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The Plausibility of Cryptids · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Why We Do what We do. I am
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: your plausible mutant host Abraham and I am.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Your unique and mysterious host Sheane.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the things that exist in the sphere of psychology, which
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: includes all of the behaviors of all living things, which
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: is really great. And for the month of October, we
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  Speaker 1: like to take on some sort of spookier topics.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, and so today we are going to talk about cryptids,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: but not in the way do you think we are
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: going to talk about cryptis, because we already did an
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: episode on cryptids, But we are going to talk about
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: why cryptids are so believable, Why do people fall for
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the lie of the cryptid in your area? And actually
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  Speaker 2: I think it's pretty fascinating. Spoiler alert, people are just
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  Speaker 2: very gullible. But we'll talk about what that means and
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: why and how very easy it is to fall in
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  Speaker 2: line with believing the cryptids exist.
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  Speaker 1: And before we get into all of that, if you
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: are joining us for the first time, welcome. We are
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: so happy to have you here. If you end up
• 1:22
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  Speaker 1: do all those sorts of things. And I'll talk more
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  Speaker 1: about the ways that you can support us at the
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  Speaker 1: end of this discussion today. If you are returning because
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  Speaker 1: you've listened to us before and you just keep coming
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  Speaker 1: back for more than we also super appreciate you. Thank
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: you for being here with us. We are happy to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: share more space in your ears. Yay, we love it,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: as we have been doing. And I'd also just like
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  Speaker 1: to acknowledge that this episode is publishing on October twenty third,
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  Speaker 1: so I would like to wish you all a happy
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: event Organizer's Day for those of you who organize events.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, and also it's a Medical Assistance Recognition Day, so
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: I love that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is National Canning Day, a pastime that has
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: saved many lives. Actually, it'd be an interesting one to
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: dive into.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Maybe, Yeah, canning is wild. It's also National paralegal Day.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It is National mole Day, and I think in this
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  Speaker 1: one they're specifically thinking of the small underground creature, the mole,
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  Speaker 1: not necessarily a mole like on your skin, or a
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  Speaker 1: mole like someone infiltrating an organization in which they do
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  Speaker 1: to which they do not belong. I think it's the
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: animal one, but maybe it could be all of them.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe it's just mole Day all around.
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  Speaker 2: Ye. It's also National Boston cream Pie Day, which I'm
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: a big fan of. Love Boston creepie.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely. It is International Snow Leopard Day.
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  Speaker 2: It's scary. It's a National iPod Day. Let me be clear.
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  Speaker 2: I said iPod, not iPad. So that's fun.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah for those of you who don't even know what
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  Speaker 1: that is anymore.
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  Speaker 2: Uh huh.
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  Speaker 1: That seemed like revolutionary technology twenty years ago. But here
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: we are, here, we are yep, coming gone. It is
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: National croc Day, and you could probably celebrate crocodiles if
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: you want to. But they're talking about the brand of shoesof.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: There's a part of me that just refuses to wear them.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Like I hear, they're very comfortable and everybody loves them,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: but I just refuse. I can't do it. It is TV
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: talk show host day, so whoever your favorite TV talk
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: show host is, celebrate them. I guess Codin O'Brien is
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: probably my favorite.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he is very good. I was gonna say
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Happy John Oliver Day for that, but yeah, that works too.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert is in there. Yeah, they're great. Yeah, all right.
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  Speaker 1: It is a truffle Days in Croatia.
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  Speaker 2: So specific and such a specific location for that. It's
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: free speech week, that's right. That does not mean it's
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: free from consequence this week.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but it doesn't cost you anything. Matter of fact,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: this podcast is an example of free speech because you
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: don't have to pay us to listen to it. We
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: appreciate it when you do. But no, I'm just kidding.
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  Speaker 1: Obviously this is referred to free speech as an unrestricted
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: by government oversight, yes or other oversight, I guess yeah.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: And then we would like to wish a happy birthday
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: too the following celebrities, because not only were you born,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: but you made the choice to get famous, and then
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: we kind of like you even though that was the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: thing that you did. And that is Emelia Clark, Ryan Reynolds,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: ooh hey, dreamy Margaret Qually Quali and Johnny Carson and
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Amandla Stenberg.
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  Speaker 2: Very cool. What a great mix of people there, it is.
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  Speaker 1: It's pretty fun. So yes, happy birthday to them. A
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  Speaker 1: happy mole, paralegal canning assistance event organizer, snow Leopard, ipodcroct
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  Speaker 1: TV talk show host, Truffle days in Corotio, et cetera.
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  Speaker 1: So happy all of those things. And let's get to
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  Speaker 1: our topic at hand, because, as I said, we are
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  Speaker 1: talking about or as you said, actually we're talking about cryptids.
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  Speaker 1: We have in the past done a full deep dive
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  Speaker 1: on cryptids. As a matter of fact, I believe that
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  Speaker 1: was last year's Spooky October selection one of them at least,
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  Speaker 1: So you can go back and check that out if
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  Speaker 1: you'd like to learn more just about the different types
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  Speaker 1: of cryptids. Today we're digging more into why a cryptid
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  Speaker 1: seems more likely to exist, Like why would we perceive
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  Speaker 1: these strange, hypothetical made up organisms that we completely pull
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  Speaker 1: out a whole cloth. Why do some of them like
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  Speaker 1: some people actually believe in that they could exist, and
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  Speaker 1: some of them we pretty easily dismiss as not even
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  Speaker 1: in the realm of possibility. Like there are people who
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: are out there looking for Bigfoot in Sasquatch, but the
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  Speaker 1: there's there's very few people out there that are looking for.
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  Speaker 2: The Lockness Monster.
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  Speaker 1: The Lockedness Well, there are a lot of people also
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  Speaker 1: they're looking for the Lockness Monster. That one, I think
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  Speaker 1: is is pretty on par with the Sasquatch. But I
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  Speaker 1: remember there was this like multi headed dragon thing in
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  Speaker 1: Africa or something that was a cryptid. Yeah, so, uh, anyway,
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  Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about that. Why do some of
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  Speaker 1: these seem like they're more believable than others and some
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  Speaker 1: of them were so easily able to dismiss when both
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  Speaker 1: in both instances or in all instances, we simply created them.
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  Speaker 1: We said, this is a thing that exists, that's it.
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  Speaker 2: So yeah, this will this will take some interesting twist
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  Speaker 2: and turns and like how we get to the place
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  Speaker 2: of believing. So I think it's worth starting with the
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  Speaker 2: idea of what a cryptid is. So cryptid is a
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  Speaker 2: creature that is said to or believe to exist, but
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  Speaker 2: has not been proven to exist. So and these creatures
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  Speaker 2: are studying through something called cryptozoology. So the idea is
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  Speaker 2: that there's a thing that exists that either we believe exists,
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  Speaker 2: or we've made up like it could be any number
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  Speaker 2: of things. But ultimately we're saying, hey, this thing is around,
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  Speaker 2: but we have no proof that it actually exists.
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  Speaker 1: And of course, as we're diving into this, we want
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  Speaker 1: to be careful we're not ending too much of an
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  Speaker 1: air of credence to this idea, because cryptozoology is pretty
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  Speaker 1: clearly in the camp of pseudoscience, meaning it is not
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  Speaker 1: real science. It is bunk, yes, but as conspiracy theorists,
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  Speaker 1: it is not backed by any kind of actual evidence.
