Now one of your pudding.
I got a string going on here, something just because my dog.
Something killed your dog. My dog.
We're flying through the air over the tree.
I don't know.
How it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused.
All I saw was my dog coming over the fence and he was dead.
And once you hit the.
Ground like, I didn't see any cars.
All I saw was my dog coming over the fence.
Sat what are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling around out here. Did you see what it was or was it was?
Standing enough. I'm out here looking through the window now and I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside.
Jesus Quice, you better.
Hello, hit the boddy out here? What quin I'm out there?
I thought of a.
Bitch about tech forty nine.
I don't know.
Easy ann ount there, Yeah, I'm working right.
Hey, all right, folks, On Walker my guest to the show.
It is the Ban the Myth, the Legend, author, researcher, TV personality speaker, and.
Now podcaster Ken Gearhard.
Welcome to the show, Man, Thank you, Brian. It's good to see you, brother. It's an honor to be on with you.
Man. Thanks for having me on your show. A big deal.
This has been a long time coming, man. I was looking back at some emails we were emailing back in twenty two to twenty three trying to get this worked out, and it's taken us to twenty twenty six to get you on the show. So I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.
Looking to ass I could remember if we'd done this before. I didn't think we had, so that's but it's great to finally make it happen.
This is our virgin voyage together into podcasting. So let's get into it. Man, Let's talk about this bigfoot thing. What in the world got you interested in the subject of bigfoot sasquatch did?
To begin with?
Oh?
Man, of course, a lot of people ask me that question. It's an unusual career slash following. I just talked about this in my first episode of my podcast this past week because people asked me this so much. But I had a pretty cool childhood. My dad was a scientist forestry professor from Canada. Both my parents were Canadian, so I spent a lot of time in the woods and
I love to collect lots of creepy Crawley animals. My first pet was a Cayman alligator, and I had salamanders and snakes and all kinds of I loved animals.
I also loved monster movies.
Man.
I grew up on Godzilla.
Movies, a Creature from the Black Lagoon, and all that good stuff. Back in the day, when I saw a TV show, and I think I figured out it was at the latter part of nineteen seventy five, I was watching Saturday morning cartoons. Scooby Doo was my favorite at that time. There was a news break they did a segment on Bigfoot. I'd never heard of it before. I was about eight nine years old, and they showed up
clips in the Patterson Gimlin film. They had the pictures of the guys holding plaster casts, Roger Patterson, Renee Dehn, and whoever man. Something clicked. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Here was this thing to be some kind of animal obviously running around in the wilderness that we hadn't discovered yet. But it also was a monster. It was like giant and hairy and scary. My mother was very encouraging growing up. She used to tell me
stories about the YETI and the Mothman and stuff. Took me the library to check out big Foot books. I saw the Minnesota Iceman exhibit about that time. In the summer of seventy six. My dad was at the University of Minnesota who was a professor there, and that was an impactful six million dollar man episode that was happening at the same time. Now, when I was fifteen years old, my mom took me all over the world. She was
a travel agent. When I was fifteen years old, she arranged for me to go to Lockness in Scotland, so I attempted my first field research. When I was a teenager, had an eight millimeter movie camera. I would interview people around the lake and sit out there hoping something would surface. So I never expected to make it a career. I've just been very blessed. It's a passion, if not an
obsession of mine. About twenty five years ago, when my music career was not at a point where I just wanted to step away, I got lucky and I started hooking up with others for researchers, joining groups, going to conferences, writing books, and I ended up on my first TV show in two thousand and six, and so it's just been a really cool experience since then.
In addition to authoring of the books, the television shows, you've done speaking in all the Bigfoot events, traveling around the world looking for these things. You're a cryptozoologist, and I know that a lot of people on the show. I had to do some digging myself when I first got into the subject and started looking into cryptozoology. There's a lot of things out there. I think that people fundamentally just don't understand about cryptozoology.
So for the audience, can.
You talk a little bit about that, give us your definition, because most people, I think, only see it through the lens of pop culture and maybe they.
Don't get so deep into the subject. So can you talk a little.
Bit about what the definition of cryptozoology is and what it is for you and how you go about the discipline.
Ye oh yeah, definitely, thanks for that.
As I told you, I grew up, I don't have any scientific credentials.
Admittedly, you don't have to be a cryptoso I'll just per se. I just think you need to be as.
Scientific as possible in terms of your methodology and being objective and critical thinking in those kinds of things.
But my father was a scientist.
He imparted me with deductive reasoning and he was a statistician, so it was all about data, collecting data and stats and looking at things.
So I try to take that approach cryptosology.
