. You must be kind of familiar with a huge number of disciplines then to even know what's going on to any of them, realize that there might be connections that could be made between them.
Yeah, very much so. In fact, I'm usually the person in the room who knows the most about everything and the least about any given subject.
I am also one of those people, which is why I became an elementary school teacher. I was pretty good at everything, but not really great at anything in your career path or in your personal life, because obviously these things intersect on a regular basis for everyone. What led you down the path to sasquatch Well?
I had been teaching courses for a number of years, and particularly been teaching courses about how science works. Not just the sorts of things that say you might have taught your students in elementary school of how science says it works, no hypothesis and testing and experimentation, those sorts of things, but also culturally speaking, how science works. What
are the economic structures that underlie scientific research. What are the ways that people communicate with one another, How do scientists communicate with the general public as well as with one another, with funding agencies, with government, with industry, and how science scientific discoveries are applied in the real world. So there's a lot that goes into science that oftentimes
even scientists are not fully aware of themselves. And so I've been teaching classes on that for a great many years, and I came upon this idea that I thought would be really interesting of looking at fringe sciences or people doing scientific work in areas that are oftentimes not considered science that might be might be referred to as pseudoscience or dismissed in that way, And I thought it would be very interesting to teach a course and this is what I started doing that looked at some of these
areas and ask these questions of why are these subjects dismissed by quote unquote mainstream science or the general public. Are they being dismissed for good reason? What can that teach us about the ways that we make decisions, the ways that cultural aspects play into our scientific questions and practices.
And so I started engaging with some of these fields, including the field of sasquatch research or sasquatch investigation, and it was very very interesting to me, and one of the things that I really wanted to do with my students was to challenge them to look at the very best evidence in each of these areas, because, as you know, there are lots of people making lots of claims, and you can find lots of silly things in any of
these fringe or paranormal or edge science fields. You can find plenty of things to make fun of, but it's much more challenging to deal with the best potential evidence in these areas and see what it says. Because any potential evidence is actually evidence of something. So the question is, really, let's figure out what it is.
Do you have a list of the best evidence that you're going to focus on right now?
Well, you know, I think that there are a number of areas where there are interesting questions to be asked with regard to potential sasquatch investigation. In my current study, the one that I'm leading with my colleagues now that we're talking about today, I really wanted to look at the physical biological evidence that could potentially yield DNA, and the reason for that is that DNA is really the
gold standard for the establishment of a species. And that is of course one of the big questions, or one of the big hypotheses, that the sasquatch phenomenon could potentially be explained at least in large part by a unique biological species. You don't know unless you look at the evidence,
unless you examine the evidence what it is. And that's something that I found was that there were people who were finding hairs, that were people who were finding other sorts of physical samples, and they were asking me, where can I send to have this tested? How do I
how do I go about that? And I really found that I couldn't find a commercial labor or a university or any any anywhere really that I could really feel confident saying, yeah, this is the place to send this if you have a potential unknown And so that's why I got together a team and created that myself with his study.
So this is a university sponsored study, Is that correct? Well, it's university sponsored in the sense that most studies are university sponsored. What that means really is that in this case, there are there are four of US faculty colleagues who have who are collaborating on this, and who have set the scope and the parameters of the study. And we are all on faculty at NC State University, so it's university sponsored in that sense. The other thing is is that it is a it is an official study. And
so I've gone through the paperwork. I had to go through what we call Institutional Review Board approval, which is our ethics committee that make sure that when we do any research that we are treating both both humans and
animals with respect and care and properly ethically. So you had to fill out probably a mountain of paperwork for this thing and then somehow still squeeze it back, squeeze it through rather knowing that this is kind of a sasquatch study, but you couldn't put sasquatch in the forefront, right, So how did you get around that? You know this is and.
This isn't a sasquatch study, and what we're really interested in in this case and this is what the name of the study is. It's a study of allegedly morphologically anomalous physical samples. So what does that mean? Basically, that means this is a study of biological specimens that people have found that they claim have unusual traits or unusual appearances, or something unusual about them, and that is what we're
studying now. This comes from my own hearing and talking with folks, particularly in the Bigfoot community, who have found samples, for example, found hair samples that folks who are actually very good at identifying hair of known species in North America cannot identify. There are certain properties to these hairs that they reportedly have in common, and yet they don't look like those of known species. That's an interesting question. What are these So these are the types of questions
that we're trying to answer. What are these things? Every physical sample that will be submitted to us is a sample of something we don't know what it is unless we look at it. Why wouldn't we want to look at these?
