Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Are you ready to taste the demon toast?
Bigfoot. You either know him from Harry and the Hendersons or you saw him in the woods. We all love him.
Arguably the most famous monster in the world. The most famous Cryptid, too, you know. Dracula. Move on over, motherfucker.
We're here today to talk about Bigfoot and, well, Max Brooks's epistolary novel De Evolution, which is undoubtedly a gothic novel. I don't want to hear it. It's a monster novel. It is horrific, it is fascinating, and, well, much like the most famous gothic novel of all time, Dracula, it is composed of a diary and several fictional newspaper clippings and news stories.
And we're here to talk about Bigfoot here on the Dematose Podcast. This is the podcast for Death Wish Poetry magazine, and we talk about gothic and horrific literature. Here with me are my co hosts, Adrian and Jack, and a special guest, one of our brilliant writers from Death Wish, poet and writer Luca Oraskin.
Luca has a new book out called With Endless Love, Poem poetry inspired by the film 28 days later.
I do recommend checking it out. I have a copy coming, but I've seen a bit of it. There it is being presented to us. Yeah, it's lovely. It's got a super cool cover.
And, yeah, if you want it, links are below. You want. You want to hit up Luca's coffee or Instagram, message him directly.
So how are you guys doing?
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Busy.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Busy's a really good answer. I like that answer.
[00:02:31] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You think I got hit by a car? I think everyone should know Jack got.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Hit by a car. Yeah.
Do you recommend it?
[00:02:43] Speaker D: I don't, actually. I thought it was chill because I saw a deer standing in the road and I was like, oh, I can. I. I want to do that. And it actually sucks.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: I guess I'll cross that one off my bucket list there. Damn it. Do you think Bigfoots are.
[00:02:54] Speaker D: Yeah, I can't tell. Your weekend plans.
[00:02:56] Speaker C: I'm pretty sure people have claimed to have hit Bigfoot with their car before.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: People have done, certainly.
[00:03:01] Speaker D: For sure.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: So, Jack, I'm gonna need you to stop sending me clown dolls. Like, I have sprinkles and sparkles, and I. I keep finding them all over the house. I keep throwing them out, and they just keep showing up.
[00:03:17] Speaker D: Like, I tried to tell you, they reproduced through my toast.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: I didn't ask for the first one.
[00:03:25] Speaker D: That's okay.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Jeff just likes you that much.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Yeah, he likes me or the clowns do?
Well, that. That being the case, spooky clowns Aside, this novel is really, really interesting. Max Brooks is, of course, the son of Mel Brooks, famed comedian. His work is not very funny. He wrote World War Z, which is also an epistolary novel about the aftermath of a worldwide zombie war. And it's not as fun as it sounds. It's a horrific novel. It's one of the scariest novels I've read.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: That is like, I remember watching the movie and being like, that was a good movie. I'm gonna read the book. And then I was like, that was not the same story.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: No, no, no.
[00:04:07] Speaker C: That was a very different story.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: They took this gruesome book about, like, cannibalism and incarceration and, you know, countries sacrificing their entire populations just to lure the zombies into a kill zone. They took that and made a movie about Brad Pitt getting a cure or something. I don't even. Yeah, it's.
[00:04:28] Speaker C: It's a movie all right.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: The movie's terrible, guys. It's a horrible movie. It's. It's. It's ridiculous. It is not 28 days later.
[00:04:37] Speaker C: It's a movie that I love, but, like, not. Because it's good. Fair.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: And I have several of those too, so I get it.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: It's no Manos the hands of fate, that's for sure.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Cemetery Man.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: It's no Cemetery Man. Yeah, it has certain flaws. We're not fans. But Max Brooks, follow, Obviously he's written other books. There's the Zombie Survival Guide or something. He's written a few comic books. But this is the second novel. And it's a novel about a bunch of.
See, I'm pretty far left. How do I phrase this? A bunch of well meaning hippies.
[00:05:08] Speaker C: Trustafarians.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Trustafari. Exactly. A bunch of people with way too much money and not enough engagement with the real world who are like, we want to go back to nature and be connected, but we still want to live as part of the world. So they go up to the mountains.
