Selects: Yeti: The Asian Bigfoot

We've covered Nessie and Bigfoot, so why not tackle the Yeti? Listen to this classic episode and hear Josh and Chuck cover what used to be known as the Abominable Snowman. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:45Josh Clark?

  He'd also tell you about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bankguy. Capital One, N A, Member FDIC. Hey there, friends. It's me, Josh. And for this week's S Y S K Select, I've chosen our 2019 episode on the Yeti. It's really fun to talk about serious attempts people make to find cryptids because we're just like tourists looking in on a world that's new to us and that turns out to be pretty neat. And if the story about Jimmy Stewart in here sounds familiar, we also recently covered it in our Tom Slick episode.

• 1:27Josh Clark?

  So you're not experiencing deja vu, which is another episode that we did before. So you're not experiencing deja vu, which is another episode we did before. Enjoy.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:52Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry over there somewhere over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the continuing cryptozoology edition.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Oh, this finishes it, right?

• 2:09Josh Clark?

  Oh, I don't know about that. We've done Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Yeti. We haven't done like, um, Mothman.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  The Chupacabra?

• 2:19Josh Clark?

  Chupacabra, that's a big one too, yeah.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Slenderman?

• 2:23Josh Clark?

  Slenderman's more internet folklore than anything.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Uh, did we do that one, or did we think about it and not do it?

• 2:30Josh Clark?

  The latter of those two.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  If I remember correctly, I said it stinks, or something?

• 2:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah. If I remember correctly, it hurt my feelings.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 2:43Josh Clark?

  I think it was, I think we could do Slenderman now. It was just so early on that, um, it was very thin. Now, I think it would be more robust.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  It was slender.

• 2:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's right. Um, well, today, we're talking about the Yeti, which is not slender. Depending on which Yeti you're talking about, Chuck, it's either enormous and like eight feet tall, covered in gray or white, or maybe sometimes reddish hair.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:10Josh Clark?

  Weighing four hundred, five hundred pounds easily.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15Josh Clark?

  Or, actually, it is kinda slender. It could be basically what amounts to a, um, a wild hippie, basically. A, uh, somebody who likes to grub roots out of the ground and lets out a squeal or a cry every once in a while, just to, I guess, know that they're alive. And, um, there's really two competing versions of what those of us in the Western world would, would think was the Yeti. But the one we're really talking about is the first one, what we also think of as the abominable snowman.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  How tall was Hippie Rob?

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  Uh, he was average, like, five something, I guess, like, high fives, probably. He was a little shorter than me.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  All right.

• 4:00Josh Clark?

  He was not, he was not the, uh, he was not the, the Yeti of legend, as far as I know. He could be now, though.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. It just sounded an awful lot like him.

• 4:11Josh Clark?

  It kinda does, doesn't it?

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Yelping in the mountains, grubbing for roots.

• 4:14Josh Clark?

  Yep. Covered in, in dirt and with wild, crazy hair.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  So, I think we should just tell, like, uh, if you don't know what we're talking about, this is the, um, the legendary beast that lives in Asia.

• 4:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, around the Himalayas typically.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's known as Asia's Bigfoot, or maybe Bigfoot is known as North America's Yeti. I don't know. I guess Yeti came first, right?

• 4:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think Yeti's been around with the Sherpa of Tibet for a very long time.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's sort of the deal of this, the origin story of this thing is the Yeti has been told for many, many years in traditional stories in that area. There was someone named Shiva Dhakal that collected a bunch of these stories in a book called Folk Tales of Sherpa and Yeti, and all of them kind of figured the same way, which was whether it's a story called The Annihilation of the Yeti, in which, this is pretty good, it's about Sherpa seeking revenge on a tormenting group of Yetis. This sounds like something that should be on like the Sci-Fi Channel.

• 5:29Josh Clark?

  I'd be very surprised if it wasn't.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  But all of these stories basically have the same moral message at the end, which is, it's sort of like a Grimm's Fairy Tale, like be careful out on the woods.