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back after these messages. So three to six months doesn't seem like a long time right in Bigfoot Land. It's not very long because we've been looking for sasquatches for decades and decades and decades. But when you think about what can happen in three to six months, Like, what would you do in three to
six months? I'm going to give me six months go squad of course, of course, And how much do you think is going to get done during that time in squatch and you're going to see one in six months? Probably not, But in three to six months, what you can see if you're not going to see a sasquatch is thicker, fuller hair regrown from Hymns our sponsor. Hymns not bad for just three to six months.
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So at this point what we've done. We just launched the online intake survey at the tail end of May, so we started. We've had a trickle of offers coming in thus far, and it's just started to pick up over the last couple of weeks. So at this stage, as of this recording, I am starting to reach out to those folks, starting to arrange brief interviews with them.
I have some questions to learn and make sure that we understand a bit more about the samples and the circumstances under which they were found, and then at that point we'll be giving those folks instructions as to how to physically submit the samples that we're prioritizing at this time. So I imagine that certainly by early September or so, I imagine we will have the first sam bulls in hand on campus and in the lab.
So let's think about it from a user perspective first, and then we'll talk about it from the mechanical side. I guess your side of things. So if someone likes say, I found sasquatch footprints and they went by a tree, and there were a number of strange hairs on the tree, and I collected them. Now of course, I'm perhaps slightly better equipped than your average Joe in the forest. I would put these underneath the microscope and take a look
at them. If I couldn't easily identify them as bear deer or anything like that, and I wanted to submit them, what would I do? Well, what you would.
Do is you would you would go to the intake survey form that's online.
Okay, And by the way, we will have that. We will have that link in the show notes below, so anybody who wants to take a look at it, whether you have samples or not, the link will be in the show notes below.
Thank you very much for that. I appreciate y'all getting the word out. So the first thing you would do is fill out well, I mean, the worst thing you would do, obviously is collect the sample. And folks ask me, hey,
what's the best way to collect the sample? And there are certainly lots of folks out there who describe good techniques for sample collection, But the most important things to do are to try to collect the sample if you can, in a sterile way, so with sterile gloves or sterile instruments. Most samples, if they're hair or something like that, something that isn't moist wet, you know, like blood or something,
but hairs. Most of the samples that folks are offering thus far, it's best to collect those into a paper envelope and stick them in the refrigerator or the freezer. So that's the best way to store samples. Collect and store samples. So then you would fill out the online survey, at which point, like I say, I'll be reaching out to people to then schedule a brief interview by phone
or on the computer or what have you. And at that point we'll be asking folks, will be identifying, you know, which samples we want to get in some priority order,
and we'll be testing those. Anyone who submits a sample in that form can choose whether they want to be identified publicly identified with their sample or whether they want to be completely anonymous, because some people want to be identified and some people just want to know what something is and they don't want anybody to know that they had anything to do with sasquatch. Either one is fine. Under no circumstances will we be disclosing specific locations where
samples were acquired. Will be giving general locations, but everybody who submits a sample will receive the results for their sample, and what sort of timeline would that be. Well, here's the thing, Cliff, real science is not a speedy process. So I'm trying not to promise a specific timeline to folks other than we'll do it as well. We will do these things as quickly as we can. But that
could depend on a large number of factors. So if the sample, if the sample that's submitted is something that we come in, we look at it, we run a test and oh it pops up. Oh this is a black bear, and it's very clearly black bear. And you know, you may get a response in a matter of a couple of months. If it's a sample that is more degraded that we have were having trouble pulling sequencing information out of, we may be working with it for a while.
It really just depends on so many things that are beyond our control or the control of the people submitting these things as to how long it could take. But I do promise you you will receive response, You will receive a report for your sample.
Yeah, you would have to be extraordinarily careful, of course, because if you say, for example, it happened a sasquatch hair is submitted, it's in good shape, it passes the microscopic analysis, and the DNA comes back, is what the hell is this? Right? Even then it would have to be tested and retested because a false positive in this particular scenario could sink everything. It could just make the
subject and the study just a laughing stock. So you'd have to be extraordinarily careful and just very very conservative in how you assess the samples. Especially if it seems that we're onto the right thing for the first time.