There's, I think, eight houses. I'll. I'll double check the book in a minute, but.
And they basically set up a tiny little village up there with the idea that they will have drones fly in groceries, they'll have Internet and they'll go for long walks.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: They're like, we're gonna live off the grid, but it's going to be with complete, full Internet. There was actually a quote about the eco village that I wrote down because I wanted to bring it up to.
I liked it so much, and it was in, like, one of the first interviews about, like, creating the Green Loop community. Someone was like, the guy who created it was talking about, like, the solar panels and all of the technology they used. And there was the quote. Suck on that. Elon Musk. No, I love Elon.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: It's very dated.
[00:06:18] Speaker C: That destroyed me.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: It's pretty funny. Yeah. Book is from. Let me look at the publication date.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: I think it was like 20.
[00:06:26] Speaker D: 20.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: 2020. It's been a. That is like, in modern. In centuries. So.
[00:06:34] Speaker D: Yeah, I was in high school.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: I feel so old.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Yeah, you just aged like a thousand years.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: I was not in high school. Yeah, I'm gonna read.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: I was definitely not in high school.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: I'm gonna read this part just to give you an understanding of who. What kind of people we're talking about and understand these are people who think that they don't understand nature. They want to be part of nature. They think nature is great, and they think that we could still be part of it as this, like, enlightened thing. Let's see.
Rizdal, that's the guy who's doing the interview. Why would someone, particularly someone used to urban or even suburban life, choose to isolate themselves so far out in the wilderness? We're not isolated at all. During the week, I'm talking to people all around the world, and on the weekends, my wife and I are usually in Seattle. But the time you have to spend driving to Seattle is nothing compared to how many hours people waste in their cars every day. Think about how much time you spend driving back and forth to work, either ignoring or actively resenting the city around you. Living out in the country, we get to appreciate our city time because it's voluntary instead of mandatory, a treat instead of a choreography. Green Loop's revolutionary living style allows us to have the best parts of both an urban and rural lifestyle. You can't ask people to give up personal, tangible comforts for some ethereal ideal. That's why communism failed. That's why all those primitive hippie back to the land communes failed. Selfless suffering feels good for short crusades, but as a way of life, it's unsustainable. Until you invented Green Loop. Again, I didn't invent anything. All I did was look at the question through the lens of past failures.
You've been very critical of previous attempts.
I wouldn't call it critical. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't. For those who came before me.
I asked my friends at Cygnus to imagine two different endgames for this soon to be privatized land. Clear cutting by A Chinese timber company, or the minimal footprint of a micro eco community that personified the new green revolution.
Six homes no more. Bringing a common house in the top down shape of a turtle, which according to some Native American beliefs is the foundation on which the world is built.
Yeah.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: So very pompous American beliefs. But like, can't name a tribe is the most.
[00:08:46] Speaker D: Like, that's what I was about.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: That is the most white guy thing I've ever heard. I'm just saying flat out like, yeah, yeah.
[00:08:56] Speaker D: Which to be fair, thematically appropriate with the Bigfoot association.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: And that is in the.
There is a bit where they talk about the nature mother and it's like, that's in here because this book goes.
[00:09:09] Speaker C: Into the thing, the yoga lodge where there's like the statue of the nature.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Mother and it's Oma. Yeah, yeah. So the thing about this book is that it deconstructs that pretty quickly. And there's a part where a puma shows up. Right now there's several people, right? There's six houses, excuse me, There are six families, thus. And at one point a puma shows up, right? And we have our main character who is just sort of there because of reasons.
There's the older hippie esque couple, right? There's all these characters. And then there's this older woman from like Russia or something who's a bad motherfucker. Like she lived through a civil war. And the Bosnia shows up.
[00:09:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I think she's Bosnian. I think that was the implication in the war she was in.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
Which is like Bosnian or something. And the puma is about to attack someone. Like clearly it's like crouching, snarling, and she comes running up with the spear that she made in her little workshop and throws it and it's not a very good spear. It hits the puma and the puma runs for its life.
And the one lady starts going like, how could you do that? Why did you do that? What's wrong with you? And she's like, fuck are you talking about? I just saved that person's life.