• 5:42Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I think it serves the exact same purpose, too. Like, in the Grimm's Fairy Tales, and I thought the same thing, you know, there's witches that live in candy houses, so don't go wandering off in the woods, kids, because you'll end up getting eaten. For little kids in Tibet, it was, don't wander off into the Tibetan Plateau, or the Yeti will get you, and you will, all sorts of terrible things will happen to you.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Which is funny, because there are all sorts of real things that could kill you in the Tibetan Plateau.

• 6:13Josh Clark?

  Well, that's what, I think what they were saying was, you know,

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 6:16Josh Clark?

  You can't just be like, look out for the bears.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  You can't?

• 6:19Josh Clark?

  A kid will be like, I don't know, I can see a brash kid being like, no, a bear, everybody knows what a bear is, I'll wrestle a bear any day of the week.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 6:27Josh Clark?

  And then, you know, along the way, it gets into a drinking contest with Marion from Indiana Jones.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:35Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. That was one of the best scenes in the history of film.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Yeah?

• 6:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think so. And Tibetan kids tend to agree with me, too. But before we move on, I want to say one thing. That annihilation of the Yeti, keep that in the back of your mind. The story was that like, there were a bunch of Yeti that were hanging around, and the Sherpa were sick of them hanging around. So the Sherpa basically threw a Yeti party, and got drunk and fought with each other to kind of provide an example to the Yeti. Hey, you should get drunk and fight with each other, too, in the hopes that the Yeti would destroy each other. It didn't work, and the Yeti all managed to escape, except for one, who was supposedly killed by a Lama, one of the Buddhist monks in the area.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Oh, that's part of the story? That's the end?

• 7:25Josh Clark?

  That's the annihilation of the Yeti story.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  I didn't know a Lama figured in.

• 7:30Josh Clark?

  And really, annihilation is kind of a strong word, if you think about it. Because if you just killed one out of, I think, 240 Yeti, it's hardly annihilation.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  That's a good point.

• 7:41Josh Clark?

  I think so, too.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  So throughout history, these legends have been pervasive in the region, so much so that supposedly, the great Alexander, or Alexander the Great. I'm not sure why I did that. When he came through town and conquered the Indus Valley, he said, "I'd like to see one of your famous Yetis."

• 8:07Josh Clark?

  I don't know if that's what Alexander the Great sounded like.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  No?

• 8:11Josh Clark?

  No.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  What did Ancient Romans sound like? If not Italians?

• 8:15Josh Clark?

  Was he Roman? I think he was Greek.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Oh, was he?

• 8:18Josh Clark?

  Uh huh.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Jeez.

• 8:20Josh Clark?

  How about a...

• 8:21Speaker 02

  I really screwed that up.

• 8:23Josh Clark?

  Give us a... Let's see.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  I knew that.

• 8:26Josh Clark?

  Do a German accent.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm just...

• 8:29Josh Clark?

  For him.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna leave.

• 8:32Josh Clark?

  No, hang, hang tight Chuck. You can rebound.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Why, why did I think he was Roman and not Greek?

• 8:38Josh Clark?

  Well, because the Romans like to pretend they were Greek themselves.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  I'm not firing on all cylinders, but regardless of my bad accent, or maybe I should just edit back in and say that was my Greek accent.

• 8:49Josh Clark?

  There you go.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  He said, I want to see a yeti. And they, the locals, locals there were like, you know, we totally would do that. However, you can't get them down this low. And you'd have to hike really high up in those mountains. And I know you're not down with that. So, sorry.

• 9:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. So I guess Alexander the Great was like, I'm bored. I can't believe we're still talking about this. Give me some wine.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 9:14Josh Clark?

  And got in a drinking contest and that was that. So the yeti continued on in, in Sherpa tradition in Tibet and Nepal and Bhutan. But in the West, it kind of disappeared from view until the 20th century. And so remember, these are tall tales that the Sherpa teach their kids. Although there is supposedly some, I guess, general belief as well. But I can't, I can't quite penetrate it. But just imagine that it was just strictly tall tales.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:48Josh Clark?

  That Sherpa people told their kids. Then Westerners came in and said, what is this you're talking about? Tell us about this and just bought the whole thing, hook, line and sinker.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. And things really took form in 1921. There's a journalist named Henry Newman. He did an interview with some British explorers. And this is a time of great exploration, especially from the British. These sort of, these, I guess, Indiana Jones like mountaineers who would go all over the world in search of these jungles and mountains in search of crazy beasts and treasures and things like that.