Well absolutely, and if that is, if that is a finding of the study, that's one of the reasons that one of the reasons that I have recruited the team that I have, because these folks are absolutely tremendous and this team is when you receive a report, you're going
to know that that's what it is. If what you said, If if there is a sasquatch out there to be found and there are samples submitted and we find that, well, uh, this team is going to you know, very carefully document that and present that again if that's if that's the finding. You know, at this stage we haven't looked at any samples. The salient point here is is that we don't know what the samples that will be receiving are until we
look at them. And that's what makes this really exciting is that there are a lot of rather interesting sounding samples out there that have not been looked at by a credible scientific team, and so I'm really excited to see what our results are.
So, so there's four of you on the team. Who are there are three people with their credentials.
Yeah, so there are well, there are four of us on the core team, myself and then two geneticist, genomicists, and one microscopist so microscope expert, think of that. And so this is the core team. And this team also has a lot of expertise in forensics and wildlife forensics as well. So this is the core team. But the fun thing about this is is I also have a whole host of experts in particular areas who are ready to come on and join us if and when we
find an interesting specimen in their area of expertise. And these are faculty researchers not just from NC State, but from across the country. So, for example, I have someone on board who is a physical anthropologist and an expert in all things osteo. So if a bone or tooth sample that is interesting is submitted for this study, she is ready to jump on board and get involved and
really excited about it. But again, if we don't have something in her area of expertise, well she's going to stay in the bigfoot closet for now.
For that genome, for doing the full genome. YEA, you always hear stuff like last time we talked to Meldery, we said about four hundred and thirty four hundred and forty thousand for a full genome sequencing? Is that like, is us go asked about your budget, like how it got approve that conmerce they give you, and then like, when you hear those high numbers, is that going to be cut way out? Since these guys are on faculty staff, like they're already paid through the university, How does that work?
I'm sorry, But specifically Meldrum said in the six figure range, and most of that would be for personnel.
Right, and so that is probably pretty reasonable to expect if you were going to go out and hire and hire the work done by someone who might know what they're doing. Now, in this case, since we have the we have the machines, on campus that are availed to us, where we can do nuclear DNA sequencing for those samples that may warrant it. Then you know, we have an in house price schedule that looks quite a bit different than that, to be honest, and because my colleagues are
the ones with the expertise. Not having to hire my colleagues to work on our own study, that actually reduces the cost dramatically.
How many you'd run, like further with your budget you have for the year, like, how many samples do you run, like twenty or fifty or.
Well, see, this is the thing. We don't have a set budget for this project. And the reason we don't is that there are quite a few different needs and quite a few different goals that this project can potentially help us to achieve. One of those that's really important
is training of PhD students in genetics. So our PhD students in genetics who work in the labs of my two colleagues who are collaborators, they need to teach these students anyhow, and they see this as a really interesting way of having the students work with true unknowns or with unusual samples, and so this is a great way for them to be able to train their PhD students, like I say, which they need to do anyway, Right, they need to be studying samples of something, So why
not the samples that are associated with this study. In addition, the team we've talked about ideas that might help push forensic understanding forward, So that might help develop new forensic techniques that could be that could be useful again, not just for this study or for this topic, but could be very useful in the field for all kinds of things. And so, and these are just a couple of examples.
There are some other things that some other outcomes that we are imagining from the types of samples that we'll be looking at. So a lot of the costs of the study are costs that are already being born. Anyhow, if you have to you know, if you have to have a PhD student studying a sample of something, well it's going to be the same cost whether studying a sample from this study or a sample from some other study.
Right, How hard a sell is it to the university to fund this?
Yeah, well it's interesting. I mean again, it's not a funding issue per se, because the funding is is the funding that is already happening through the labs.
Like the institutional reputation that they're worried about.
That there is not really a concern with institutional reputation because of the way that we are framing the study again, because we're looking at this, We're looking at samples. We're looking at specimens that are something right, and it's a matter of figuring out what they are. We are not going out there. This is not a study about looking for Bigfoot. This is a study of looking at seemingly
unusual physical samples to determine what they are. Now we know that a number of these samples are coming from the Bigfoot community. They are the result of folks having an experience they feel as a sasquatch and then finding these specimens in connection with that. Well, there's still interesting specimens, so we certainly don't want to be prejudiced against those specimens.