You know, it brings to mind people that go into Yellowstone and like go up to the moose and try to pet it. Like, don't pet the moose.
[00:10:34] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:35] Speaker C: People who watched the show Yellowstone and think they can be homesteaders.
Yeah, that's my parents, like full stop.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: That's exactly what we're looking at.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: Yeah, it's very, it's like super clear from the beginning of the book that like these people, like you're rooting for bigfoot for the most part, I think specifically is there's a couple that adopted a little girl from Afghanistan, and they're regularly like, oh, don't say that word. It triggers Palomina's war flashbacks. But they're, like, constantly talking about her like she's not in the room. Like, they're adopted. Traumatized child is just an accessory to them.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Literally.
Literally is real.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: That's. That's, like, there's some real commentary there because, like, you know, those people, like, those people are.
They exist.
[00:11:28] Speaker C: I was very shocked by how I was reading this book, and I was like, I feel like I know these people. I've seen these people in the art world.
Like, I Especially art world.
At one point early on, I was reading it, and my brother just returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest. He actually hiked Mount Rainier, which is where this book takes place.
I actually, like, recommended it to him. I think he'd really like it. But I was, like, crying because I was like, oh, my God, this could actually happen. And then I was like, this is a fucking book about Bigfoot.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: That's the thing. This is a book about Bigfoot, but it is a very serious book about very serious themes. So I want to direct your attention to the sequence where they're talking about a book called Rousseau's Children. Right. And Rousseau's a philosopher who traces all of our problems to urbanization.
He believes that tribal peoples or essentially civilized and lived fuller lives in many respects. Right. And I'm not saying that this is wrong or right. Right. Obviously, I think different cultures are different cultures. But the point here is that the book, Our protagonist looks at the book and sees it as white. White people's porn, you know, because you have. You know, you have partially dressed women, men holding spears, and it's a curiosity, nothing more, nothing less. What are you going to take from this? Why is this a coffee table book? You know, and this book becomes kind of a key component later once the Bigfoots make themselves new. Right.
Yeah. So the people feel very. I have something I marked off here. There's a part where they're hanging out in the woods, and the one character says, how unfair is it to leave California earthquakes for this? You know, just loving. Loving the wilderness as if nothing bad could possibly happen, as if they're supposed to be there, you know?
And, like, the frustrating thing, too, is that, like, they claim that they're doing it for, like, the environment and to make this, like, eco revolution, but their entire life depends on being able to take out their Phone and order groceries with a click. Where are those groceries coming from? They're coming from. They're coming from a city, you know, where people live and work and die.
[00:13:50] Speaker C: You know, they're delivered by drones, which are some of the least eco friendly things in the world.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: Seriously? Yeah.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: I think that's what you call privilege.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: What you call privilege. Exactly.
You know, we here are all working class people, so we are not hypocrites. In fact, I do want to describe this. The drone hovered for a second, descended slowly, then gently settled on the large grassy patch big enough for a real helicopter.
Did I ever mention the helipad? That's how much land is allocated for this gnarish kite.
It's crazy. And like, I could. The thing is like, yes, this is fiction, but I could see this happening. This is all very plausible.
[00:14:32] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:33] Speaker C: I think the scary thing is, yes, I was crying because the scary parts could happen, but also just the story. This just feels like it's gonna be on the new. Like, if I woke up tomorrow and it was like, dumbass billionaire opens eco commune on protected forest land and people still live there, I'd be like, yeah, okay, that sounds like something that would happen.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: It's the lack of like, redundancies too. Like, why would there have been a satellite phone or a two way radio? Those are technologies that imply you're cut off from civilization, which they certainly were not. In Green Loop, the whole point was to ensure that its resonance were as wired in as anyone on the Upper west side of Manhattan. Better. Even as a telecommuter community, they had to have the fastest, most reliable connection possible. That means cable, not air. Satellite issues aren't as reliable, especially in the kind of weather we get. Up in the Pacific Northwest, everyone's data stream flowed through solid fiber optic cable.
And why would. How could that cable ever fail? And like, the thing I like about all this and the way this is set up is we, if all of us were to move up into the wilderness, we'd want to bring the Internet with us, we'd want to bring our TV with us, and this is how we'd want to live. We'd want to hear. You know what I mean?