• 10:26Josh Clark?

  Right, sure.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  So he interviewed some of these guys and they said, you know what? We found these huge footprints up in the mountains. And the locals there, I guess Sherpa, said, because isn't Sherpa the plural Sherpa? Didn't we determine that?

• 10:41Josh Clark?

  I'm pretty sure, yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  That was a good episode, by the way, everyone.

• 10:46Josh Clark?

  It was. Go back and listen to that one.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  What was the title? Warm Friendly Living?

• 10:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because that's I think what Tenzing Norgay said.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  So great.

• 10:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  So they said that their guides, our Sherpa guides.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Called them metohkangmi, which the translation, the real translation is a little awkward. Man bear snowman. But Newman confused all that. He got the snowman part right. But he translated that first part to mean metoh, M E T O H, to mean filthy or dirty. And then he changed that on his own to the word abominable.

• 11:25Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  And that's where we get the abominable snowman.

• 11:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was like, I don't like filthy snowman. I'm gonna change the name that I've already gotten wrong.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:35Josh Clark?

  And turn it into abominable snowman.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, he really is a great journalist.

• 11:39Josh Clark?

  But it's fascinating that you can trace it back to this one dummy.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:44Josh Clark?

  That's the whole, the abominable snowman, that's where it came from, was this one guy. And that obviously just completely captured the attention of the rest of the world when he, he, he wrote this. Because like this was not just like, oh yeah, they heard about an abominable snowman. It was these, these explorers found tracks and their Sherpa guides told them the tracks belonged to this abominable snowman. Therefore, there are abominable snowmen living in the Himalayas. And the explorer who was, who led that particular expedition was Charles Howard Berry. Howard hyphen Berry, B U R Y. And apparently he and Newman were really big into promoting the idea of an abominable snowman

• 12:28Josh Clark?

  or men living in the Himalayas. And that it just being like this giant, huge creature with shaggy hair and very much akin to Bigfoot. But if you look at the, the descriptions, the traditional descriptions of the Yeti, they're, they're much smaller and not nearly as huge as the, the Westerners kind of immediately made it out to be.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was one description, one of the earlier written descriptions from 1942. There was a researcher named Mira Shackley. And I believe that she got this information from two hikers that reported seeing the Yeti.

• 13:07Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  And this is what they said. The height was not much less than eight feet. So tall for sure, but. It's not like it was 10 feet tall.

• 13:17Josh Clark?

  Oh, right.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Uh, the head were, the heads, because there were two of them, were described as squareish and the ears must lie close to the skull because there was no projection from the silhouette against the snow. Uh, the shoulders sloped slowly down to a powerful chest covered by reddish brown hair, which formed a close body fur mixed with long, straight hairs hanging downward, uh, about the size and build of a small man, the head covered with long hair, but the face and chest not very hairy at all. This, this all sounds like, they, they always describe him as, or it is bipedal.

• 13:53Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Uh, means, you know, walking upright.

• 13:56Josh Clark?

  Right, but if you, if you go back and look at that 1942 description and how detailed it was.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:02Josh Clark?

  Those hikers who gave the description said that they, they saw, they saw all this from observing two black specks moving across the snow about a quarter mile below them.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:15Josh Clark?

  And yet they could see that it had a thick undercoat and like a very long hairy overcoat and that it was reddish and like, that's just, just basically perfect abominable snowman sighting.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 14:28Josh Clark?

  But, but it's one of like many, like after, after that uh, Howard Barry expedition came back and Newman broadcasts to the world, people started going to the Himalayas in droves and they weren't just necessarily looking for the abominable snowman. Everest was there and everybody knew Everest was there and a lot of people wanted to be the first one to summit Everest, or the first Westerner, I should say, to summit Everest. So that while a lot of them were in the area, they're like, well, we'll look for the abominable snowman while we're here too.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and some pretty legendary mountaineers. Um, and granted, these are not, uh, like zoologists or anything, but they're respected men in their field. Uh, people like Reinhold Messner and, uh, one Sir Edmund Hillary, both searched for evidence of the Yeti while they were hiking. Uh, and Messner even wrote a book called My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery.