In fact, I think, if anything, the experiences that people are having in conjunction with finding these types of samples make them all the more interesting to me for us to take a look at.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'll be right back after these messages. So we talked a little bit about the user's side, like someone like me who might get a sample and want to submit it. We talked a little bit about the budget and how you got this past the gatekeepers at the university, and
basically how you sold the idea, which is brilliant. Of course, then it was fantastic because working with unknowns that could yield a real fantastic mind altering a discovery is just brilliant. But what does it look like from your side, like your team, When after I fill out, I fill out the computer survey thing, my name, this and that, whatever, I still have the sample, you get that email. What
happens in from that? And we'll just use an example of a hair because obviously if you have a bone or a flesh or blood tissue sample, it would be probably a slightly different process. But we'll just deal with hair for now because that's probably I'm guessing that'll probably be what the majority of the samples you get or be hair samples. So what would that look like from your end, from when you receive that email to when I don't know, when you put the sample down. I guess I don't know.
Well, again, we have to prioritize the samples that we're looking at.
How would you prioritize something like that?
We don't have a Folks ask me, you know, what's your formula. We don't have a set formula for that. But certainly what we're interested in is we're interested in looking at First of all, we're interested in looking at samples that appear to be the most interesting and that
appear to be the freshest, most likely to yield genetic information. So, for example, if you were to offer us a hair that you found twenty years ago and it's been in your garage, that's going to be a much lower priority than someone who's who says, hey, here's a hare that I found last week, and by the way, I put it under a microscope, and it's got a little bit of flesh attached to it, and it doesn't look like a known animal.
Sure, sure, but now the user, the users aren't going to be able to determine that. That would have to be I mean, on your end, someone like me or something. Yeah, sure, I've got a microscope. I'm that level of nerd. But the average Joe who may have seen a sasquatch and wanted to submit a sample. They wouldn't know that. So you just get a hair and a story essentially on an email.
No, absolutely, and to give you an idea. So there's a a sample that was offered to us that sounds interesting because the person offering it reported seeing a sasquatch one night. He said it was peeking out at him from behind a pine tree. He went back the next morning and in the sap of the pine tree found a hair stuck there. And so he collected that. And
that was just several months ago. That, to me, is much more interesting than this is not one that was offered, but this was something that somebody talked with me about a couple of years ago. Someone who says, hey, I have a clump of hair that I think is sasquatch hair. And I say, well, what makes you think it's sasquatch hair? Why is it interesting to you? And they say, well, I found it stuck fifteen feet up in a tree. And what else would be fifteen feet up in a tree?
Could it be the hair of a sasquatch? Sure, of course you don't know until you look at it. But of course there are plenty of other things, you know, There are things that climb trees, there is wind, there are birds that use clumps of hairs nesting material, and they can fall down. You know, there are lots of ways that hair could get fifteen feet up in a tree.
So again we have to look at and it'll depend on how many how many things are offered to us, but we have to be able to put these in some sort of priority order, because we're not looking to just test any and every hair that someone finds in the.
Forest, of course not so say you have a good sample, say that this person who saw the sasquatch and there's a hair associated with it, or you know, you get another sample that seems very promising to you. What is the process at that point I'm assuming, I mean, I'm just guessing here to you'd probably put under microscope first, talk to your microscope dude or a gal, and then and then move forward from there. Or what actually does happen up to the point.
Absolutely well, the first thing is obviously, yes, we will be looking at it microscopically. If we if we get a specimen in and it looks you know, like for example, this this hair that was found in the in the sap of the pine tree. If we put it under a microscope and it looks exactly like the hair of a gray squirrel, which are common to that area and climb up trees all the time. If it looks exactly like that, it's a classic presentation. Well we've identified it
at that point. We don't need to move on to genetic analysis to say it's a grey squirrel. But then you know what we'll be doing is we'll be looking at these things in step wise, a step wise way throughout, so we'll be looking first. We'll be looking first at the morphology, so again the appearance of these through the microscope,
seeing what is readily identified. If we find things that aren't readily identified, or that look somewhat unusual or really unusual, or whatever it may be, that's when we'll move on to genetic analysis. And we're going to proceed with that very cautiously because one of the things that we don't want to do is we don't want to be destructive any more than we need to be. We don't want to be destructive of the samples that we receive. And this is one thing that told me that I had
recruited the right team. Was at our very first team meeting back when. It was one of my colleagues who said we to treat every sample that comes to us as precious, because these samples are going to be precious to the people who are submitting them. And I was like, wow, I couldn't have said that better myself. And so we're going to be proceeding very cautiously in the least destructive ways possible, and we're going to be we will go as far with the analysis as we need to go
in order to determine what the sample is. So with a hair sample, will you know, certainly looking at it microscopically, first looking at the mitochondrial DNA, and then again, if warranted, taking that to the step of looking at the nuclear DNA, looking at the full genome.