So, you know, I think that that is worth something, you know, because a lot of people will set their novels in the 90s to avoid the Internet. This, this, this book is specifically going like, this is how modern we are and how, quote, quickly, we could descend into primitivism.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: I do like that. The central plot point of this book. Stop me if I'm getting way too ahead is that a natural disaster occurs. And it. It kind of goes with the theme of, like, oh, these people are getting back to the land, but they're really not. They're enjoying every modern convenience humanly possible. And then, like, the wrath of the land shows them. No, I decide when you get back to the land.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Exactly.
Let's go to.
Hmm.
We could talk about Oma.
Let's see.
Let me see. Is this it? No, this isn't it. Or did I lose it? Okay, don't worry about it. Yeah, we could. We could go to when Bigfoot shows up. Honestly. So, yeah, there is a volcanic eruption, and they don't know what to do because suddenly nothing's working anymore.
And, like, you know, pretty soon all the animals are mysteriously gone.
[00:17:10] Speaker C: And also, like, a good cult leader, the guy who runs the commune, is like, nobody leave. We'll all be fine.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And they're all, like, crying because they're like, wow, Tony saved our lives. We could be sitting in traffic, and who knows what might happen to us down there?
[00:17:25] Speaker C: And only the old Bosnian woman is like, what the.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: She sounds like. She would be 100% my favorite character.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: She's amazing.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: She's a Mostar. Mostar is her name.
[00:17:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:39] Speaker D: I love her.
[00:17:41] Speaker C: Like, all the other characters are like, nobody panic. She's like, let's ration food.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Yeah. She immediately falls into it. Because the thing is, is they aren't really. I mean, like, someone has an herb garden, but they're not living off the land. Not really. They're not hunting.
They're just having everything delivered with Uber eats through their phone and their drones. Like, it's ridiculous.
[00:18:04] Speaker C: I do. I do want to say my parents, like I said, they're the kind of people who watched Yellowstone and think they could homestead, and they moved out to, like, the middle of nowhere. Still in New Hampshire, but pretty far away from everything. Like, and, like, if you wanted to, like, instacart a meal, which you can't even do in the town they live in, but, like, if you had big billionaire buku bucks like these people do and could. It's a lot more money than, like.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Everyone thinks that they can do these things. Just, like, how many men think that if they just worked out enough and had enough money, they would be Batman, you know? Yeah, it's in fantasy. It's a persistent fantasy. You guys don't think you'd be Batman, right?
[00:18:45] Speaker D: Like, I wouldn't want to be 5ft tall.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: Billions of dollars. I would be Batman.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:55] Speaker C: But I don't think it has to do with working out or, like, a good worth work ethic. It's just if I had billions of dollars, I could probably do that.
[00:19:03] Speaker D: If I had billions of dollars, I'd be dead.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: That's fair.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: If I had billions of dollars, I could pay someone else to be Batman, and then I could be the joke.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: See, now you're thinking. Now you're cooking.
[00:19:17] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Now you're.
[00:19:19] Speaker D: You know, I really genuinely thought you were going to say I could pay somebody else to be dead.
[00:19:26] Speaker C: I mean, that's the. That's the much harsher reality.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm having trouble finding the part, but when she sees Bigfoot for the first time, she thinks it's a boulder. She's like, whoa. And it moves so fast, and it blends in perfectly with the darkness, right? The next time, they just see its eyes peeking at them, and it's like, 8ft tall, and it's just peeking through the herb garden. There's two points of light, and she's like.
They blink and they disappear. Creepy as fuck.
But when you finally see them, it's. It's crazy. It looked just like what I'd seen the night before, and it was definitely not a bear. Broad, powerful shoulders, Long, muscular limbs. I saw fingers, four and a thumb. Don't get me wrong, though. It was not human. The size, the fur, the head. From the back, that huge necklace head almost looked like a helmet. And when it swung that head toward me, I got a good, clear look at its face. Hairless, shiny, dark skin. A jutting jaw, lipless under flat, flaring nostrils. A pronounced brow shading, deeply recessed eyes. I don't think it saw me. I'd switched off the desk lamp the second I saw the Durant's porch light switch on. It wasn't even looking at our house. More of a slow scan. We left to right across the whole neighborhood. Its movement was slow, casual, smooth. Unlike last night, the motion light hadn't scared it away.