• 15:24Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  But, I mean, well, we'll, we'll save the big reveal till the end.

• 15:29Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Or the third act of this show.

• 15:31Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Is there a third act?

• 15:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's gotta be.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 15:35Josh Clark?

  We're in big trouble if there's not.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  Well, why don't we take a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about a couple of more of these reported sightings.

• 15:43Josh Clark?

  Let's do it.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  All right.

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• 18:23Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so we've started to get some sightings from expeditions that are going to Everest and just hanging around the Himalayas. And then I think in 1951, something really big happened. One of those explorers, Eric Shipton, took a photograph of a track that to this day looks pretty remarkable, actually.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this is, again, it's not like hard evidence, but this is a very famous photo. I remember seeing this when I was a kid. And like, I guess it was probably the Guinness or Ripley's Believe It or Not or something.

• 19:01Josh Clark?

  It was time life books for me.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Was it?

• 19:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I remember that it's a very famous picture of a, like a pick, like a, you know, pickaxe.

• 19:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, used for scale.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, right next to it. And I remember that very distinctly when I saw this picture. I was like, oh, yeah.

• 19:17Josh Clark?

  And then when you look at it, you're like, wait, that doesn't look quite right. That's a really weird track. It's, it looks like an elongated human foot, but rather than a left toe. It's it's got it's kind of bulbous and weird. It doesn't look like the other toes and it certainly doesn't look like what a human toe should look like. And it's also huge. I think it was it measured about 13 inches, which is a pretty typical size for a yeti trek, from what I understand, over the ages. But the thing about it is, it is a nice, crisp, fresh track. And the other thing about it, and this is what really captured the attention of the

• 19:59Josh Clark?

  world, Eric Shipton was not known to be a particularly fraudulent person.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:06Josh Clark?

  He was a very respected explorer and mountaineer. He knew the area well. And as a guy who has tracked yeti his whole life, I believe his name is Daniel Taylor.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:18Josh Clark?

  Daniel Taylor put it, if if Shipton's coming back with a picture of a track, you just you know it's a real track. It's not faked, it's not a hoax. So the question was, what was it? And this is 1951, and it it hit the world, that picture, that track hit the world like the surgeon's photo of the Loch Ness Monster hit the world back in 1933. It it just became like, proof to people who believe in the yeti around the world, that the yeti definitely exists.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like you said, it was really, what what made it different than other photos, that it was so sharp, it was a really good picture. And that that little toe thing basically looked like a thumb. And it just, you know, it looked odd. But this this Daniel Taylor guy, he actually, when I started reading that article, I thought, oh, boy, this crackpot. But he actually turned out to be a pretty cool guy, because he'd spent a lot of his life looking for the yeti, went over there, even met with the King of Nepal, and the King of Nepal said, well, if you want to go like to the wildest place, and the most,

• 21:28Speaker 02

  you know, remote place in in our land, go to Barun, B-A-R-U-N, this Barun Valley.

• 21:35Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  And he went there, and he looked around, and he did not find a yeti, but what he did do was ended up Helping to work toward conservation of that area, which was kind of a nice silver lining to his story, was he got there and he was like, this is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

• 21:55Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  And one of the greatest wildernesses I've ever been to. He realized it wasn't protected and that like Chinese loggers were infringing on one side and farmers were infringing on the other. So he kind of spun it into like good work doing conservation work in that area, which was kind of cool.

• 22:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it got it turned into a national park in Nepal.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:18Josh Clark?

  It's a protected area now, which is significant. Have you seen pictures of the valley?

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:24Josh Clark?

  It's astounding. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life and it was just being used because the people living there are like, well, we need this land. Yeah, it's beautiful, but we can't afford to preserve it because a lot of people around here live on $15 a year.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:39Josh Clark?

  So they were just making use of it however they could. And he came in with the government and said, no, no, no more of that. Get out of here. This is protected now. But it is gorgeous and his, he had actually been raised there, Daniel Taylor, his grandparents were missionaries in the Himalayas and his parents kind of took over his grandparents' work. So he was raised in the Himalayas. So he'd been looking for the Yeti his whole life. But when he went to the Barun, he feels like he found the answer to that track, that it was a kind of tree bear.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:11Josh Clark?