The field was actually created by a zoologist named doctor Bernard Hoffelmans, who was a Belgian slash French zoologist at the Royal Institute of Natural History in Belgium, and then Ivan T. Sanderson, who wrote a great book in the nineteen sixties, A Bominable Snowman Legend Come to Life. Those
two guys, both zoologists, founded cryptozoology. They were romantic in terms of thinking that a lot of these legendary creatures that people talk about, like sea serpent, signettes and the Lockness monster and sasquatch might be not just legends but undiscovered species. So cryptozoology means a study of hidden animals, that is, animals that are hidden from science scientific recognition.
Pouvelman's original definition basically states that it has to be somewhat of a remarkable animal in terms of the size or the sensational aspects of stuff. So something like an unknown lizard that's this big wouldn't really be I mean, there are a lot of scientists working on that kind of stuff and field research. But of course scientists are very reticent to become involved in cryptozoology because it can hurt their reputations, as we know from our good friend,
the late doctor Meldrum. So it's the study of hidden animals. So I try to emphasize the zoology part of cryptozoology. I look for these things like sasquatches and other cryptids in terms of are they undiscovered species. I think you can make an argument based on how much of our planet is still unexplored or at least uninhabited, and how new species are still being found all the time, even large ones from time to time.
So that's it.
I'm very interested, of course in other weird creatures, and I've written a book about things like the moth man.
I've investigated dog man and.
Pig men and the weird things that are I think more supernatural or metaphysical. And I guess the reason I get involved with those reports is there is a chance that some of those could be based on an actual animal or misidentification of something. Right, you knows, you really have to dove into the stuff. Anyways, A long rambling answer there, But cryptozoology things in my opinion that are not cryptids are things like mothman, dog man, goat man,
black eyed kids, windigoes, skin walkers. They're still cool things to investigate and cool topics to talk about, but I don't see any viability for any of those things as being an evolved species on this planet.
In your view, where do you think cryptozoology sits on the spectrum between folklore, zoology, anthropology, psychology and why do you think so many people are so uncomfortable with that gray area of cryptozoology as opposed to all those other things.
Well, man, that's a good question.
Yeah.
Pulvimen's intended for cryptozoology to be a multifaceted discipline. So it does incorporate the fundamentals of zoology, which involves evolution, natural history, and biology and those types of things. But also folklore was very important because a lot of things that were discovered around or just before his time, like the okapi, the Komodo dragon, the mountain gorilla, a lot of those things had a cryptid status in some ways, at least to Westerners.
So it's multidisciplined. As I've been in this a long time, I think all.
Good researchers really have to study sociology and psychology because you need to understand human motivations, why some claims are more sensational than others, why some people claim that they can go in the woods and hang out with sasquatches versus the rest of us that have to go out for years and years looking We have to recognize and anthropology is very important because sasquatches do seem to look like something in our fossil records, some type of ancient
hominin just bigger. All of that encompasses a lot of different schools of elf.
Do you think cryptozoology suffers more from skepticism that comes from scientists We've talked about scientists already in this conversation. Or do you think it comes from some of the sensationalized accounts and some of the sensationalism that comes with and is created by the believers in the field. And how do you think that has shaped the tension in the field.
These are good questions, Brian.
Let me think in terms of Bigfoot, for example, I guess all cryptids really there's been a lot of hoaxing. There's no doubt that hoaxing has been enmeshed with these creatures in many cases across time and going back many years, so there's reasons for people to be skeptical. Scientists, as I mentioned, are reticent to get involved with this kind of stuff because it could damage the reputation or create
professional problems for them. The general public, I believe, based on two recent surveys, eighteen to twenty two percent of the population think that foot could exist, So really just one in five people. Everyone loves the idea, it's a great idea, it's fun, it's a legend. But only one in five think that bigfoot could exist. But most people
don't immerse themselves in the evidence. They may have just seen like a thirty minute TV show or a YouTube video or something, and they think, okay, I got an opinion on that. But if you've done this for years and you see how all these dots connect, as remarkable, as impossible as it seems for bigfoot to exist, I think they probably do. I've never seen one, I'm convinced.
I've heard them a few times, and I've seen other evidence like footprints and physical trace evidence and things, And of course, I like you, I've spoken to hundreds of people various levels of credibility. I guess that's the other thing. The other part of your question that we could address is there are a lot of sensational claims to the general public outside of the bigfoot field. They're going to
lump us all together. So if there's a person out there that's saying they telepathically communicate with a clan of Sasquatches and this and that, there are really no different than some like that's out there, like trying to use objective science and find answers that way you've.
Described Bigfoot in the past. I believe is one of the most compelling cryptids because of the sheer number of the reports. So many people have claimed to have encountered and seen these things and had experiences with them. What do you think separates sasquatch from other cryptids as far as the evidentiary weight behind some of the reports.
Oh yeah, it's the consistence.