So with hair samples, and again, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know very much in general, But there's no there's no nuclear DNA, there's just mitochondrial DNA. Do you think that, unless, of course you have the follicle? I remember, correctly. But let's just say that you have a partial hair sample, and it could the mitochondrial be enough to indicate the presence of a new species potentially?
Yes, absolutely, I you know, I do think that we would we would want to try to have multiple samples certainly where we would find that. I do think that having like one sample with mitochondrial DNA was different would be really really interesting, but probably not enough, you know, certainly to establish a species. You know, the interesting thing is is that you know, when people submit a hair sample, oftentimes yes, we don't know will that sample have the
follicle in it? Will that sample actually have a skin cell still attached where where where it came out of the body, And certainly the skin cell would contain a complete genetic sequence, So again you're you're absolutely right. Hair is generally not going to give us a full genome, but a sample that one thinks of as hair could potentially do so.
And I guess it doesn't come down to one sample at the end of the day, because this is science and you want repeatability, and certainly sasquatches are real animals, and people start sending you a flood of hairs, a very small percentage of those hairs will probably represent sasquatch. And I'm assuming by comparing the results of these anomalous samples, that's where the real, the real positive affirmation is really going to lie is the repeatability of the same novel sequences. Is that correct?
Absolutely? If we just get one novel sequence again, that's a really fascinating result. That would be that alone would
be enough to keep us looking and looking and looking. Perhaps, but yes, it's it's the idea of having multiple of that, and so in an ideal world, at a minimum, I think, if you're if you're if if the idea is, if you're asking me, what would it take to establish a species, I think that actually as few as say, three samples coming from three different locations but that share the same novel sequence, I would think that that that in and of itself, something as simple as that simple ha, right,
something as you know, as as little as three samples could could be enough to essentially prove species.
Fantastic. Now, one of the things that we spoke about when we were speaking in person last in Tennessee, where I met you face to face. Something I believe that sets this the study apart from the many many other studies that have kind of come up empty after all this time, is that this study isn't dependent upon you.
And I think that's an important thing we probably want to put out there, because I imagine a lot of our perhaps slightly more conspiratorial minded listeners out there are thinking, well, this is just going to have more positive results, and the results are going to go missing. You know, the Smithsonian is going to take them, the roth Childs are going to send their spy team in and take them, or whatever sort of you know fantasies are out there.
I don't know, I don't know. I'm not a conspiracy guy. I don't buy any a lot of that stuff. But what would stop the samples after they're submitted, especially the positive hits, if such a thing does exist, what would stop them from being lost or mishandled, or going into the Smithsonian where all the illuminati of the world will burn them in some sort of ritual.
Well short off an absol catastrophe, and you know, we don't need to talk about a nuclear event or.
Something like that.
But no, I mean, this is this is why I was determined to set this up as a as a as a real study. This is not me, as a faculty member at NC State saying, hey, send me these samples, I'd like to take a look at them. I spent years putting together the right team going through the paperwork with the university, so they said, I had to go
through this ethic ethics review. Part of that ethics review is having a plan so that when somebody submits a sample and we say we're going to give you your results, there is a plan in place that that person will receive those results even if something goes wrong, even if something happens to me, if I die, you will still
get your results. And that's something that's very important. You say about all these studies that have happened in the past, but there aren't actually all these studies that have happened in the past, Cliff, in terms of looking at them as actual studies. There was the Brian Syke study, which is the only other university study of any alleged sasquatch DNA ever, and that was a very limited study. They
looked at a very small number of samples. Other than that, folks looking at these things in university settings have been individual researchers who have been doing this on the side
out of personal interest, as a favor to someone. In a few cases, universities I know some universities offer a similar service to a commercial lab to where they'll look at a sample for the general at the general public pays to have those samples examined, but there hasn't been a large scale university study period that's been inclusive of this potential evidence. And that makes a huge difference. Because I was talking with a bigfoot investigator a couple of
months ago who had collected some very interesting samples. A few years ago, a faculty at a university I shall not name said hey, I'd like to take a look at those in my lab, and he sent them off to this faculty member who was very well intentioned and just never got back to him, never got back to him, never got back to him, And so I asked him,
I said, well, who was this? Let me try to reach out faculty of faculty and I found out that this faculty member was deceased, and I'm trying to I'm trying to get to the right person in his former lab to find out whether these samples are still around. But I'm almost certain we're going to find that when he passed away, they weren't part of an official study, so they just got discarded, is what I'm sure would
have happened. When something is not part of an official study, you're really reliant on you, really relying on the individual. And again I think a lot of very well intentioned faculty have taken samples from folks and not given back the type of the type of report, the type of information, or any information in some cases, again despite the best of intentions.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. Will be back after these messages.