And, yeah, she, of course, wakes up her.
Her husband, and there's a bunch of them out there. Dark shapes in the dim porch light. More than one. I caught sight of a full body with lighter fur than the rest. And she gives them all names. But, you know, what do you guys think of the description of Bigfoot?
[00:21:12] Speaker D: So I did a lot of research for this episode.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: Y'. All.
[00:21:17] Speaker D: Y' all may know I don't like Bigfoot.
I. I'm so sorry with your shocked expression. Luca. I don't like Bigfoot.
I.
I'M native, so I'm.
I find a lot of aspects of the whole bigfoot thing problematic.
I have notes to talk about it later.
What I find interesting about this description, specifically the bear. It's so many times you're like, oh, Sasquatch is a bear. But it reminds me specifically of the.
Has to be one of the first, because this was 1924.
My next latest resource is 1929.
This is before the term Bigfoot.
1924, Mountain Devil, the eighth canyon attack.
There were a bunch of miners, and they're in their little lodge and they reported, shoot, I could get into Theodore Roosevelt too.
Anyways, I'm getting off track. Two things are important.
Compare the. The comparison to the bear, because it's always a bear. Because bears can stand on two legs. So you think, oh, something standing on two legs and it's hairy, it's a bear. That's just fun. Appreciative that that's where it goes to at first. Because you see that in so many other stories of bigfoot sightings who are like, oh, we thought it was a bear, and then it's not a bear. But also the darkened face.
Specifically, that is the terminology used to describe the Sasquatch. In a McQueen's Magazine entry, April 1, 1929, Ozzy Osbourne, not Ozzy Osborne. Unfortunately, Ozzy Osborne did not invent the term Sasquatch, I hate to tell you.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Damn it.
[00:23:18] Speaker D: Anywho, what I'm getting into is Harrison Mills. That's his name. Harrison Mills was a teacher that happened to live in the Swiss valleys nation. I do not believe I'm pronouncing that correctly. And he first reported on the Sasquatch, taking it from the word Sasket from the Salish language. And the sasquatches were. He reported a couple of stories, and they were described as wild men who.
One of them is specifically described having a darker face. It's a story about there's a little white boy and this hunter is hanging out, and he's like, oh, my God, it's a bear. So he shoots the little white boy, and then he's like, oh, no, it was a little white boy. And then the Sasket comes and is like, you shot my friend.
And the guy's like, you are really hairy and have a dark face. And she's like, you shot my friend. You suck, man. Notably, these Sasqia speak the same language as the native American guy, which is important.
I forget. I had the language written down somewhere and I lost it. But the important thing is I share a language, okay? And this is a story from the valley's nation.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Is that the Sioux Valley? Is that what you're trying to say?
[00:24:39] Speaker D: I will send you the word in the chat function. I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce this, and I meant to look it up before we started recording, and I didn't.
So if any of our viewers want to kill me on a stake, that's fine.
[00:24:59] Speaker C: My objective this super interesting because most of my Bigfoot knowledge admittedly comes from my Appalachian aunt, who is a Bigfoot hunter. Well, a Bigfoot truther, not a hunter.
I'm epilot.
[00:25:14] Speaker D: I have no beef with your aunt. I'm sorry.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: No.
[00:25:18] Speaker C: There's plenty of reasons to beef with her, but her Bigfoot true thing is, is not one of them.
But when, like, I was asking her about it, I was like, I've heard a few different stories, but, like, do you think that, like, Sasquatch can talk? And she was like, it depends on who you ask. And I was like, what an answer.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: That's fantastic. So. So, you know, have I seen her on Mountain Monsters? I'm a big fan of that show.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: You definitely have not. She is like a crazy old woman. She during, like, COVID lockdown, she moved into a storage container to wait until Covid was done. And I just like, every now and again we'll talk to her or her relatives, and she's just. She's crazy. She's just.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: She sounds crazy.
We need her on the show.