It's the number of reports and accounts, which let's assume that's a small percentage of the population. Most people probably don't come out and tell anybody if they've seen one of these things, right, They're afraid of ridicule. But the consistency of the reports, But there have been analytical studies Brian on sasquatch reports, first by John Green mister sasquatch back in the nineteen seventies, and then Hunter Fahrenbach in the nineties.
There's analytical models.
The data fits pretty well together across hundreds or thousands of sightings. Height described or estimated to seven and a half feet, that's pretty consistent, the way the hairs on the body, the gait which is described, and of course the very broad shoulders and no neck thing, and so a lot of these things are very consistent. That's interesting.
And then of course you have the wild man stories from the nineteenth century and also Native American traditions many in the Pacific Northwest and across the North America of these quote unquote wild men. So that's one level. Then you have the physical trace evidence, like the footprint evidence, in addition to some handprints and knuckles and butt prints and other things like that. But the footprint evidence is
pretty consistent, the ones that are credible. I'm actually going to be talking about that a lot this year at conferences because I want to carry on doctor Jeff's legacy in terms of what evidence he thought was really key, So we'll talk about mid tarsal flection. You can see that on a lot of casts now, all the ones that are considered most credible. I've even gone back Brian and looking like the Gray's Harbor Trackway Jerry Crust. You can see mid tarsal flection on all of those, like
really considered to be really realistic or genuine casts. And the foot design is so consistent but still shows a level of animation, as Jeff would say, but also genetic variation. So the physical trace evidence is very convincing. I think footprints, and then we have the Patterson Gimmin film, which we could probably do a five hour show on that, but I think that's very convincing. So it's just how all these dots connect. It just builds a pretty good case
in my opinion. I've been doing this a long time and maybe I have a little bias, but I tell people I'm ninety percent convinced that they exist.
That's where I was man until two summers ago. We were out in the Pacific Northwest. We're out actually at the headquarters for the Olympic Project when we were filming a documentary, and I had three encounters in two days. I got to see these things one daytime siding, and then I got to see them two times at night ten feet away from me. At one point, Oh gosh, I am definitely convinced one hundred percent. I'm only skept now about people and evidence. I'm no longer skeptical about bigfoot.
But here's one of those questions that has haunted me and everybody I think that's in this field. After so many decades of all these sightings, the encounters, the footprints, the audio recordings, what do you personally find most difficult to explain away when it comes to sasquatch? Is there one thing that sticks out to you that you find more difficult than others, maybe to explain away when it comes to the phenomenon itself.
I mean, there's definitely some red herrings, like the red eyeshine. It doesn't really make any sense zoologically. People talk about top of them, lucidum and different adaptations.
Cliff has an interesting theory about all this.
But red pies that are like seem self illuminating, that's pretty far out.
So that's a big problem.
But so many people describe that, and there's a lot of argument about I mean, they seem habitually by pedal. But then when you go down in the South, and I researched for many years in Texas, Louisia, Arkansas, and it, oh no, they go down on all the fours all the time. And I'm like, that doesn't really make sense, you know, I mean in the big scheme of things. But as far as the thing that's the most convincing in terms of evidence, I guess is what you're really asking me.
Stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see.
We'll be right back after these messages.
I think it's the physical trace evidence combined with the Patterson Gimblon film and maybe a percentage of the eyewitness accounts that are undeniable where you have multiple eyewitnesses. But I know there's a lot of arguments to be made against, right, why don't we have better photographic evidence at this point?
And why hasn't one been road killed?
The guys we're going to say all the roadkill that I see in this country driving around, and even big things get hit by trucks and stuff sometimes, and you think that might happen eventually, but I don't know.
It's a great mystery.
This is a two part question.
If Sasquatch is a flesh and blood creature, and I believe that they are, I've always been in the apor camp. I've always been in the flesh blood camp. What do you think for you.
Is the strongest.
Argument of how they've avoided biological confirmation for so long? And I guess this is a two part question about The other question that I get from skeptics all the time is where are the bodies? How do you respond to those questions now? And has that answer evolved over the last ten or twenty years that you've been doing this where's the body?
I've got a whole chapter on that in my book, The Censior Guide to Bigfoot.
That is the great million dollar question for skeptics.
I mean something, these are large animals that weigh eight hundred one thousand pounds. They've had to have a breeding population for thousands of years on this continent. You think at the some point a fossilized twos or a bone or something would have turned up at least. So that's again, that's a real tough proposition as far as why we can't find them. I think it's two dynamics at work. One is that they are incredibly rare animals, I think,
much less common than people realize. A population estimate model that I came up with, which actually pretty well matched one by doctor Grover Krantz and somewhat one that Jeff had done, is that there's probably only about three to four thousand of these animals in the entire continent of North America, from Alaska to Canada to Florida. So you're one hundred and fifty times more likely to fight a
bear or remains of a bear. Right, So they're very rare, probably critically endangered in some ways, but still they may have evolved with a longer lifespan and slower birth rate or some adaptation to keep them going. The other thing is that I think that they have evolved with adaptations, behavioral adaptations specifically geared at avoiding humans Homo sapiens. I think that they recognize I'm not saying they're as intelligent as we are, but they're intelligent enough to recognize that
we are the one thing that can basically take them out. Right, they're the apex predators, but they don't like humans, and they seem to move away from humans as quickly as possible, Although they do. Occasionally we'll get territorial like many animals and throw rocks and scream and bang on things, but they're not out there killing people or dismembering people and eating them.