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  Speaker 2: It's a lot of magical thinking. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a confirmation bias, hindsight bias. As you said,
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  Speaker 1: magical thinking. Yeah, it doesn't follow the scientific method. It
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  Speaker 1: takes isolated anecdotes and treats those as evidence and disregards
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  Speaker 1: the substantial counter evidence that would prove those things false.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: It accepts unsubstantiated claims as true if they support their
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  Speaker 1: working hypothesis, and ignores the parsimonious facts that are the
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  Speaker 1: things that we actually can observe and collect data about.
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  Speaker 1: And so that's why we want to be very careful
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  Speaker 1: that although we are going to talk about cryptids and cryptozoology,
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  Speaker 1: we do not want to give the impression that we're
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  Speaker 1: endorsing this as even existing inside of the realm of
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  Speaker 1: reasonable things that are trying to describe the natural world
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  Speaker 1: around us. It specifically doesn't because those things don't exist,
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  Speaker 1: and they've never been able to produce a tiny even
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  Speaker 1: morsel or shred of evidence that they do.
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  Speaker 2: Right, So let's unpack the term cryptozoology for a second.
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  Speaker 2: So this was a term that was coined in nineteen
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  Speaker 2: fifty nine in a dedication, not even in the book itself,
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  Speaker 2: but in a dedication to Bernard Hebelman's So the phrase
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  Speaker 2: was used by Lucien Blancau when they dedicated their book
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  Speaker 2: to Hoblelman, specifically calling him a quote master of cryptozoology.
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  Speaker 2: So who is this Helman's, Habilman's Hebelman's Who is this
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  Speaker 2: Heugelman's guy?
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  Speaker 1: So Bernard Hoovelman's is how I choose to read that? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: he published the nineteen fifty five book on the Track
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  Speaker 1: of the Unknown Animals, one of the first I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I guess it carried the veneer of science, like it
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  Speaker 1: sort of presented itself as legitimate inquiry. And so this
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  Speaker 1: is one of the first books on this that was
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  Speaker 1: aimed at discovering or studying the unknown hidden animals out there.
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  Speaker 1: And to be clear, I mean, as we talk about this,
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  Speaker 1: like other things, a really good lie is close to
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  Speaker 1: the truth. Sure, and there is a nugget of truth
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  Speaker 1: and the fact that we know that we have not
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  Speaker 1: found and categorized all of the animals on Earth, particularly
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  Speaker 1: in the ocean.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: I heard an estimate recently that we're like, I don't
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  Speaker 1: remember the exact number, but the general takeaway was we
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  Speaker 1: think that there we have discovered fewer animals than there
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  Speaker 1: actually are in the ocean. I believe that, meaning that
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  Speaker 1: we have categorized less than fifty percent of the species
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  Speaker 1: that likely exist in the ocean. And they mostly did
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  Speaker 1: that based off of like an analysis of the clades
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  Speaker 1: of evolution and how many different branches there should be
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  Speaker 1: relative to how many we have discovered, And they're like,
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  Speaker 1: we should have found a lot more. And we also
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  Speaker 1: have mapped so little of the ocean that it's very
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  Speaker 1: likely that we just have literally not even stumbled upon
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  Speaker 1: the various species that there should be, right, and we
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  Speaker 1: keep discovering new ones. So like the evidence for the
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  Speaker 1: one that there's going to be more is that we
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  Speaker 1: keep finding more.
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  Speaker 2: We're going to talk and we're going to talk about
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  Speaker 2: that later too, like about exactly how many we discover
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  Speaker 2: every year.
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  Speaker 1: So great. Yeah, So anyway, the point being that, like
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  Speaker 1: they're particularly in nineteen fifty five, like there was a
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  Speaker 1: lot of reason to think, like, yeah, there are a
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  Speaker 1: lot of animals we don't know about yet, so it's
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  Speaker 1: reasonable to talk about and speculate on what that might.
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  Speaker 2: Be, right, Yeah, absolutely, So A quick fun fact, the
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  Speaker 2: term cryptozoology means the study of hidden life, despite the
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  Speaker 2: fact that it does not actually study all life, just
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  Speaker 2: animal life. And I want to be really clear about that.
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  Speaker 2: Cryptozoology studies just animal life, where like you have other
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: sciences that study life, and like when we talk about
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  Speaker 2: discovering new species, it's a combination of zoology and botany
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  Speaker 2: and other groups of people that are coming together to
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  Speaker 2: discover that. So, yes, cryptozoology is the study of hidden life.
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  Speaker 1: And Bernard managed to strike a nerve here. This resonated
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  Speaker 1: with people they were interested in this. The book sold
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  Speaker 1: over a million copies worldwide, although it did take four
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  Speaker 1: decades to get there, but that's a lot of copies.
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  Speaker 1: I think people really underestimate the number a million, and
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  Speaker 1: how many that is? It's so many?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean to be fair though. JD. Vance's
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Hillbilly Elogy has sold quite a few copies too, so
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  Speaker 2: it doesn't make it a good book.
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  Speaker 1: No, yeah, no, something that's popular does not necessarily mean
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  Speaker 1: that it's good.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. So we know what cryptozoology is,
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  Speaker 2: we know where it came from, and we do have
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: an idea of what cryptids are. I think the most
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  Speaker 2: infamous cryptid is ads.
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  Speaker 1: All right, we're off to the races, with the infamous
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  Speaker 1: AD cryptid as the first one. Let's actually go ahead
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  Speaker 1: and start talking about some of the some of the
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  Speaker 1: more well known cryptids we listed a few earlier on
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: and before we start naming just listing a whole bunch
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: of them, it's important to know that we could sort
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: of categorize these into different domains if we wanted to,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: just for fun. There's aquatic or semi aquatic, terrestrial, hominid
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  Speaker 1: or flying are different ways to think about these. So
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the water bound or ones that are between the water
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  Speaker 1: and the land, the ones that are just on land,
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  Speaker 1: the ones that are human shaped, and the ones that
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  Speaker 1: fly are different ways. We could categorize those. Sometimes they
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  Speaker 1: will transcend a single category and exist in multiple sure,
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  Speaker 1: but we'll try and and share examples of each to
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: really highlight the scope of cryptids.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and these come from cryptozoologists classification. So, like, I
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  Speaker 2: just want to kind of point out that these are
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  Speaker 2: very very general like aquatic, terrestrial, hominate, and flying. There
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  Speaker 2: are four categories, and if we know anything about animal life,
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  Speaker 2: animal life is far more complex than that, right, So
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: I know, you know, you can't just call something flying
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  Speaker 2: without describing it, like cause there are flying mammals, and
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  Speaker 2: they are flying birds, and they're flying insects, so like
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  Speaker 2: you could see the variation inside of all of these already.
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  Speaker 2: That kind of throws off the classification system. So I
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: just want to be really clear that, like again when
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: we say cryptology doesn't follow the scientific method, this is
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: one of the things that we're talking about.
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  Speaker 1: It's just basic categorization, Yeah, where it's like just sort
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: of put it in that into that category without a
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  Speaker 1: lot of a lot of real biological unpacking of what
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  Speaker 1: that would mean. Yeah, I mean, because you mentioned birds
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  Speaker 1: as a thing, like there are also birds that don't fly. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: Like flight is not a necessary characteristic of bird right exactly.