  But there's, there's a big problem with that. The Barun Valley is a subtropical rainforest, so a tree bear living in there wouldn't survive very, very well in the snow of the Tibetan Plateau, you know, 10,000 or more feet higher up the mountain. So it doesn't really solve the mystery much.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  No, but his notion that it could have been a tree bear makes a little more sense with these tracks because a tree bear does have a, I don't know if you call it a thumb, but some sort of opposable digit to make climbing easier.

• 23:45Josh Clark?

  Totally.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  And that would, that would at least explain this weird thumb-like thing in these prints.

• 23:50Josh Clark?

  It would. So he's got like half of the thing explained. The other half is what the heck was that tree bear, the subtropical rainforest tree bear doing up in the mountains of the Himalayas? You know what I'm saying?

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:02Josh Clark?

  Like in the snow, above the snow line, I guess is what I'm trying to say. But the other thing about that, that Shipton photo that became world famous for the Yeti.

• 24:13Josh Clark?

  Was that like the track itself was very crisp. And there's a guy named Benjamin Radford, who's a skeptic, who has written a lot about the yeti. And in particular, how, how difficult obtaining yeti tracks could be, or actually, more to the point, how easy it would be to confuse a normal animal's tracks for something weird because of the fact that the, the snow is a terrible medium for tracks. Because like, say, a bear walks through an area, leaves some tracks in the snow. The next morning, as the sun comes up and it hits the tracks and it shoots all that heat onto this, onto that track, it starts to melt the sides, maybe elongate it, maybe

• 24:58Josh Clark?

  make the toes look splayed. And it just doesn't resemble a bear track anymore at all. It looks like something weird and, and, and not previously known, like an entirely new species. That's the thing about this Shipton photograph that caught, captured everyone's attention. It doesn't look like that at all. It looks sharp, new, it doesn't look melted at all, the edges are clean and crisp. That's what I think really kind of struck everybody. It wasn't like a melted, mangled track. It was like a new track by something that was not immediately identifiable.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So there have been other photographs through the years, as, you know, supposed evidence. In 1986, a hiker named Anthony Woolridge said, "There's a yeti over there. He's about 500 feet away." And he saw a bunch of tracks in the snow that looked like it was going that way. And he took some photographs that were proven genuine, but I think by genuine, that just means they weren't faked.

• 26:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's what I, that's how I understand it.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Because wasn't this the photo that they said, "Actually, those are just rocks standing up"?

• 26:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Like a rock outcropping or whatever.

• 26:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this guy was also a respected mountaineer and explorer and knew the area really well. And so when he came back with this photo and they said this photo wasn't faked, it's not been doctored.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:25Josh Clark?

  People, people listened to him too, but it just turns out he was wrong.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  This photo of rocks has not been doctored.

• 26:31Josh Clark?

  Exactly. That's, that's ultimately what they were saying because another expedition went back to the same spot the next year. We're like, oh, uh, yeah, that's, it's those rocks over there. And even, even in his account, um, that guy, what was his name? Woodridge?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:46Josh Clark?

  Uh, Woodridge says like, yeah, they just stood there motionless staring at me.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Like rocks.

• 26:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they were, they were still as boulders, as upright boulders. But the other thing is he swore that there were tracks leading up to it. So he, he seemed to think that, that they really were there. But from what I understand, he was earnest in, in his report. It wasn't like a fraud or a hoax or anything like that. And I think he was a little, a little red faced afterward, probably.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, they even made a movie about it called Ernest Goes Hiking.

• 27:19Josh Clark?

  Ernest Saves Christmas with the Abominable Snowman. I'll bet Ernest did save Christmas in one movie. I guarantee there is a movie called Ernest Saves Christmas.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  I think, I think there was, right? No?

• 27:30Josh Clark?

  The only one I'm a hundred percent sure of is Ernest Goes to Camp.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  I never saw any of those.

• 27:35Josh Clark?

  My family saw that movie in the theater.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Oh, that's.

• 27:39Josh Clark?

  Paid top dollar.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Top dollar, which was three dollars.

• 27:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess. I hope so at the time, which is surprising because my mom used to sneak in bulk candy from like the, the little store across the, the way from the movie theater in Southwick Mall.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, we know that move in our family.