They're very reticent. And there are other adaptations, presumably largely nocturnal, very nomadic, move around a lot, and just good at camouflaging themselves, staying very still standing, buying trees. All that stuff has ingrained in the reports.
So I don't want to put words in your mouth here, but I assume when you first got into this, specifically with Bigfoot, most of the researchers that were in the field, at least for me, I'll speak for me personally. When I got into this seriously and started looking into the subject, most everybody was in the flesh and blood camp. Everybody thought this thing was a relic, tomanoid of some sort,
or a Hamanan of some sort, some undiscovered primate. But as we've progressed in this, it seems that has changed in the mindset, seems to have went to almost a fifty to fifty sometimes at seventy thirty even eighty twenty split of people who believe that it's some sort of relic tominoid versus somebody on the other side, These people who think that it is potentially an interdimensional being, something that's dropped off by aliens to use the bathroom when
they're moving throughout the galaxy, whatever it is that people think they do. Hortal potty, hortle potty exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.
Have you seen the same shift that I have towards this interdimensional supernatural or extraterrestrial explanation? And how do you think about that mindset versus what you discovered or what you saw when you first got into this versus now.
I hope my answers aren't too meandering for you, Brian, but these are obviously relevant questions that you're asking. I've done some research on this, and to the best of my knowledge, the first reference to Bigfoot possibly being connected to UFOs or the supernatural was with John Keel in nineteen seventy in his book Strange Creatures from Time and Space. The next year, Jerome Clark ufhone investigator and Lauren Coleman Cryptosolas too. At that time was more of a kind
of a fortiing guy. Co wrote an article for Flying Saucer Review magazine about his Bigfoot connected to UFOs, and then a lot of stuff started happening around that time. I still speak frequently with Stan Gordon, who investigated those bigfoot UFO cases in the early seventies in Pennsylvania. He called me about once a week. He's still adamant that bigfoot and UFOs are connected. And of course I've had good conversations with people like Ron Moorehead and Tom Powell.
There are some people with that kind of viewpoint that I think are very smart and have done the research a long time. But as you mentioned, bigfoot research in Earnest started in the nineteen fifties, fifty six and then up until nineteen seventy for fourteen years. None of those pioneers of research that spent years and hours researching and interviewing people in the field, John Green, Reneea Hind and Peter Burn, Bob Tittnis, none of those guys ever said, oh,
there's a supernatural UFO aspect to this. John Green even investigated some of those weird cases in the Eastern US and he thought that the this is were sincere, but it didn't make sense to him Anyways. Throughout the seventies there was an evolution and if you went to a bookstore or watch the TV show. Usually Bigfoot was sandwich between Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle, right, so people began to connect.
This is social phenomenon.
People exercised something known as apophenia, which is basically our unconscious desire to connect everything and make it have some kind of meaningful connection. And we had a lot of cultural influence with these TV shows and six Million Dollar Man where Bigfoot was an alien and all these things in the seventies, and then it went back to apri
for a while because things are cyclical. But it feels like to me, Brian, that there's been a new spiritualist movement in recent years where people are reconnecting with different levels of spirituality and belief. For many people, Bigfoot Sasquatch fits into their worldview their belief system. Unfortunately, according to Oxford Dictionary, belief is defined by feeling.
It's not evidence. So it's just what.
You want or think or feel that something should be or you want it to be, as opposed to what the evidence show. So I've been in the field for decades in the most active areas all over North America, Alaska, Pacific, Northwest Bluff Creek, boggy creek, honey island, swamp, foot, green swamp, apply and you name it. If they've been big for I've been in that area. I've never seen these weird
orbs that people talk about. I haven't seen a bigfoot, so therefore I have not seen a bigfoot cloak or do anything like that.
I don't know.
I don't want to be disingenuous, and I'm sure I'm making a lot of enemies in certain camps when I talk about this stuff. To me, the evidence does not indicate that these things are supernatural or interdimensional. I'm still one hundred percent ap or based on the evidence.
I've thought about this so much because we do talk to so many people. I've interviewed probably a thousand plus people at this point for the show and in person at these conferences and book signings and things that we do, it seems to be what's happening.
It looks to me like Bigfoot has.