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  Speaker 2: So going into these four categories, we're let's unpack the
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  Speaker 2: first one, which is terrestrial. Terrestrial just means it's a
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  Speaker 2: creature that lives on land, and the two that are
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: really popular the chupacabra, whichever people are familiar with. We'll
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: come back to that one later, or the Mongolian death worm,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: which we did talk about in the Cryptids episode, which
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: is this elusive two to four foot redworm that nobody
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: has seemed to discover, but everybody thinks that it's real
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: and it's more likely a snake than it is a worm.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah. Then for the hominid ones, we have Bigfoot,
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  Speaker 1: as I mentioned, because it's very human like and I
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: believe is generally described as being related to humans.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: And then we have the crypto terrestrial, which is aliens,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: which are almost invariably depicted as being somewhat human like,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: you know, the pinnacle of all life, squishy humans.
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  Speaker 2: Uh huh yeah yea yep, yep, yep ye. And there's
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: so many variations that too, which is fun. There is
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: the lockness Monster and the megalo On, both are aquatic
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: lackness sponsor being freshwater, and the megalodon being saltwater. Arguably
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: the scarier of the two would be the megalodon.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, And then we have flying we
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: have the mothman and a thunderbird. I don't know if
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: we have talked about thunderbird in the last Cryptids, but
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I don't remember this one.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: So thunderbirds are interesting. They are thought to be a
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: relative of pterosaurs because they're like really basically a big bird.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: But like in a lot of like Indigenous people stories,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: the thunderbird exists in like multiple cultural like Indigenous people
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: like oral stories, and it essentially carries the storms on
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: its back, like so when it flaps its wings, it
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: creates thunder, it creates lightning and crazy storm weather phenomenon.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: So it's like a really cool, like really interesting kind
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: of I don't want to call it a mythology. It's
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: very important like indigenous people's cultural storytelling device.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: I like that. That's cool, Yeah, super super cool. What
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: a phoenix count as a cryptid?
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: I think it does fall in line with cryptid lore.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Something I want to say here too, And we're going
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: to talk about this later, but like you might hear
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: these and you might hear like, oh, well, we know
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: megalodons are real, like we know they existed, Yes, existed,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: But we'll talk about kind of the why megalodon is
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: categorized as a cryptid today versus like because it is
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: a known species.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good point. So like like a woly mammoth for example,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: right now, if people were believing that there's a woly
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: mammoth out there, that might fall into the category of cryptid. Yeah,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: but there were woly mammoths, like they existed, they just
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: would extinct a long time a long time ago.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Right right right, And that's actually a thing that we
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: are going to we'll unpack as part of like because
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: ultimately we're asking the question like not what is a cryptid,
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: but how and why do we even begin to believe
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: in cryptids? So I have so real quick, I have
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: a question for you. Are there any cryptids that you
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: think that you are, like you believe that are likely
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: to be real but still categorized as kryptids? Like to me, Like,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I read aliens and I go, yeah, it's statistically likely
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: that we are not the only life in the universe,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: right yeah, So from like a rational scientific standpoint, I go, yes,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: aliens exist, but technically they fall into the cryptid world.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: So is there anything that that stands out to you
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: like that?
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: I think that would be the one as well, because,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: just as you said, it seems most likely that either
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: there has been life on other planets or other solar
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: systems before us, or there is in conjunction with us,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: or there will be after us. So I do believe
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: that it makes sense that there are likely some there's
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: likely some sort of alien life that is out there.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I do not believe that aliens have ever visited Earth,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: but I do believe that that that life form is
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: more likely to exist than not out in the universe
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: around us.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I think, Yeah, that's the one. I
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: think that's the one that stands out the most to
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: me for sure.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: So I would most like maybe the thunderbird to exist.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: I'd like the thunderbird. I would like the Mothman to exist.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: I think the mothman would be cool because it's like
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: more a protector even though it's creepy.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: That's fair. Yeah, that's a good point.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: So then the question is at the end of all
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: this is how do we start believing in cryptids? And
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's actually that hard. There are a
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: few reasons that lead us to believe in these types
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: of creatures. The symbolst explanation is that people just may
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: see an animal that they have no idea what it is,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: or they see it out of context. And that's a
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: lot of like if they see something and there's like
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: reports of this anecdotal I saw this creature, it's more
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: likely that they just don't know what it is or
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: it's out of context. But in both of these cases,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: the observer may describe something that's out of the ordinary,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: and given that we aren't good at recall or remembering
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: things or reporting back details, some of those details might
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: get skewed and they might get changed, they may get altered,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: and then people in the community might take those stories
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: and they might run with it and go, yeah, I
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: saw that too, and it turns into you know, gremlin's
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: attacking a farmhouse or something like that.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there's an aspect of this, and I
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: know we're going to talk a little bit more about
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: there this as well, But that I think is just
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: a general overview of believing encryptids, which which is a
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: couple of things. One is that we are very good
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: at pattern seeking as a species. We look for things
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: that we can then put into a box where we
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: have a name and an idea for what that thing is.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: The other thing I think in here is that cryptids
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: exist in what I've heard described as the low information zone. Yes,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that and when we talk about
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: ghosts as well. But it's ambiguity, it's lack of clarity.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: It's like scant evidence that you could maybe shoehorn this
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: idea into because the evidence is ambiguous and unclear. So
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: I think the cryptids seem to exist in the space
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: of we don't have very much information. The picture is blurry,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the evidence is skewed. It's like we can't really tell
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: what it is. And when we can't really tell what
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: it is with definite clarity, you could, if you choose
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: to do so, superimpose mythological explanations on top of that. Yeah,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: but there are multiple ways we get there, So we'll
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: start discussing a few more of those different ways. We
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: end up finding ourselves orienting to what could be encryptid
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: as the explanation for some phenomenon.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's a great point, Like a lot
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: of it is, you know, because we are good at
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: patterns seeking and because we have limited experiences or limited information,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: we tend to language with what we know. So like
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: seeing something, you go, oh, the only way I can
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: describe this thing is based on what I already know,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: not what I could, Like you could describe stuff, but
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: it still is only in whatever language you actually have
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: to describe it. So I think that's also a thing too.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: It's like you can't like It's like the whole thing
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: about HP Lovecraft is a lot of his horror is
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: that whatever it is is unknowable, right, And like that's
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: the thing. It's like it's unknowable, so like you can't
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: describe it. It's an indescribable horror. Do you have many
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: indescribable horrors or an HP crypt Lovecraft story all of them?
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: And so like, so that's the thing, is like they
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: just don't have the language to describe this infinite cosmic
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: corr that exists. And sometimes we don't have the language
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: to describe these cryptids that exist, and that's we find
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: ourselves in that space. So yeah, I think one really
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: fun way that they start to show up is through
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: oral traditions and oral storytelling, Like, especially when it comes
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: to cultural beliefs and like that type of thing. So like,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: cultures that have oral traditions can create these kind of
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: interesting lures and stories and creatures based on specific belief systems.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: So belief can be a driver of local myths and
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: lore which gets passed down over time, and then those
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: stories evolve over time, with different storytellers adding their own
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: flare and their own kind of unique twist on the story.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: And even in oral traditions, the core of the story
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: might remain the same, like it's some kind of moral
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: tale or some kind of like creation belief or something
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: like that, but the details may shift and change and
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: grow and alter as that culture continues to grow and
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: expand and as they get more advanced.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: As an example of this, Pppalachian culture relies on storytelling
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: as a huge part of just sharing this culture among
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: people who are who live there and passing it down
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: across generations.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: And so inside of this tradition for an Appalachian culture
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: where oral sort of storytelling is one of the ways
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: they pass on these beliefs, some creatures have sort of
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: evolved through this process of storytelling. They evolve in the stories,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: they don't really evolve, and that includes as we've mentioned,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: the Mothman, but there's also the flat Woods Monster and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: the snally Gaster, which is a great name. Yeah, and
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: this one has described as half bird, half reptile. But
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: what is a Flatwoods monster, Shane?