[00:26:12] Speaker C: You know, if my papa was still alive, I would love to have him come on and talk about Appalachian cryptids, because, boy, did he have some stories.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: I would like to watch Mountain monsters with these people and just hear them tell me why Dogman and the Yoohoo are all bullshit.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: You know, the amount of times I've ever was like, and then I was in the forest and something called my name, and we were like, wow, what happened next? And he was like, I walked out of the forest.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Oh, my God.
[00:26:43] Speaker D: That's why he had kids.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: That's why he had kids. That's why he reproduced.
Well, that being the case, Adrian, do you have any thoughts on old Bigfoot in the book before we move on?
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Not really. It seems pretty classic, you know, like, as far as descriptions go, that's pretty. Like, that's kind of like the basic description. We're not, like, going, right all Nashy or anything.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Well, yeah, yeah. He's not like, 85ft tall, and he's not going to turn you into A werewolf either, you know.
[00:27:15] Speaker C: Yeah, there was multiple of them.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: There are, well, there's a tribe. And that makes sense because if something is living out there, you know, I mean, here's this book I'm going to flash up in the edit about how Bigfoot is a. An immortal wizard living in the center of the earth. I mean, it's not that there's a lot of fun Bigfoot stuff out there, you know. Thanks, thanks Internet. But this is a bit that my boyfriend, who loves paleontology and loves taxonomy, he didn't care for this bit, but I thought it was clever. I'm gonna read this. Most artistic renderings paint Gigantopithecus as a stooped long ard knuckle walker, while the Centers, such as Dr. Grover Krantz, postulate erect bipedal locomotion. In his book Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence, Krantz described his reconstruction of a Gigantopithecus blocki skull based on recovered jaw fossils. From this process, he determined that the position of the neck indicates a fully upright posture.
Not only does Krantz's hypothesis corroborate eyewitness accounts of Sasquatch's human like gait, the thesis of Gigantopithecus as a terrestrial rather than arboreal existence would also explain the physical makeup of Bigfoot's feet.
Although no cast or photograph of Sasquatch footprint shows the traditional simian gripping digit, the mystery of its absence is solved when we consider that its ancestor Gigantopithecus, whose size and weight prevented life in the trees, had little evolutionary need for this feature. So basically what is proposed is that Bigfoot is not Gigantopithecus, which makes no sense. He's descended from Giganticus. And that gigantic Gigantopithecus preyed on early humans and followed them across the land bridge and eventually became a plant eater. Right? Although Gecanthopithecus probably would have been a plant eater. The fun thing about this is that they introduced the idea and the truth that though most great apes are strict herbivores, they're not above eating meat. Dr. Reinhart was right. He didn't know jack about primates. All apes practice some kind of faunivory, which is a fancy way of saying they eat other animals. Apes have all the biological hardware to be predators. Canine teeth for gripping and ripping flesh, forward facing eyes for locking on a moving target, and a brain designed to outthink food trying to get away.
I heard a theory once that if aliens ever do come calling, they may very well be hostile because the Same brains that mastered space flight, learned to think by hunting.
[00:29:48] Speaker C: And people laugh when I mention that I have a very severe phobia of chimpanzees.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: They're terrifying.
[00:29:56] Speaker D: That's not one agree with you. It's 100% terrifying.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: That's legit.
[00:30:00] Speaker D: Not funny. Not funny. Fear.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: Did you guys see? Nope.
[00:30:06] Speaker C: Yep, of course I've seen. Nope.
[00:30:08] Speaker D: Fuck yeah, I haven't seen. Nope. I live under a stone.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: I have a very severe fear of chimpanzees. No one was going to let me get it without seeing. Nope.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Nope is a movie about animal husbandry and how you can do everything right, but that animal is operating on a different channel than you and you might misinterpret a signal for something very different.
So when that chimpanzee tears that child apart and then puts his hand out for a treat later, he doesn't know what just happened.
[00:30:36] Speaker C: I. I was like at the perfect age to have been traumatized by the Travis the chimp story, which is very much what they're echoing in. Nope.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: So before we close out this part and move on to part two, where we'll start talking about Bigfoot communication, because that's the part of the book I want to go to next. What do we think about Gigantopithecus?