Almost became the cryptid Rarshock Test, and people start putting their own worldview onto the mystery. Because here's the thing, I think, at least for me, and I guess this is a question for you, do you think it could be one of these situations where people go for decades, so many years looking into the subject. We both know people that have been doing this for thirty plus years.
They've been out in the woods looking for their own experiences, looking for those answers, and they tend to not come right because, let's face it, bigfoot research in and of itself is pretty fricking boring. There's a lot of time sitting around the campfire where absolutely nothing happens, and you go so long without having any kind of answers about this. Do you think that pushes people maybe to start maybe getting into this more supernatural explanation because I can't explain
it away with science. I can't explain it in a way that makes sense logically. So let me go in a different direction and see if I can find answers there. Do you think that's possibly what's going on?
Yeah?
I think for some people it's a sociological phenomenon, the archetype of the wild man, but you can find it in every culture around the world. The brutish, big hair, care covered manlike creature has a lot of symbolism.
For us.
It represents kind of our connection to the wilds, the wilderness, our past, and so it's a very powerful the idea of a bigfoot or a sasquatch. It hits people in a very profound way. I think resonates very strongly different people for different things.
I know.
I think there are some researchers who eventually turned to hoaxing because maybe they found some cool evidence at one point and then they didn't feel as relevant.
After a while.
And I think that might be the case with people like Ivan Marx, and there was a guy in Texas that had a video can't think of any name off the top of my head, that originally had good evidence and then eventually they started faking things, I think to some extent, because it's very difficult for us to disconnect ourselves from our desire to have experiences or find evidence.
I've been on a bunch of big put expeditions with different groups and stuff, and sometimes people are a little bit, maybe teeny over zealous about what something they hear or what they're interpreting something is. I've been on bigfoot hikes with fifty people and then someone was like, Yo, there's one following it.
I don't think it is, man, I had fifty of us here in a row. Yeah, I don't know, it is boring.
Also, if you love the outdoors, it's never such a thing as a bad big put excursion because you're just out in the woods checking out other animals and camping and enjoying the outdoors. But in terms of your right, I've been in the field for many years and I've heard vocalizations a few times that I think we're very convincing.
I've never seen one.
Occasionally, I'll find something else here or there, but you know, it requires a lot of patience.
Let's talk a little bit.
About the technology. As technology has progressed. I know when people started getting out in the woods thirty forty years ago, you carried a flashlight.
That was about it. Right now everybody has all the toys.
We got trail cams, we've got drones or satellite imagery. There's even AI enhanced analysis that people do on things, which I think is a very dangerous, slippery slope that we can certainly get into at some point as well. But do you think with all the technology, are we any closer. Because of that technology and your opinion to getting into the answers, maybe it is pushing us farther into discovery. Take drones specifically. For example, I've had tons
of conversations with people over the years. I love drones. I have two of my own. I love taking them up. I love taking them out in the field and using them as a scouting thing. Like when we were out in the Pacific Northwest. None of us had ever been in that area. We wanted to go out and shoot at night, so I put the drone up and it helped us a lot in determining, Hey, that area looks a little easier maybe to get to than this area. We could go there, but you're not going to find
a bigfoot with a drone. And I don't know why that's so hard. I think it's hard for people that have never used a drone to just assume because they see these beautiful pictures online. You can zoom in and see the wings on a fly from three hundred feet away with some of these drones.
But here's the problem.
If you go out and use it practically in the woods. I was out with Todd's standing back in the end of twenty three up in Radium. Todd's got a fifteen thousand dollars thermal drone.
We put it up.
We found a few deer, but by and large, as dense as that forest is, and this was going into winter, most of the leaves had fallen, it was still almost impossible to see anything on the ground there. So there's no magic bullet as far as I'm concerned with technology, But in general.
I guess that can be a two part question.
Do you think we've moved the ball down the field with technology enough to help us maybe get some of these answers? And do you think things like AI are going to make that even more difficult? Even if somebody did find one of these and was able to get a photo or a video. Do you think all the AI stuff out there is going to muddy the water so much that's not even going to be a thing anymore.
Yeah, definitely the last thing. For the last few years, I've basically declared I'm pretty much out on alleged photographic evidence. People try to send me photos and videos all the time now, and with technology as it is and AI, there's no way you're ever going to be able to tell for sure if something is Maybe if you had a multi camera angle of something by different witnesses, that might be something, But even then technology is moving so fast it's going to be hard. So yeah, I'm out
on the photographic stuff for sure. But AI has many different benefits too in terms of data collection, assembly, organization stuff, so that's cool and all the other gadgets you mentioned, And I.
Know lots of guys in the field too that have the really cool drones and the flurs which were never really affordable years ago, and light ar and man.
There's the technology is definitely going to increase our chances, I think, because it is going to help us basically just survey the landscape a teeny bit better than we could in the past. But the one technology that I think is pivotal is the DNA environmental DNA.