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: So the Flatwoods Monster is also known as the Braxton
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: County Monster or the Phantom of the Flatwoods. Oh the
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: sense and so in West Virginia, Yeah, this is West Virginian.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: So it could just be like, I don't know, somebody's
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: grandmother or something they see at night. I don't know.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: The Flatwoods Monster is a creature reported have been sighted
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: in a town of flat Woods, and basically what it
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: is is it's a creature that is basically they said
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: investigators suggests that there was a light meteor that came
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: through and the creature was a barn owl perched in
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: the tree and just kind of like there was a
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: large shadow as a result, so like there was light
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: from a meteor that made this barn owl look extremely huge.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: It was discovered in nineteen fifty two and it's a
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: humanoid kind of extraterrestrial thing and it looks like it's
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: got branches for arms and like a long kind of
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: like skirt dressed thing and big red eyes very similar
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: to the mothman.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, bird person, yeah, or maybe a harpie.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: I don't Maybe, I don't know, but like, I think
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of like, uh like to me, it
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: reads that there's a lot of like big big bird,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: red eyed things happening in Appalachia.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: That's a great point, and in other parts of the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: world probably, But yeah, the idea of the large, flying,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: ambiguous creature is one that seems to exist in multiple iterations.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's yes.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Well, another way that we could turn to the idea
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: of cryptids in understanding things that we observe is mutations.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Because mutations, again, this is a nugget of truth thing here.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: These do happen. You'll get random mutations genetically and otherwise.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Where there have been creatures that were born with two heads.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that that creature is a two headed creature,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: but every once in a while, these rare birth defects
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: will result in things like that.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, comedy animals in an area that have some type
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: of mutation or deformity might actually become part of the
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: local lore. And that's something thing that happens too, is
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: like something happened, somebody sees some variation or mutation of
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: this thing. And the thing is is people have absolutely
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: observed this thing, whatever it is, whatever animal it is,
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: so like it's very easy to believe what you've seen
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: if you can see it, right, So you go, I
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: actually saw this thing that had ten legs, and it's like, well,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: you know, it's hard to believe because you know, the
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: general kind of exemplar of that animal only has four.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: So when something has ten, you're like whoa. And so
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: people see something that has extra limbs or two heads
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: or is furless and they think it's unique. Then that
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: turns into a whole different story and it's very easy.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: That's when it turns into local lore. So the chupacabra
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: might actually be an example of this. So the chupacabra
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: is a kind of dog like animal that is a
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: blood sucking beast. It attacks different different animals. They call
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: it a goat sucker as well. That's what it like,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: I think specifically means yeah. And so there's no reason
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: to believe that, like from a scientific standpoint, that like
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: maybe this is some type of wild dog or coyote
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: or fox that was mutated it's furless, it's you know,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: it's got some kind of deformity where it can't run
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: a certain way. It doesn't run like a normal creature.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: So these mutations can happen, and it can turn into
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: a bigger thing than it might actually what they might
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: actually be.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: It occurs to me that another that this might appear
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: in actual reality is animals in the wild they get diseases,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: like they will get diseases that make them rabid, for
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: example Rabi's, which has them behave in ways that is
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: inconsistent with what we normally expect, but other ones that
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: would change their appearance in a way that might have
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: people then believe there to be encrypted, particularly if there
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: are a few sightings. Is if they might get a tumor,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: for example, Yeah, they might grow a very large tumor
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: off the front of their face, and then their face
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: looks like four times the size that it would normally be, right,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: and they look like this deformed, hideous monster, and it's
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: just an animal that's slowly dying from cancer basically, but
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: that would appear so altered and mutated from its normal
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: form that people would then see it, and particularly when
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: they only catch a glimpse. They're sitting there thinking what
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: could that be? That must be the normal form of
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: this cryptid creature.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Right right exactly now, another.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: One, as I was sort of alluding to, like one
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: place where cryptids are likely to exist are in this
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: sort of low information zone. And another name for the
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: low information zone is ads. All right, so we are
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: now returning to this idea of cryptids and ways that
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: we might sort of come to believe that cryptids exist.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: And one is when we're just lack information. And that's
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: sort of what I meant when I was talking about
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: the sort of low information zone, the zone of ambiguity,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: if you will, and things that we only catch small
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: glimpses of. And so when we just are missing some
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: information that can be a way of a force, if
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: you will. That variable that gets us to it must
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: be acrypted or it could be a cryptied.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: So none of us that I know of, are zoologists.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: I'm not. I'm certainly not. And nor do we have
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: a perfect grasp on the entire kind of biome that
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: we exist in, right, so we don't know all of
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: the creatures that exist around us. Simply put, that just
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: means we're going to encounter creatures we've never seen. And
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: I think this is more apparent in like aquatic or
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: maritime spaces. Right. So, sea serpents are a great example
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: of this, especially when it comes to sailors, who, by
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: the way, sailors are great storytellers, so like that's kind
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: of like a really fun thing about that world. Right, So,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: sea serpents are a great example of this. Mermaids are
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: another great example of this, where you know, it was
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: a mythical creature that ended up just being manatees, which
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: is really fun or maybe like there's like a story
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: of their stories behind that, but I think that that's
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: kind of could be manatees. But ultimately, like think about
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: you're talking about a group of people who have absolutely
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: no understanding of what lurks beneath the surface of the ocean,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: and of course something weird like a giant squid might
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: appear to be a sea serpent, or you know, amanite
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: might be a mermaid.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: There was an example of very recently somebody had found
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: something from the ocean and they were all excited to
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: share with it, share it. They thought it was this
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: new discovery and it was this long serpentine thing so
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: maybe it was a sea serpent. Turns out it was
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: a whale's penis. So things that we don't know what
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: they are, and they're very large because the ocean's capable
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of hosting very large organisms, which is why I am
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: afraid of it. Those things sort of make their way
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: into human purview, and then we started inventing things about
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: them without necessarily doing our due diligence to figure out
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: what those things were. And then the other one, relatedly
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: was the idea of sailors who again thought there were
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: sea serpents, and some scholars believe that maybe what they
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: were seeing is whales penises hitting their boats.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Slapping the boats. Yeah, yeah, slapping the boats.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And they're like that could explain some of what they
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: were seeing. They're like, oh, that serpent is after the whale,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: like now part of the whale.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's and I think that's so funny
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: to think, you know, just like as you go through history,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: it's like there's just so much penis stuff that shows up.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: It's just an interesting thing. So didn't they say? I
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: think it was something like and I may be totally
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: wrong on this, but like the first recorded graffiti is
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: a dick joke.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I did hear something like that where I think there
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: are maybe taking some liberties with how to interpret it,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: but they there was maybe some reasonable hypotheses that it
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: could have been something that was depicting a fallus. I
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: definitely can appreciate that the male scholars of antiquity ends
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: today are still very obsessed with their male appendage and
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: all that that means to them.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: It's very funny. It's very funny. Yeah, So let's get
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: back to cryptids. So another reason that we tend to
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: start to believe the cryptis exist is because many times
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: the cryptid that subscribe is just an extinct creature. So