[00:30:53] Speaker D: How amazing to have a relative of Bigfoot that follows humans across the land bridge and lives around humanity for thousands of years and yet there are no fossilized records of any ape like creature other than humans in the entirety of North America. Which, I promise you, we looked for. Because I say we.
I say we as in white people, because we really wanted to prove that Native Americans were not actually related to white people.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:31] Speaker D: So we needed an eighth ancestor and we could not find one.
Tragic.
But we looked. We looked really hard.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: I did hear one really interesting theory where like UFOs and Bigfoot and things like that are actually like interdimensional travelers that like go through portals and run around and then disappear. And that's why we can't find the bones. I think the human imagination is a beautiful thing.
[00:32:04] Speaker D: I think I would do that if I could travel.
[00:32:08] Speaker C: Paleontology is so complicated. For years we thought like certain kinds of dinosaurs looked a certain way and realized we put the wrong fossil on the wrong head.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Right, Right. Yeah. That's happened many times.
[00:32:21] Speaker D: Yeah.
The fact is, sometimes on purpose.
[00:32:24] Speaker C: The fact is, like, the Gigantopithecus specimens, like, I don't want to say it could be anything, but, like, I feel like there's a lot of stretches to be made to say that it is like a human hunting creature that crossed the land bridge and is now Bigfoot.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: So I'm a skeptic and in skepticism. We don't believe things without a good reason.
Like I can postulate that Thor is my big brother. And you're going to say, where's your evidence? And I'm going to say, I believe it. And you're going to say, is that a good reason to believe that? And I'm going to say, no.
[00:33:01] Speaker C: You know, man, I opposite of a skeptic. You could be like, thor is my big brother. And I'd be like, of course, you're King Loki.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: Yes.
But my.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: That's literally what I told him the other night.
That's exactly what I told him the other night.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Create its fantasy.
Yeah, it's going, what if Bigfoot was a carnivore and evolved to hunt us? What would that look like? How can I make that realistic? Right. So I agree.
[00:33:31] Speaker C: It's like there are very scary ape attacks that are real. Like we just mentioned with Travis and like countless similar stories.
So, yes, like we have this real thing that we know happens and you know, Max Brooks definitely knew happened in 2020. And it's so easy to say, oh, there was a giant ape at some point. Well, clearly it could have behaved in the way of this modern ape.
It's just a very, it's, it's low hanging fruit.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: It's low hanging fruit.
[00:34:07] Speaker D: It's a great example of speculative evolution though, which is a really fun hobby to get into where you go, what if things evolved differently? I just think that's fun. It is. Technically, if you're writing a fantasy world, it's absolutely possible, but this could evolve. This is possible.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: I'm looking for this one segment where he talks about how the fossil record can be incomplete because that's the biggest fucking thing, right?
[00:34:36] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: My dad was talking about Bigfoot and I was like, dad, you know, Bigfoot isn't real. We've never found a dead body. He's like, that doesn't fucking matter, man. They could bury their young. They can get eaten. And like, you know, have you ever found a dead deer? And I'm like, well, yeah. And he's like, listen, because my dad's a hunter, he thinks he knows that. He's like, me, if I didn't go to college. And I'm like, dad, yeah. I'm like, dad, dad.
The fossil record disagrees. We found no, no apes that would fit that, you know, archetype.
[00:35:12] Speaker C: Okay. But, like, that's such a mood, because that is exactly how I react when people are like, there's no proof of Bigfoot. And I'm like, listen, there's no proof yet.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: I. The truth out there, man. The truth is out there.
[00:35:27] Speaker C: You know? You know, you know there's proof of Bigfoot. You know where it is? It's right here.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: I mean, Mulder would definitely approve of this message, but, like, I actually am pretty fond of, like, the interdimensional travelers and stuff like that.
It makes. I mean, so many people have so many interesting stories. Like, my mom has her own personal Sasquatch stories from when she was a kid growing up in Missouri.
It's pretty like, I don't know, like.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: As they say in Missouri, I ain't going back to Missouri, you know?
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Well, and, like, I know that when she tells me these stories, she 100% believes them.
Okay?