It's gotten a little bit more affordable.
It was phenomenally expensive before, and there's still aspects that are pretty expensive. But I collected my first water sample at Lockness a couple years ago, I had my first DNA analysis. A doctor Haskell Hart, who's a friend of mine from Texas, put me in touch with a lab
and it's becoming a little bit more affordable. And I was actually involved with a project with doctor Hart out in Oklahoma a couple of years ago where he was collecting water samples in an area in your area X where there's been a lot of activity where he had at a siding.
So that's cool.
Because DNA is scientifically speaking, it's going to be pretty much a slam dunk. Now Here's the thing that I've heard is for one thousand dollars or one thousands of dollars or maybe even a little less than that, you might be able to have a DNA sequence that is relegated to pomenoid or homa in hamanidai or whatever it's in our family.
And stay tuned for more sasquatch otasy.
We'll be right back after these.
Messages, and that sequence would come back. If you did a gen blast on the database, it would come back like champ human, gorilla champ orangutangad look like okay, it's a great eight, but it could still be human. In order to sequence and find a lab that'll do and I'm not a geneticist, so I'm not going to tend to explain it, but the way that Haskellhart could. But in order to have a novel DNA sequence that is distinct enough where geneticists can look.
At it and say, oh, look it's almost human.
But it's got this many mutations and this, and so it's got to be a different.
Species or whatever.
I think that is still going to cost tens of thousands, if not one hundred thousand dollars to have a DNA test of that level applied.
So we're still going to run into.
This kind of obstacle where we get a lot of DNA results of alleged sasquatches and they come back as either they could be human, and of course some people in the big foot field argue that they are human, which I disagree with.
But it's going to be hard, but that's a pretty powerful tool.
And then particularly if you find a soil sample under a bigfoot track, or you get a video or several witnesses see a big foot make a track, then you get the dirt sample, and then it's secret. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic. I think all that could add up.
Anything's possible, But I agree with you it is the totality of the circumstances. If somebody goes out and picks up some random dirt just in the woods on a hike, with nothing to prompt them, just hey, I'm going to do this, and they want to go have it tested
and then something weird comes back in it. Yeah, people are going to look at that and say, but if you do have something on video or a photograph or multiple witnesses that see this thing take a step, then you go get the dirt, and then it comes back that you've got some kind of grade ape or some sort of eight DNA, then you have to perk up a little bit and say, hey, what's really going on here?
There may be something to this. I know you've looked at this, just it's like everybody else who's into this. Everybody takes a look at sasquatch, Yetti, the Yaren, the wild man from.
All over the world.
And I get this question a lot. People ask me, do you think Bigfoot or Sasquatch here in North America is the same thing as a yetti or a yaren or something in another country on another continent. And I take that a little bit deeper, and I guess I want to go a little bit deeper on the question
for you. I know you've looked into this. Do you think there could be some sort of shared biological origin between all of those things or do you think it's just possibly some sort of convergent mythology going on.
Good questions, Brian, this is good stuff, okay. Evan Sanderson, who I mentioned earlier. Ivan Terrence Sanderson, who was Abominable Snowman legend come to Life, proposed four different types based on his research back in the sixties.
There was the neo giant, which is like a sasquatch or the year En.
There was the proto pygmy wich were the little teeny ones like the Sadapa orang pendeck Agagway and shiu we Wendy. And then there was the subhuman, which was like the Almus from Russia. They seem to be more human like, they might wear skins or clothes or trade or have primitive language or something more human like. And then the fourth one was the sub human, which was like the Yetti. He thought that YETI was just like an ape, like
a pongiate. So that's four types. And I know, actually doctor Melgrim kind of added he and I talked about that. He liked Ivan's original guests of four different types, and of course Jeff traveled around to Russian and China investigated a lot of those types of reports.
Cliff has as.
Well and Adam Davis a lot of guys I haven't had a chance, so Madda loved to get to Asian and check some.
Of those out. But anyways, I digress.
I tend to align with Krantz on this, Doctor Grover Krantz, I'm a crancy in many ways, and that's one of my scientific viewpoint. Science is about probability. So what is the probability that there is an unknown species of hominoid running around in the world. What is the probability that they're for in different types of specie that seems to be I don't know, so I like to hedge my bets in stay. I think it's the same species all over the world. The protopygmy accounts are interesting, little foot
I've written about that. I've spoken to many Native people, indigenous peoples that have encountered these things. Could there be a pigmy variation or variant of the one type and then I think the other ones. You probably just had a lot of accounts of kind of feral people. I hate to say, like homeless. The website is really disingenuous.
Not be disrespectful, but wild people that live feral and very wild and uncamped in the woods are very primitive people, uncontacted tribes, things like that probably make up the more human like one.
So I think it is just one type.