• 27:56Josh Clark?

  Works, works really well.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Uh, so over the years, there have been not only things like, oh, look, footprints or hey, look at that rock across the valley. Uh, there, there have been. Uh, I don't want to call it evidence, but alleged evidence brought forward by legitimate scientists and people like Sir Edmund Hillary. Like, he brought back a scalp and said, he didn't say, "I scalped the yeti," but he said, "Hey, I think this is a yeti scalp."

• 28:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  And I don't think he was trying to fool anyone, though, was he?

• 28:31Josh Clark?

  No, no, no. He was supposedly kind of a casual believer in it. He'd been sent on a yeti expedition by New World Encyclopedia years before.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:39Josh Clark?

  And he came back with a yeti skull cap that he'd gotten from a monastery in Nepal. They had a yeti skull cap and a hand, a yeti hand, a mummified yeti hand. And what's crazy is that yeti skull cap was supposedly the scalp of the one yeti that had been killed during the annihilation of the yeti story.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 29:05Josh Clark?

  So he brings it back. I think it wasn't that he was gullible, and I also am sure it wasn't that it was, he was a hoaxster. He was the kind of scientific person who kept his mind open until the evidence was in.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Man, can you imagine a time when an encyclopedia company would send Sir Edmund Hillary out on assignment?

• 29:26Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Like, how great is that?

• 29:28Josh Clark?

  I know. That was the mid 20th century. It was a great, great time to be alive in the way of wonder and curiosity.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Uh, so, yeah, he comes back with his scalp, and it turns out they did a little research, and it was a, it's an animal called a serow. It's kind of like a goat.

• 29:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, some poor serow got scalped.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that happened a lot. Like, there was this finger, and this is a pretty good story, that actor Jimmy Stewart, believe it or not, was involved in smuggling out supposed yeti finger.

• 30:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, from, again, from a monastery. I believe it might have been the same monastery.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and wasn't he just on vacation there and just got sort of mixed up in this plan?

• 30:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we gotta mention Tom Slick, the oil man.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, because he figures into this story. He was a rich guy who, he was one of these dudes, this sort of adventuring, rich guys that was like, "I'm a yeti hunter for this year."

• 30:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and when you say hunter, like, he was a hunter. His entire point to finding the yeti was to shoot and kill it, and to take it back and have it stuffed. And the government in Nepal had a real problem with that and basically said, "Your expedition is banned. Nobody can come in here and kill the yeti." And apparently, the US State Department got in touch with Nepal and said, "Hey, by the way, we have the same feeling. We have a policy of not killing yeti either." So apparently with that, Tom Slick's expedition was allowed back in on the basis that they would never try to kill the yeti except in self-defense.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 31:10Josh Clark?

  And I guess later on, when he became interested in Bigfoot, he had a change of heart, and he stopped hunting to kill and started hunting just to find and maybe capture on photograph, and that was it. And that, his change of heart changed the way that Bigfoot is searched for to this day, and the yeti.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 31:32Josh Clark?

  Now, it's a much more, yeah, it's a much more peaceful search. He was like the last of the big game hunters involved in like trying to find unidentified animals, again, to kill them so they could be stuffed and kept to the National Geographic Society or something like that.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and that was a big thing, that Daniel's guy talks about just these legends in history and how quote-unquote "science" back then was, in the Victorian Age, were, because you know, all these tales of Tarzan and these fantastic beasts.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  People would just, these rich people would go into the jungle and search for animals that no one had ever seen before, so they could shoot and kill them and bring them back and say, "Look at this weird thing."

• 32:14Josh Clark?

  Right, and I mean, a lot of people like, don't really, like, you point to the guys who are out there like, doing the hunting and killing and the exploitation and all of that, but they were very frequently working at the behest of museums.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 32:29Josh Clark?

  Who, for a very long time, got a pass, even though they were the source of the, those expeditions, and the funders of those expeditions. And the reason people were out there in the first place was to go get specimens for the museum's collections. And ostensibly to study or whatever, but it was to study them dead. And I think probably because there wasn't really any reliable way to ship a live specimen back in a lot of ways, but also there, there was. So, I think Tom Slick kind of represented the, the end of that, and then the beginning of the new, this new era of much more peaceful exploration and expeditions.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I don't want to leave everyone hanging on Jimmy Stewart. He was on-

• 33:10Josh Clark?