So Cliff, you may recall several years ago we had some conversations online and you had guested in my university class, and thank you again for that. That was a wonderful time for the students.
I am still an educator at heart.
Well it shows and it's great. But at that time you and I had discussed one on one. You had come into possession of a very interesting sample, and I know you were saying to me, Hey, I'd love to send this to you. I'd love for your folks to look at this. And I know at the time I said to you, I said, hold on, hold on, I
don't want to take it yet. I did not want to be that person who takes samples again with really great intentions, but outside of an official study, because I feel like I owe it to folks that if they're going to submit, they need to know that they're going to get back good results, they're going to get them back regardless again, regardless of me, and that they're going to be treated with respect.
And was that the mattress prints? Is that what you're referring to?
Indeed, yeah, and I know we're talking about ways that you might be able to submit part of that now. I would be talking that over with my team at our next meeting to see how we might work with a sample like that.
I was thinking, Macy can, like the other night has fallen asleep and these are the sort of things that put me to sleep. I guess at the end of the night, I guess, although it gets me too excited and worried about stuff, so I can't actually sleep. It's a horrible circular thing I live in. But I was thinking, maybe send you like a cute like a square centimeter or something like that of a place where I know that it's stepped and I don't know, there's lots ways
we can do that. And also I did have the foresight of collecting the soil off of the fabric itself, and I still have that in my files. It has been refrigerated. Unfortunately I didn't was unaware of that component. But it's in my files in a paper bag, so there's also that. I'll talk about that later off the air. Of course. Back to the question I was going to ask, is that you mentioned various others I said studies, but perhaps that's not the right word, projects that have been
done over time. And I didn't you mention to me when we were in Tennessee a few weeks ago about using or looking at least at other people's data to kind of like in the same way that doctor Haskell Hart did with the Sasquatch genome project. He just used their data and came up with different results. Are you looking for other former projects, I guess, and trying to get a hold of their data as well, And if so, for what purpose?
Well, yes, I have been trying to do that, and that has been I've been trying to do that over the last several years. And that's been a rather frustra frustrating process, Cliff. And it's been rather frustrating because what I find is that there really haven't been that many analyzes done period. There really isn't data to look at hardly at all. In fact, when Haskell heart did his interpretation of the Ketchum at all study data that you're
referring to. Ironically, that is the only real data sequencing data that has been made available by anybody who's looked at alleged sasquatch samples. So one thing that the Ketcham team did right was it eventually, at least after they self publish their paper, they did release that data so that Haskell and myself and others can take a look at that. Now, in the case of that study, with the data in hand, it's easy to see that the
interpretation that was given by that team is wrong. Now Haskell has looked at that and noted a few interesting, potentially interesting things in the data, but these are really just questions at this point.
Yeah, And I think that's interesting because at the end of the day, Haskell is not a geneticist. He's a chemist. He's a retired chemist, and just realized that, well, biology and DNA we're just big old bags of chemistry walking around talking to each other. At the end of the day. That's what life is, just chemistry essentially, And I think he kind of taught himself what he needed to know
to kind of do the examination of the data. So it's neat that someone outside the discipline, I think, paid attention to it and is perhaps drawing attention to these things. And it's maybe because he is outside of the discipline, it's a perfectly normal thing that he just doesn't have that knowledge to explain. Or maybe it's just a new set of eyes looking at something from a different direction that you wouldn't get from the inside of that discipline.
Yeah, So what Haskell has done there is he's raised a really interesting question, but it's a question that simply cannot be answered with the data that we currently have.
The data might be available for a couple of these previous studies, right, so does the data do you any good or do you actually need the physical samples to make any progress on this?