The footprint evidence again from China and the United States a lined pretty well, probably some from Russia and Asia as well, So yeah, it's probably just one species with regional variations that I guess would be subspeciation where they might be a little bit bigger, smaller, different colors based on you know, where they're at.
Here's a question I get often, and I'm curious where you are on this. If sasquatch were definitely proven to exist, tomorrow, no question, somebody bags, a body brings it in.
It's discovered, right, What do you.
Think would be the most disruptive consequence from that, whether it be scientifically, culturally, politically, or do you think it would be more geared towards the sasquatch themselves as far as the consequences of discovery? Where are you on the whole discovery thing? Because I tell you, when I first got into this years ago, I was always about discovery.
I wanted to push the discovery. I was documenting all these encounters as part of being the repository to have people come and share those so that it could be data mined by whomever wants to do it and hopefully maybe pushed the ball down the field for discovery. And I naively thought everybody was in the subject for that same reason. Not the case, And that has even changed for me some, especially since my encounters last year.
It's definitely evolved from me.
I'm less concerned about having them discovered by science, honestly, because I think there are going to be some disruptive consequences on both sides for that.
So I kick it back over to you.
Where are you on the whole thing with discovery and the potential for these disruptive consequences that would come with that discovery.
Oh gosh, yeah, who knows. Again, the science nerd in me says, we have to discover these things. It's going to teach us so much about not only our planet and our environment and habitsat but also who we are because this is presumably the closest species to Homo sapiens on the planet, so from an anthropological and zoological perspective,
it's pretty huge. The conservationist in me hopes there would be an attempt to have some kind of legislation or protection for these things right off the bat that everyone would agree, Okay, these things are really rare, maybe they're going extinct, and they're the most human like animals, so it would make sense that we would pass laws and pretty cool. There are actually a handful of places already in the US where there are ordinances things where yeah, they're protective.
I think that's already a good start.
Socially, I don't know, man, there's a lot of We're living a very polarized society right now, and people have very strong opinions and beliefs. It's hard to say exactly what the discovery like that would do to people in terms of a foundational level, people's reality and foundation, and would people stop going out.
In the woods.
There's definitely gonna be a lot of problems, economic issues, social issues, scientific problems, so it would be a big deal for sure. You may be right, maybe it's our best interest not to discover them, but I guess I've invested so much time in this, and also again just the curious person in me, which is the science side, you want some type of at least prove for evidence that this thing exists, because then it kind of broadens the scientific scope of our world.
This is another question that I have wrestled with over the years, and I certainly want to get your take on this. Do you think there are institutions, systems in place, even the government on some levels, that have a vested interest in the fact that Sasquatch aren't proven real at this point? Because I used to argue with people and say, look, I was in government. I was a cop for sixteen years. You would be surprised what the government doesn't know about
most things. I worked for a huge metropolitan police department in the city of Atlanta, and you would think that we were a well old machine, and most of the time it was literally like Keystone Cops.
Behind the scenes.
So that said, do you think it's possible that there are at least maybe factions within the government. In my opinion, I don't think it's some big, overreaching conspiracy theory, But do you think it's possible that at least maybe on a compartmentalized basis, there are factions or portions of the government or institutions that have a vested interest in making sure that this stay's quiet.
Yeah, I guess that's fair.
I'm not really a conspiracy advocate either, I've found in my life that it's hard for more than one person to keep a secret. Like you said, how many people would have to be involved in a cover up of that magnitude with all these different political polarized positions and things, that would.
Be very difficult. But I'll give you an example.
We were doing an expedition maybe twenty years ago in the Green Swamp of Florida. Actually, Scott Marlowe was the guy that put it all together, of the late cryptosoldis, and he actually obtained a permit for us from the state of Florida to search for the skunk gate in this park, so as a state approved expedition or whatever. And while we were in there, one of the park rangers drove over and parked and came and talked to us, and he said, yeah, I'll never say this on the record,
but they're here. But what I know about park rangers and p people that work in those situations is they're very overworked and underpaid. They have a specific list of animals that they have to manage, which is a lot of work different species, and then suddenly if you throw something like sasquatch in a mix, it's just going to
make the wheels fall off in some cases. So I think there would be reasons, some economic and some perhaps just stress people trying to save themselves undue stress and problems. So probably true. But no, I don't think there are bodies hidden it an underground bunker and Area fifty one or anything like that. I don't think there were bodies recovered from Mount Saint Alan's or skeletons in the Smithsonian.
I'm not a conspiracy person.
Damn it. I don't know, and that's no fun.
I know it's not. I keep ruining the party wherever I go, and I don't mean to do that.
But with everything you've seen, researched, experienced, is there that one nagging question about sasquatch for you personally that you wrestle with the most?
No?