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: I want to be clear about this. So we talked
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: about cryptozoology being the study of hidden life, where we
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: are talking about creatures that have not been confirmed to exist.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Extinct creatures are kind of the the exemption from this right.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: They are the example that we say, yes, this thing
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: did exist. We know this creature did at one point
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: in time exist, but we know that or as far
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: as we can tell, this creature has gone extinct. However,
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: there are people that believe that that extinct creature is
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: still around. So there's lots of reasons why, Like, and
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: there's things like big cats, like ground sloths, they could
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: have survived their extinction events the giant ground sloth, which
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: you know, I live in a city where like that
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: is like we are known for our like we're known
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: for racing, yeah, but we're also known for a giant
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: ground sloth. So like it's a very strange thing. Our
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: museum here has. Like they're huge. They're like twelve feet tall,
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: so it's crazy.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're super big, super big.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Super interesting. But if these things survive, then they might
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: have existed well beyond their time. And Megalodon's are an
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: example that people they're known to have existed. They look
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: similar enough to modern day sharks that it's easy to
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: believe that they still could exist. And then add this
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: to that missing information piece, which is we don't know
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: everything about the ocean, then you have a perfect cryptid.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: It's a creature that lives in the shadows. It lives
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: away from what we can observe, the observable ocean and
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: all that. And because we know so little about sharks,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: like specifically large sharks, great white sharks, we know so
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: little about the habits of great white sharks that it
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: is reasonable to believe that this is a thing that
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: could exist with that information together. Right, Well, it's.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Not reasonable, but I care you can sort of connect
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: why it seems more plausible than other things, right right, right.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: A very similar vein as we had mentioned the loch
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Ness Monster, and the idea of that was that it
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: was a plesiosaur like it was this ancient dinosaur creature
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: that apparently can just live for tens of thousands or
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: millions of years without dying. Right, maybe there are multiple
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: generations of it, but that means that they're all interbreeding,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: which has never worked in a species before. So anyway,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: speaking of let's get into the Lockness here, because one
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: of the ways that these cryptids can exist are from
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: elaborate hoaxes. Yeah, and people who are who put together
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: these really complex, big pranks. And unless you know that
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: it's a prank, the story can continue on. And the
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Great Lockness Monster is a really good example one of
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the original photos taken at Lockness that seems to show
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: what could be potentially interpreted as an animal in the water.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: And again it's a low resolution, low information, sort of fuzzy,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: ambiguous image that does not put things into scale. For
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: perspective that was taken by a credible photographer, but like
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: it was, it was presented as being this animal, even
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: though the photographer likely knew that it was not. As
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, I believe the history is that
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: it was arranged.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, so it actually was arranged, and the story is
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: kind of wild. So in nineteen ninety four it was
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: discovered that the entire Lockness monster thing was a revenge prank.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: So a man named Marmaduke Weatherell, Marmaduke Weatherell.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: That it's such a good name, such a good name.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: When that name showed up, I was like, I cannot
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: wait to say this name on the air. It's such
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: a good name.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if I met someone named Marmaduke Weather, I'd be like,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: you hunt big animals, don't you why that's what you do?
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: You would be right, because Martina Duke Weatherell does that
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: exact thing, or he did at least, so he was
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: a big game hunter and he had claimed to have
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: found Nessi's footprints, So, which is actually kind of a
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: different story than most people know about Lockness the Locknes sponsor.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: If the Locknes sponsor was aquatic and would have arguably
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: had flippers and not footprints, right, so right, yeah, anyway,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: so it starts like that, but it was later discovered
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: by a local newspaper that they were hippo tracks, and
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: he was embarrassed. He was made a laughing stock as
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: a result of this. They're like, oh, Marmaduke keys, he's crazy,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: he doesn't know what he's talking about. But in a
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: classic I'll show them type of move, Marmaduke made a
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: model of the head and neck of the of the
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: Lockness Monster using a toy submarine that he bought and
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: like built all this and then staged the photo with
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: a man named doctor Robert Kenneth Wilson, who was the
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: respectable photographer. He was supposed to be the person that
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: was like the front man of like, yes, I discovered this,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: here we are, here's I am credible, and here's my source.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And that is what gave that image any credibility in
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: the thirties. So at the time, Granny photo elaborate hoax,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: revenge prank, and it persisted for nearly fifty years until
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: we discovered oh, actually you know it was not I
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: sixty years even.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Say persists persists still, even though we know yea, yea,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: it was made up. Yeah, I can imagine those guys
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: like rubbing his own sweat on the lens to make
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: it extra blurry, and you might you might think like, yeah,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: as you said, I think it really was not very large,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: and you might have a hard time believing that you
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: could photograph something small and make it appear large. But
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: you'd be amazed if you watch movies how often these
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: sort of large zoomed out shots are of miniatures that
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: are like there may be a few feet tall at most,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: or they'll blow up a building, or they'll show as
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: like an establishing shot. They'll show a building, for example,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: and it's like a miniature. It's just a thing that
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: they made that's really really small scale version of it,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and you wouldn't even know. Shots of trains rolling by,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: or often miniatures when they're crashing cars. They're often miniatures
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: because they're easier to make and shoot. Those where you
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: don't need to actually like buy a fifty thousand dollars
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: car and then destroy it. You can build like a
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: couple thousand dollars car that looks really cool, it actually works,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: and then destroy that and then do it over and
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: over again for a lot cheaper, and you can't tell
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the difference. Yeah. So the scale thing is actually something
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: that cinematographers have long played with. Yeah, because you can't
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: tell if everything's just like sort of scaled down. You
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: can't tell that nothing is the right proportions.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting that you would use the idea of making
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: like taking a picture of something small and making it
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: look larger and then using miniatures from movies and that
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: dick pics.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Indeed, indeed, all right, the sort of final one here,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's more to talk about, but the final
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: sort of path to cryptids, if you will, is the
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: fact that new animals are a real thing. As we mentioned,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: as we were mentioning earlier, we keep finding new animals,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and to be fair, like we're at the territory now
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: that I think some people might think of as splitting hairs.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Will they discover a new species that's like a slight
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: variation on an existing species we already knew. But they
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: actually do discover new things all the time. And also,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: to be fair, they will also discover animals they thought
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: had long been extinct that actually are still around. Right, So, like,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: again there's a nugget of truth in here. But for reference, here,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: scientists discover about eighteen thousand new species per year, eighteen thousand.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: Animals plants, but mostly animals, like it's mostly animals and
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: not plants discovering.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: So twenty twenty four saw the discovery of the smooth newt,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the oyster catcher, which is a bird, and a bunch
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: of beetles and moths. As a matter of fact, I
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: would not be surprised if beetles make up the fair
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: share of new species discovered. There are a lot of
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: beetles out there, yes, but reference I don't know the
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: number for beetles, but I believe I've heard the statistic
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: that in total mass ants, actually there are more ants
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: than there are humans by mass, not by number, I
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: mean by number they weigh out number humans. But even
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: by mass, there's so many of them that the mass
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: of ants is larger than the mass of humans.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Interestingly, because I was going to say, as far as
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: beetles go, as far as I can remember, there's only
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: two on the planet, is it, Paul and Ringo?