Well, the data, in one sense, the data could do some good, and I think that One of the things, though, is that I've found that the data just simply isn't there. There are On the one hand, I've found that there are far more rumors of genetic analyzes having been done, in fact, overwhelming more rumors of genetic analyses being done than actual analyses that have been completed. And it's really interesting to me because, as I said, I've spent years trying to track down every example that I can of
an analysis that was done a genetic analysis. And so when someone says, oh, you know, my friend had a sample tested and it came back from the lab as such and such, I've said, okay, well who's your friend? May I contact them? And again and again what I find is I contact the friend and they say, oh, no, that wasn't me, that was my other friend. Like oh, okay,
well what's your other friend's name? And then I go and I talk with that person and they say, no, no, no, I didn't say that I had a genetic analysis done. I said, the sample that I found looked like the sample that was featured on one of the Snelgrove Lake episodes of Monster Quest where they got such and such
a result. And I kid you not half a dozen of the specific DNA analyses that had been shared with me verbally, I traced back to that one same episode of Monster Quest where someone was talking about that and it had become misinterpreted in a game of telephone. Again, I think everybody trying to be sincere, but everybody believing that it was their friend who had this sample tested.
I have found actually very few instances where there was a sample actually tested or somebody claims that they actually had it tested, and far far fewer than that where somebody can actually show me a report. And so there really don't seem to be that many practically none that have been done. So that's really interesting there. Really we're operating in a space where there isn't really any data at all, and so that's why we need to.
Produce some Absolutely, and will the data from this study be shared publicly or will how will it be packaged up and shared with other scientists even for that matter, Yeah, definitely, the data from this study will be shared. I'm not promising a particular timeline for that that It depends on a number of factors and certainly depends on what we find as to how we go about sharing that.
It will be public, yes, indeed.
Now, will the negative hits also be made public? Like when you get a black bear sample, the black bear sample, and that'll be put out as black bear. Yes, yes, to the public as well as the sample owner.
Yes, that's the idea. Yeah, we're planning, and you know, we're certainly planning publication out of this. You know, what we are obviously, what we publish and where we publish and when we publish. All these things are going to depend on, you know, what are the results that we are getting. There are quite a few rather interesting results that we could have. There are lots of things that
can help push science forward. I know that your listenership is particularly interested in what if we were to find an unknown species? And in that case, I think that's where it's particularly interesting because in that case we probably would hold back at least for a while on sharing publicly.
We would certainly have it peer reviewed, but from sharing publicly the the sequencing the sequence data of a of a novel species, simply because it wouldn't necessarily be ethical too, uh to put that information out there publicly until we understood something about that species. What are its numbers, what are the what are the factors that may be impacting it?
What it?
You know, what are its social customs? You know, these all these sorts of things of culture, if you will, those things would all be very important. Because we don't know at this page, I mean what we don't have any idea, I mean, I don't have any idea whether, uh, such a species even exists. If it does, what is it like?
Uh?
Is it endangered? Do we need to make sure it's on the endangered species list before we release this information? What are what are those steps? Need to think very careful because we want to be ethical about how we how we we release not the information that it exists, but release specific information that could potentially be used to threaten that species.
If you did get a positive and my god, there's something out there, there's a thing out there, and it's it's it's it's here on the evolutionary tree, and blah blah blah, you had all this that that you had all the stuff that DNA could tell us about the next step, the actually echo the actual ecological study of these things would basically have to start from ground zero because of the dubious nature of the vast majority of
the data that has been gathered thus far, even siding reports. Now, luckily there's probably enough siding reports set statistically, you could probably do some stuff and squeeze some information out of it because the outliers would separate themselves. But between the cultural and just the filters that the investigators who listen to these reports, who recorded these reports even even they're like cultural perspective and all that comes into play here.
And this isn't a this is not an objective database. There's a lot of subjectivity in here, as there would
be with any soft evidence like testimony. I imagine a thorough ecologic study of these these critters would be five or ten years down the road, because scientists who've been denying their existence for so long, no, far less than you know, us amateur investigators do at this point, even though much of probably what the vast majority of bigfooters think will probably be proven wrong at some point, you know,
or certainly vastly refined. Are you suggesting that if you did get a hit that you think would be strong enough to prove the species, at least to geneticists who understand the sort of data, that it may not be announced for until an ecological study is done on the animal, which could take five or ten years.