[00:36:09] Speaker C: Like, whenever. Whenever someone's telling stories like that. Like, I have a lot of ghost stories. I've had a lot of ghost experiences in my life, and whenever someone tries to meet me with skepticism and stuff, I just eventually have to be like, I know what I saw.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: Right?
[00:36:26] Speaker B: You experienced it. You were there. It was your.
[00:36:30] Speaker C: I genuinely, disappointingly, do not have a I saw Bigfoot story. But, like, that doesn't mean I'm not trying to have one.
[00:36:38] Speaker A: Well, yeah, and that's that. And that's. That's the big thing. Like, if somebody had an experience, that's their experience.
That's their anecdote. That's good. That is evidence. It's not evidence that should convince anyone else, though, which is the issue.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: You know what I mean? That's the big problem that comes up with this kind of stuff where it's like, you know, Bigfoot came to my house, knocked on the door, and I gave him a carton of milk, and he went his way.
[00:37:05] Speaker C: I used to have a sticker that said, bigfoot is real, and he tried to eat my ass.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you know, he probably would. He's conscientious like that, I hear. You know, he's a nice guy.
[00:37:15] Speaker C: See, that's why I'm trying to meet Bigfoot. I'm trying to get a date throat.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: I mean, I feel like that could be fair. Whatever, Dan, you know, you love you some monsters, so don't even.
[00:37:26] Speaker A: I mean, I. I am a confirmed monster, but I don't know, man. You know, in the Cryptid episode I.
[00:37:33] Speaker C: Was in of Mike's podcast, I did smash or pass all the Cryptids.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: Pay to see this actually.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: Which episode is that?
[00:37:44] Speaker C: I think it's literally called Cryptids.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: All right. You know, a future episode idea. You know. All right.
[00:37:51] Speaker D: I was gone for a minute. Can I jump in super fast?
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:37:57] Speaker D: I found your numbers for the rate to fossilization. Scientists estimate that less than 1/10 of 1% of all animal species that have ever lived have become fossils. That is from the BBC, Specifically an article written by John Pickrell. So, John Pickrell, if you're wrong, that is your fault, not mine.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Amazing.
[00:38:21] Speaker D: Okay, put that random man on black.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: On that note, that is it for Episode for part one of our discussion of Max Brooks's de Evolution and Bigfoot. Come back next week for.
Well, when we discussed the Bigfoot's attempt to communicate and the way the characters react and presumably the historical foundation for the Bigfoots communicating and the way they communicate being said.
Boom, boom, boom. That being said, Luca can be found at the Instagram below.
Do buy his book, do check him out and do follow him. He is really talented. He's really cool. He has two poems in our spring edition over at deathwitchpoetry.com but you should read everything there. Luca Oraskin Adrian is the founder and chairperson for the Horror Film Art Society and is also a really talented dream inspired painter who specializes in watercolors and does take commissions. She painted the book cover for my first book back there. It's incredible. We do love it. Hit her up. Follow her below. Adrian, do you want to say anything about anything you do?
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Well, this month's theme for the Horror Film Art Society, the movie I've chosen is the Toxic Avenger. So if any of you artists want to watch the Toxic Avenger and create some art surrounding it, send it my way. It doesn't cost anything. If you can't ship the piece, we will have it printed up and it will be showcased and then it will be published in Horror to Culture magazine.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: There you go.
Horrordoculture.com Jack, what are we shilling? What plugs you got?
[00:40:15] Speaker D: I have nothing right now, okay? Essentially, I am a ghost.
I don't exist on social media anymore.
I've accomplished nothing. And anything I have accomplished.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: True.
That is not true. Jack is in college.
[00:40:33] Speaker D: Anything I may or may not have done is my secret hidden work from my resume.
Specifically, I've been writing news reports for my college.
So if I shouted that out, I would just be dropping my location to our entire audience.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: Okay?
Okay. Well, Jack is a spider daddy. He has a very cute tarantula. What's your tarantula's name?
[00:41:01] Speaker D: My tarantula's name? Jack Jr. Jack Jr.
[00:41:04] Speaker C: I'm so jealous.
I used to have a tarantula, and my mom killed him.
[00:41:10] Speaker D: No.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: No.
[00:42:37] Speaker D: Sa.