Wow, I think to me, the most definitive answer that I would want to know is that you know exactly what species they are because we're learning more in the field of anthropologies, learning so much more about all of our family tree and all the bushiness and different species that overlapped, and some inner bread and this and that. I don't think they are sentient in terms of you're
going to be able to sit down and communicate. That's borne out by the eyewitness descriptions on the Patterson Gillen film where you see this sharply receding forehead.
It's a smaller brain case.
Are they as intelligent as something like Homo ergaster, which is almost like Homo erectus, which.
Is almost on the cusp of being a man, or is.
It more primitive which other great apes are very intelligent, Or is it more like a gorilla or a austrolipithesceene or something like that, because that would teach us so much about again, just where we belong in the kind of the scheme of things. I don't have any great interest in trying to communicate with one or anything.
I don't want to make big foot, my friend.
I know there are a lot of people out there that think that would be a pretty cool thing.
But I know people who think they've done that already.
But we won't go there.
Yeah, all right, last question here. I want to be respect for your time. So let's go out for the thirty thousand foot view for a second. When future generations look back on sasquatch research, maybe that you've done or I've done, or anybody in this field has done right. Now, what is it that you hope they say we got right? And what do you fear that they might say we got wrong or that we missed entirely.
Well, that's deep.
I'd like to think that the pioneers Peter Burn sixty eight years his research, John Green, I think it was like fifty six for Reneea Hinton forty something. These guys spend decades their whole lives, So I think their original idea of what a sasquatch is many different ways of describing it. Peter Burn liked to think it was more of a primitive man, whereas John Green and Renee and
Krantz were all aper somewhere in that. But if it is discovered, then at least validates on not just them, but any big researcher out there within the sound of my voice, if you've spent years, decades, thousands of dollars pursuing this, if it's proven to be real, then you did get it right.
You know.
That's the bottom line there is. All your buddies at work are gonna have to zip it at some pole. All right, you were right about that bigfoot thing. I'll tell you that what did we get wrong? I don't know.
I think there's been a lot of I'm going to contradict myself because I think there have been a lot of very passionate researchers through the years, but there's been a lot of sloppy research and people that didn't do as meticulous a job as they thought they were when they were out there doing the research. And so maybe
we would have made the discovery a lot sooner. Maybe there wouldn't have been so many missed opportunities or situations like that if people had really thought out or put more of a method or a strategy to the research and do not document any things a different way.
If that makes sense. I don't know. Man, it's all fun to talk about. It's fun to speculate.
I know, I love it. It's what keeps me coming back.
Before we get out of here. We've talked about the books. We've talked about your cryptozoology classes. Tell everybody about your books. Tell them about your cryptozoology classes. Tell them about the cryptid Legacy podcast. I know you just got that off the ground. Tell them all the things about Ken Gearhard where they can find it.
I appreciate the opportunity, Brian, great conversation and you had some pretty profound questions. I really enjoyed that.
So yeah, my books can be found on Amazon dot com just look up Ken Gearhard. I do have a Patreon which is the base now for my online cryptozoology course.
If you want to learn about.
All the cryptids out there, from Bigfoot to NeSSI, to thunderbirds, the Beast of javadaan, you name it, that all can be found on Exploring Cryptozoology, which is my Patreon. And I've just started a podcast called Cryptid Legacy and we'll see how it goes. But I'm just going to tell stories basically about some of my misadventures and some of the big personalities I've worked with through the years.
And different things like that.
That can also be accessed on Exploring Cryptozoology on Patreon.
So those are my two big product.
And of course I can be seen on various TV shows on the History Channel mostly if people want to check that out on Friday nights, they're probably going to have the best.
Shot at that. And I have several appearances this year.
I'll be speaking at several Bigfoot conferences as always, Big Book conferences, festivals, and some paranormal type conferences as.
Well, So I'm going to be a good year.
Oh one last thing, my fiance and I am are also leading a tour to Scotland at the end of June for people that want to come with me and search for the Locknest Monster and check out other Scottish legendary creatures mythic Scotland. And that's the adventure mystery tours.
That sounds intriguing. I'm going to have to check that out myself. As always here on the show, we make it easy for you guys. I will link to that in the show notes. Go over to Kengearhard dot com. You can get everything Ken just talked about there. We'll link to that in the show notes. Ken, our most valuable resource on the earth is time, and I cannot thank you enough for spending an hour of your time with us today. Man, I've been looking forward to this
and it didn't not disappoint. One of the best conversations I've had in a long time. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Man, I've had a blast talking to you.
Thank you, brother, It's been an honor and a pleasure. Everyone take care and stay warm.
They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
I don't want to be.
World open, this job, that chart everything, Joy for me.
Joy, stay right.
Coming away, answers, consiside and stalls.
Concerns inside insteads stay said said, stand inside, side inside inside and stays stills. Also bass and State plays arst things in fast uss P instans