No, No, I'm not suggesting that. What I'm suggesting, though, is is that if, for example, such a thing we're shown and there were a specific you know, there were specific novel DNA sequences that identified this species versus any other species on the planet, right, which is that's what DNA does. When you have a full genome, you have
a new species, you have a known species. The problem then is that releasing the particular sequence could potentially put it in the hands of individuals or particularly potentially corporations to create primers specific for that species that could that could enable the species to be tracked down, hunted, so on and so forth. So again we're talking we're talking
a what if scenario here. But it wouldn't be responsible of me to even if I think that there's a very small chance of that happening, it wouldn't be responsible of me to not think a little bit down the
road about that. But even thinking about the just think, for example, about the pharmaceutical industry, Well, the pharmaceutical companies might be competing with one another to try to track down such a species that would presumably be closely related to human because of the possible discoveries to be had there and the possible money. Yeah, so I think the bottom line is just that you know, not the not the fact of a new species, but specific information about
that species that could compromise a population. That's the information that might might need to be very close to the vest for a while. What's interesting to me about this is the range of folks who are really excited about this study. And I get it. I know that some people are using the term historic, and I have to confess, yes, it really is. To have the team that's working on this to have these things looked at in a scientifically
credible way. That this is not just we're going to look at eight or twelve or fifteen samples and call it a day. It is historic. I find support, on the one hand, from folks in the bigfoot community who are convinced that this will be the study that's finally
going to prove the Bigfoot as a species. I also have part folks who are more Scout in their ideas, who think, ah, this is finally going to be the study that looks at lots and lots of the quote unquote best samples and figures out that they're all known species, and maybe this Bigfoot thing will go away. I have people who say, Oh, this is going to find that Bigfoot is descended from the given family. I have others who say, Aha, this is what's finally going to show
that it's descended from Paranthropus. You know, everybody has their ideas. Everybody has their thoughts as to what we'll find. I'm just really curious. I'm just really curious to see what do we have here? And it will be what it is.
Yeah, to summarize John Green into Hindon, something is making these footprints, and it sounds to me like you're just on a quest to find out what it is. Except now we're living in a more modern age. It's no longer just footprints. It's actually DNA and by aloe logical material. So fantastic.
I'm excited.
Well, Darby, thank you so much for coming on and sharing about the project. This is an exciting thing. I think any bigfooter who is looking at the goalpost here and wondering like, can we can we move the ball? Well, I shouldn't use sports metaphor, as you know me, but man, any bigfooter that wants wants some sort of resolution to this should be excited about this project. And I can't. I can't do anything else but wish you the best
of luck. But I'll tell you I'm going to put my boots on the ground in my best areas and I'm going to put the word out to all the best researchers I personally know to participate in this, and of course it is open to anybody. If you have our listeners, if you have bigfoots on the property, this is an opportunity for you to participate as well. Who knows, it could be your sample to actually, you know, win
the game here. So show that the links are in the show notes of places you can submit samples, like if you want to fill out the entry form for Darby's project, the link is in the show notes. And also something we didn't mention, this is an ongoing project. There is no I mean Darby said it several times, there is no. There's not necessarily a budget that is going to run out here. But it's not like they couldn't use a little extra money either. And there is
a donation form. We'll put that link in the show notes as well. If you want to throw fifty bucks or five bucks, even how about a dollar anything towards it. It goes straight to the university. And this study is that correct, Derby? Is that the way people can help out and participate.
Yes, any donations are a tax deductible donations to the nonprofit the North Carolina State University, and they are are earmarked for my research area. As you'll see.
Online, fantastic. We're not shaking our tin cup. But some people out there may not have samples or may have no hope of getting any and maybe they want to participate in some other way as well. So there is that any final thoughts Derby before we get going.
Well, I really appreciate I really appreciate y'all getting the word out. I think that we folks need to understand that we can't find what we're not offered samples of. So this is the opportunity for those who who feel like they have something compelling, this is the opportunity to present it. This is the opportunity to find out what it is. Bottom line, this is the opportunity and it depends on you.
Thank you very much, Darby. We really appreciate your expertise, your talents and the opportunity to maybe get this thing done. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Yeah, thanks for what you're doing it. Thanks for coming on, Sharon. All right, folks, you heard it here. You got Darby Orca from NC State University. They're on the case. So let's get up some samples and until next week you all know what to do. Keep it Squatchy.
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