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, got you now.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: So I just looked it up and there are roughly
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: four hundred thousand species of beetles, and they make up
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: about forty percent of all insects species.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah yeah there a beatles are lots of beatles. Yeah,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: beatles are cool.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So this also means that creatures that used to
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: be cryptids actually become real because we're discovering new animals.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: So they're cryptids because we can't confirm their existence, but
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: then eventually we discover their existence and we go, ah,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: they're real. So like komoda dragons, the platypus, giant squids,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: and gorillas were all once considered cryptids until we actually
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: discovered them and like could actually describe them and study them.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the difference between a cryptid and a real animal
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: is that they're real. Animals are real. Yeah, because as
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: soon as a cryptid becomes real, it just becomes a
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: real animal.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, as soon as you as soon as you
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: actually discover the animal, it's no longer cryptid. It's part
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: of the zoological studies that go along with actual scientific
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: method Yeah.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: It's it's like, there's the sort of joke that I enjoy.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: That's like, what do you call complementary an alternative medicine that
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: actually works medicine?
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: I like that that.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, are humans just gullible. I mean, we
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: do listen to ads, So maybe all right, let's talk
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: about the gullibility of people.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, gullibility? Is it naivety? Is naivety and gullibility the
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: same thing? I don't we had we had the conversation
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: the other day. We couldn't figure out the adjective for brevity,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: and it was brief. So we are not necessarily wordsmithing
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: very well these days. But it's okay, is.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: It gullibility, gullibleness, gulibousnesslessness, it's he gullible?
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So generally speaking, we are pretty gullible. But
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: it's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it's pretty
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: nice that we have people that are gullible and at
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: least naive to like not have to worry so much
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: about it, or like not so cynical about the world
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: that you know, things are you know, everything is dangerous
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: and everything's trying to kill you and all that. But
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: the problem is that people tend to lack a couple
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: of different things. What ends up happening is humans tend
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: to believe available evidence or whatever piece meal evidence that
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: especially cryptozoologists put together. But many in the problem that
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: we run into is that people will believe that kind
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: of information. There's anecdotal pieces, but they lack skepticism or
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: critical thinking to discern that something isn't possible or isn't
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: real and there are actually other a few other reasons
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: why it happens, But a lot of it comes down
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: to people don't ask questions. People believe what they're told,
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: and they don't use the critical thinking to actually provide
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: an analysis of like, hey, does this even make sense
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: for this thing to exist? Like something like you mentioned earlier,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: or like we talked about earlier, the megalodon, Like it's
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: reasonable to believe that it's like a shark, but it's
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: not reasonable believe that it exists because of its like
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: sheer size, Like we would have seen it by now
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: at some point in time were it actually the size
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: that they discuss or describe.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: It does does seem like it would be hard to miss,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: right it be like the tallest building in the world,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and you're like, I don't know where it is, can't
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: seem to find it, right, Well, look at the horizons
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: sometimes yeah, yeah, look, you're moving around the planet. Maybe
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: that's not a great analogy, but I think the point
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: holds and yeah, I think essentially we have the combination
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: of the fact that, like, we see something that doesn't
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: necessarily line up with known things, and it's often kind
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: of ambiguous or we do not get a clear reference
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: to what the thing of the features of the thing
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: that we see, and we tend to pick up on patterns,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: so we start to assume a trend even though we
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: have only a single data point sometimes and then we
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: start putting on the filter of what could plausibly explain this,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: this thing that we now have some evidence for existing, right,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: that could make sense of this? And you can either
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: go to the like what is the most plausible or
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: the what is a thing that I can invent that
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: fills in the gaps we like to fill in the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: gaps sometimes, and what we fill in the gaps with
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: sometimes is the magical stuff. Right, And then what happens
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: is we tend to believe in the evidence, but the
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: lack of skepticism or critical thinking about that evidence makes
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: it difficult to discern whether things are more plausible or not,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: or more real or not.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: Right, And there are a couple of things that happen
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: inside of this. The one thing that happens is this
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: idea of confirmation bias. Basically, what this says is, if
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: the information aligns with our already existing values and beliefs,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: we're gonna look for information that confirms it, and it's
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: gonna be easier to adopt information that will confirm that thing.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: If I believe that aliens are real, that I'm gonna
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: look for evidence that aliens are real, and I'm gonna
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: and I'm probably gonna like lean that bias a little
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: bit hard into yes, aliens are real. Yes, I'm talking
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: to u, Tom DeLong.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And also disregard evidence that says m maybe not so
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: much yes, or like, here are things that make it
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: harder to believe that that might be real. We tend
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: to dismiss those because we're looking for the things that
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: confirm our beliefs and ignoring the things that tell us
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: that we are wrong. Going back to our critical thinking
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: episode on the fact that if he wants to think
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: skeptically and critically about things, then you need to start
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: questioning your own biases, right. But another one is cognitive miserliness.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Oh I like that a lot. I do. Essentially, I
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: think you could you could sort of think of cognitive miserliness.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: You think of miserliness as being frugal, unwilling to put
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: in the effort. Maybe, yeah, this would be the idea
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: that we sort of just depend on our knee jerk,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: gut reaction, our intuition, our whatever pops into the fantasy
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: elements of our minds instead of doing like an analysis
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: of things, let's rule out and rule in plausibility, and
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: so instead we sort of land on this feels like
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: it could work, So I'm gonna accept that as reasonable enough.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Right. There's also overconfidence, which is where our good friends
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Dunning and Krueger come in. You know, people just they
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: overestimate their intelligence and their knowledge. So they see something
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: and they go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's about odd job, dude,
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: that's about it. And it's like that like no, first
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: of all, you don't know anything about shark. Second of all,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: you are not a marine biologist. Third of all, like
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: you don't understand physics and how like creatures of that
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: size can't exist right now, so like whatever, like it
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: doesn't it doesn't make any sense. So the idea of
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: overconfidence actually, like it's pretty pervasive, especially when you get
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: into like the world of like pseudoscience and all that stuff.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: Like you get people that just like really bought into
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: this thing that they don't know anything about.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Relatedly, I think what you'll notice if you start watching
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: some conspiracy theory thing that is not one you already
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: believe in. If you're curious about this, what when you
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: watch what they say, the thing they believe in becomes
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: the answer to every ambiguous thing that happens anywhere. They're like,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: it rains today even or like let's let's say, like, oh,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: it's snowed even though it's like almost summertime.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Must be the megalodons, like or Democrats are controlling the weather,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: and they want to target red states, so they're sending
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: hurricanes their red states. Except for climate change. We can't
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: control the weather because climate change isn't real. But climate
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: change is a machine that is used to control weather.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Got it.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, good, Yeah, they're not also using that weather to
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: benefit Blue states for some reason, but sure they're at
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: least using it to do destruction. So anyway, Yeah, the
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: explanation for anything becomes whatever it is they believe it.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Like anything that seems like there's any room for ambiguity,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: then conspiracy theorists will slot in their thing as the
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: explanation for whatever the ambiguous event is.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Another one that I think then is extremely powerful is
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: sort of personal history, stories and experience. And this is
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: people seeing or experiencing something that they have trouble explaining,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: and they have their own story for it, and they
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: relay that story to other people. And so when we
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: hear people's personal experiences, that carries a lot of weight
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: with us, and we tend to put a lot of
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: stock And when someone says this is a thing that
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: happens to me, I mean the sort of pseudoscience medicine
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: market almost exists because of this. Yeah, it almost couldn't
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: exist without it. Having people share their own experiences about
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: things is really powerful in our tendency to believe or
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: not believe something.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And then we already mentioned this before, so
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: I won't touch on it too much further. But like
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: access to information, some people just don't have any information.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: They don't have enough skills to critically evaluate information, and
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: they don't have enough information to actually make an informed conclusion.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: So they go, oh yeah, And it's very easy, going
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: back to condent advisoriliness to go oh yeah, yeah, of
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: course it makes sense that there's a swamp ape running
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: around in the in the swamps of Florida Gainesville, right
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: like like, of course that's what's going on, Like just one,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: we don't need more, and then not thinking about like, oh, well,
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: how does it procreate? So if there's one, there must
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: be more, so and then why don't we know about
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: the species? And then you know, you kind of go
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: through that like if you just do simple questioning, you
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: start to find the holes and these things existing at all.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: But yeah, people lack information and they just cannot make
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: informed decisions or come up with informed beliefs about these things.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: As a general recommendation for this then is like if
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: you are unclear, if something seems unclear, then consider that
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: maybe you don't know everything in the entire world that
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: people have ever known, and that there could be a
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: reasonable explanation that you're just not privy to at the moment.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: Right. I think that's fair.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I do think to be fair that most people do
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: operate that way, but there is a not insignificant number
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: of people who are more tend to the fantastical way
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: of thinking about things. Right, then you can just turn
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: on flip on YouTube or social media, and you'll find
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: them all over the place.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: Right exactly, They're everywhere.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: There are some other reasons that people might fall for
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: cryptid lore beyond this the ones that we've described. Some
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: people are sensitive to authority, So when someone who seems
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: like authoritative figure definitively claims that something is real, that
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: sensitive person will simply accept that view as accurate. Again,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: this is a huge way that the pseudoscience medicine market
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: works is they will find someone who is an actual
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: doctor and get them to push their product, and then
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: they'll say, well, that person's a doctor. They said this
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: is true. And the same thing with a lot of
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theories and other nonsense is like you can go
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: out there and find someone who is has the credentials
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: that they then carry an air of authority, and that
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: can be very powerful in swaying an audience to believe
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: in something that is not true. And I think journalists,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: particularly those on television, really strive to have that level
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: of authority and where they can just say totally false
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: things and people will believe them. And that's why Fox
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: News exists, right, is like they can just lie right
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: to your face and you're like well, they're on the
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: news must be a thing, right, And to be fair,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: I think it happens in a lot of spaces, but
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: that is one that notorious for it.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, most definitely. So I think at the end
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: of all this, too, like one thing to think about
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: is whether or not this is a bad thing. Like,
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: I think that believing in cryptids is probably arguably not
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: the worst thing that humans could do, right, I think
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: that that's I think that's fair from it, far from it.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: We have social media, Like, there's a lot of terrible
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: things we've done, Yeah.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly, So believing cryptis is not inherently harmful. I think
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: where it becomes harmful, or where it becomes problematic is
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: that we spend a lot of money and time and
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: resources and like studying these things that simply don't exist.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: But I do think that one thing that is I
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: think maybe a silver lining in this is that humans
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: are naturally curious, and maintaining that curiosity would actually benefit discovery.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: And I think that's the thing. It's like, if you're
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: not curious about this possible creature that exists, then we're
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: never going to even take the time to go study it.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: I think we just have to study it in the
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: right ways. Right, So the problem would lie more in
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: the resource that we put into studying things that we
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: know are a hoax. The lock, this monster, we probably
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: don't study it anymore. We don't need to do any
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: more deep dives in the lock, like we're good, right,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: But something like creatures that are more plausible, like big
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: cats or certain insects, or like the Mongolian death worm.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Like if you think that that exists, and that's like
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: a plausible real thing, let's go ahead and find out
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: and maybe study that biome and that ecosystem and see
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: what's there. Like spending thousands of dollars on something that
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: we already know doesn't exist, not a useful way to
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: spend our time or efforts or resources. But in something
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: like I don't know the rainforests of the Amazon, right,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: where like there are new creatures to discover, or the
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: depth of the ocean, where there are new things to
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: discover about the world around us, Like, let's spend time
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: doing that, because that's where we're going to get more
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: use out of that and find more important things. The
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: swamp ape and the thunderbird and all that stuff.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Beautiful. I have a couple more quick things here that
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: I think that popped into my mind as you were
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: talking that I felt like we're important to sort of
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: add if that's okay. Yeah, yeah, one is sort of
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: billboarding on this. We talked a little bit about out
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: why some cryptids seem like they catch more of a foothold.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: They're ones that are like Bigfoot. There are so many
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: people who think that Bigfoot is real. Not a lot
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: of people seem to think that the will of the
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Wisp is real. A lot of people think the Lockedness
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Monster is real, but not a lot of people feel
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: like maybe the Leshwie. We'll go to the Leshwie like,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: not a lot of people even know what that is.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: The thing is, when we look at the ones that
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: seem the most plausible, there's kind of two factors that
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: I think have that raise them to the level of
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: seeming plausible. One is they have characteristic features that are
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: really close to things that we know to be true. So,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: for example, they look like a creature that we know
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: already exists. They're pretty similar to it. Maybe they look
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: exactly like those other creatures. They just have some mysterious
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: powers and we just haven't really categorized what behavior's animals
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: are capable of in all times, and they frequently amaze us.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: So like the closer they are to things that we
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: have information about, the more plausible they feel. A bigfoot
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: is like it doesn't imagine a lot of fantastical anatomy
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: that we couldn't find elsewhere. They look kind of like
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: a very large, bright ape, Like that's not so different
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: from an ape. But like when we start there are
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: are a lot of these animals that are sort of
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: camera animals. They're like the head of a lion, the
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: wings of an eagle, the tail that's actually a snake,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: hoofs of a goat. And I'm like, we've never seen
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: an animal that has, first of all, multiple animals combined
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: with it, and or the katsuni, Like, we've never seen
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: an animal that has multiple appendages, way outside the variety
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: we tend to see. So like most animals that have
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: a tail have one tail, right, not a lot of
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: animals have multiple tails. So when you start talking about
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: one that has nine tails, that seems particularly odd, Like
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: there are not a lot of odd numbered limbs or
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: odd number appendages on various creatures, except for when you
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: have a single one of something like one nose or
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: you know, one tail, right, that's fairly common. But aside
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: from that, three five, seven, those are really uncommon numbers
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: to see in the sort of natural world for you know,
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: reasons that would be fun to discuss at some point.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: So anyway, the closer they are to like real things
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: that really exist, that is gonna be one of the
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: reasons that they seem more likely to really exist. And
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: the other is how hard someone campaigns to push the
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: reality of this thing. Right, the luck this monster is
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: pretty implausible, right, there's really no reason to believe that
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: anything like that exists, and we even know that it
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: was set up as a hoax, but there was such
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: a campaign to push that idea for so long that
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: like it created a lure in into itself. So even
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: though that one's on the less plausible end just by description,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: it is on the more plausible or I think is
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: easier to buy into because of how much was sort
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: of made of it. And often an effect of just
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: this is so well known it must be so is
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: a way that can sometimes carry things that seem very
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: implausible and unreal through so that we sort of continue
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: to believe that it could really be a thing. Right,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: there's one more thing I wanted to speak to really quick,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: which is just this. Another reason that they sometimes get
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: invented is that sometimes cryptids are invented because the function
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: as a cultural lesson, a moral lesson, if you will,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: it's like, don't go into this lake because Jenny green
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: Fingers will get you or whatever. I'm like, Actually that
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: lake is filled with toxic sludge and if you go
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: in it, you will probably die from that. But like,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: to help keep people away from it, they might invent
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: some cryptozoological entity that is very dangerous, because that seems
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: more frightening and more likely to prevent activity than the
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: sort of mundane thing of like, actually, it's just full
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: of toxic chemicals. And if you imagine going back to
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: a time when people didn't even believe that germs existed
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: and being able to have the idea of some kind
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: of cryptid as a way to try and guide people's
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: behavior actually worked fairly well, because they're like, well, we
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: don't know what's making people sick, but we do know
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: that if we prevent them from doing this, they're less
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: likely to get sick, and so then we'll just invent it.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: A cryptid, that's the thing that is danger Yeah, and
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: so I think that it sort of worked in some
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: instances to just be sort of a guidance for people,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: even though it was sort of known that like, well,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: it's not really a thing, but it does help keep
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: people in line, if you will. Right.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: So the moral story then is watch out for Jenny
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: green fingers.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: That's what that's really what we're building up to this
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: whole time.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Oo scary, all right.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: I think that's what we have to say about why
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: cryptids of cryptids?
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that covers it. I mean, it's
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: a fun thought experiment. But ultimately, you know, we understand
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: that they exist because of lots of different reason. But
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: people like to believe things and it's just kind of
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: fun sometimes.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: I'm really happy that we have these things to talk
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: about because they're fun. I wish that people didn't believe
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: that they were real, But I love people exploring the
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: lore and like telling fictional stories about them, like bring
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: it on. Those are so much fun. I really enjoy
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: the creativity of it. I enjoy the artistry in it, Like,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: please explore the idea of cryptids as much as you like,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: for the purposes of entertainment and don't waste any time
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: or resources on them for the purposes of quote unquote science. Yeah,
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: because most of the time we really don't need to.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Now I will I guess their caveat There are plenty
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: of animals that we believe may exist that we don't
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: actually have very much evidence for, and for those we
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: probably should pursue this as long as we don't have
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of counter evidence just to figure it out. Like,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's worth trying to unpack the things that
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: we don't know about, even if we're not really certain
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: about them. But the things that we have lots of
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: evidence against really no reason to believe that they do exist,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: those feel like a waste of time and resources.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So before we do our last ad and
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: go into like our kind of wrapping up the episode,
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: I have a question for you, and I have a
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: question for the audience.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, is Jesus a encrypted? Wow? Love that ponder that,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Why don't you? And then, as I had mentioned, a
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: waste of time and resources, here's some ads. Yep, all right,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: we left you with the existential crisis of Jesus being encrypted.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: We are going to recommend some things, but Before we
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: do that, we need to get through some credits. If
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: you would like to support the show, as I mentioned
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: at the beginning, you can pick up some merchant or
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: store you can get like mugs and beanies and T
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: shirts and all kinds of cool stuff. We have a
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: really good water bottle there. But you can also leave
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: us a rating and review. That's a free way to
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: do it, like and subscribe. I have to make sure
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: that our episodes are always present in your feed. And
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: of course you can join us on Patreon, where you'll
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: get access to behind the scenes content, ad free content,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: and know other bonus goodies, and you can sort of
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: communicate a little more directly with us there. And there's
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: a certain number of people who have done that who
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: I must shout out every week because I just so
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: eternally appreciate them, and that is Mike, m Megan, Mike t, Justin, Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, Ashley,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Kiara and Michelle. Thank you for your continued support of
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: this weird thing that we keep doing.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, we love you so much. You're the best.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: In addition the team of people that helps make this
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: thing happen, we have writing and fact checking from Shane,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Katie and myself. Welcome to the team, Katie. Yeah, social
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: media coordinator is Elma Wilson. And the person who does
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: all of the audio mixing, engineering, producing and turns the
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: garbled mess of sounds that come out of my face
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: into a listenable podcast episode is Justin Greenhouse.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: He's the best.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Of course. Thank you so much for recording with me today, Shane,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: and thank you for your awesome work on these notes. Thanks,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: thank you to everyone who is listening for joining us.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: And let's go ahead and recommend some super fun things.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, recommendations.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: I'm going to recommend a movie that came out, I
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: believe last year, twenty twenty three. This is a action
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: adventure shoot him up movie called john Wick Chapter four. Yes,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: the John Wick movies are just insane, but they are
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun, and they have really great fight choreography.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: They have really great cinematography. They'll usually orchestrate some pretty
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: long single shot fight sequences, or at least they give
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: the appearance of being one shot fight sequences, and they're
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: always just meant to be a long, cascading string of
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: fights and gun battles, and it's just they're just fun,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: like they're just fun movies. They're I mean, I mean,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: they're kind of insane because like a lot, a lot
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of people die, but like so many other
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: people who are more main characters literally can't seem to
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: die no matter what happens to them. So but they're
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: just a good time. And this one's a good time.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: So John Wick Chapter four Shooting Them Up action movie.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Pretty enjoyable if you're into that sort of thing. And
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: this one's probably the longest one. I think this one's
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: close to three hours. But otherwise it's a good time.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: It's so funny to get longer and more complex and
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: continue to remain awesome. I love it. Yeah, all right,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: So my recommendation is a record keeping in with scary
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: spooky things. This is from a band called Blood Incantation,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: Cool Cool, and the record is called Absolute Elsewhere. So
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: this band is known for writing black metal, but like
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: more progressive black metal, okay, also about cosmic horrors. So
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: everything that they write about is like scary and spooky,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: and leading up this album out Absolute Elsewhere, they had
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: done some really cool like teaser things, some like secret
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: space messages and stuff like that, so really cool kind
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: of marketing and leading up to it. This album is
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: two songs and it is forty three minutes long.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: Now what's great is like it moves, it move it
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: has movements. So like there's the two songs are the
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: Stargate and the Message, but it's the Stargate Tablet one,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: the Stargate Tablet two, the Stargate Tablet three, So it
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: is broken up into these movements in different parts of
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: the songs. But it is just two songs for forty
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: three minutes, and it is awesome. You know. I don't
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: typically go with like like reviewer score because I think
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: music critics are just buttholes, but I do think like
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: so Pitchfork actually gave this an eight point five, which
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: is like a very very high score for Pitchfork, So
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: it's worth I think it's worth checking out if you'll
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: like this sort of sort of thing, I think you
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: have fun with it.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: This sounds up my alley. I'm in love this.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Blood Incantation they have the Bramble Bush logo,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: so you know they're legit.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that is that is the secret. Well, if
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: you would like to tell us about John Wick or
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: other shoot them up action movies or crazy progressive death
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: metal black metal albums. We would we would certainly like
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: to hear from you. Of course, you could talk to
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: us about cryptids and which cryptids you believe in or
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: don't believe in, or why you think people believe in them,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: or why they seem plausible. Whatever you would like to say,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: we would like to hear it from you. You can
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: reach us directly by emailing us at info at WWDWWD
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: podcast dot com. You can also reach us on the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: social media platforms and communicate with us there and otherwise.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening, and I think that
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: is all that I have. Is there anything that I
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: forgot or that you'd like to add before we wrap up?
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: Shane Hail Bigfoot.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Hel Bigfoot, This Isna, This is Jane. We're out. See yea,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: you've been listening to Why we Do what We do.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: we hope you have an awesome day