  Really?

• 33:11Speaker 02

  He was on vacation, I think in Calcutta, got mixed up in this, in this yeti finger, helped smuggle it back, and they finally did DNA testing about seven or eight years ago, and they said, "Oh, this is a human finger."

• 33:27Josh Clark?

  Right. But I mean, for a while there, they weren't 100% sure. And I guess Tom Slick was friends, had a common friend with Jimmy Stewart, and Jimmy Stewart happened to be in India. And so Tom Slick's agents in Nepal managed to get this finger to Jimmy Stewart, who agreed to smuggle it out, on the basis that Jimmy Stewart's luggage is not going to get searched. And Jimmy Stewart smuggled a yeti finger out of India, and to the UK for it to be studied.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Oh, go, go, go ahead and put the finger in my bag.

• 34:05Josh Clark?

  I was so hoping you were gonna do a Jimmy Stewart Yeti impression.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  In my head, I was like, ah, Jimmy Stewart, can I pull that off?

• 34:13Josh Clark?

  You did, man. You nailed it.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  All right, well, let's take another break and we'll come back and talk more about DNA and how that is figured in, uh, in the search in more recent years, right after this.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Well, now, when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right.

• 34:40Speaker 03

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• 34:59Josh Clark?

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• 35:16Speaker 03

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• 35:44Josh Clark?

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• 36:16Josh Clark?

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• 37:01Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, you remember in the Loch Ness episode, the Loch Ness monster episode?

• 37:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:06Josh Clark?

  We talked about how there's like a new search going on where they're sampling the loch itself and examining it for DNA. Apparently, applying modern genetics and genetic analysis to cryptozoology is like the next chapter. And rather than saying like, oh, well, that's it for us. Our big fraud is over with. Cryptozoologists are like, awesome, good. We finally have the tools now to find out, to get to the bottom of this stuff, and to actually discover new specimens or new species. So they seem to be quite happy about it and quite excited, although a lot of their beliefs

• 37:47Josh Clark?

  hang in the balance and could just have the legs cut out from under them by science.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  That's true. So, science wins. In 2013, there's a geneticist at Oxford named Brian Sykes, who said, "All right, Yeti holders of Yeti pieces, send them to me. If you have any Yeti hair, Yeti teeth, Yeti tissue, send it to Oxford University."

• 38:13Speaker 02

  And he got it. He got 57 samples. They picked 36 of those to do some DNA analysis on. And most of these turned out to be animals that we all know, like bears and cows and horses. At the time, though, he found a couple of samples from Bhutan in India that he said were 100% match for jawbones of a polar bear from the Pleistocene era.

• 38:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  And this kind of excited people because this may have been, I mean, not the yeti, but this may have been sort of a combination, a hybrid of a polar bear and a brown bear. Because this is when they were diverging genetically. And that in itself would be a pretty cool find.

• 39:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, oh yeah. It would be a new type of bear that was a direct descendant from bears that went extinct about 40,000 years ago. And it'd be a type of polar bear. There aren't polar bears in the Himalayas. There's black bears, there's brown bears, there's Himalayan bears, there's tree bears, but there's not polar bears. So, and the fact that like, he accidentally found this by putting out this call for, for samples of yeti or bigfoot or whoever, just made it all the, all the sweeter. That like, he had just accidentally discovered a new type of polar bear living in the Himalayas.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, but sadly, that was not even the case. Some more scientists came along later. They did reanalysis. And I think what they landed on was, you know, unfortunately, these, I think you're getting a bad reading because of a damaged sample. What these really are are just brown bears.

• 39:56Josh Clark?

  They're brown bears. Yeah, some other people followed up because it's not like it was any kind of hoax or anything like that.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 40:04Josh Clark?

  Wyke, it's Wyke, right? His last name is Wyke?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Sykes.

• 40:07Josh Clark?

  Sykes. Sykes is like a, a leading expert on analyzing mitochondrial DNA. Wrote the book, The Seven Daughters of Eve, which kind of introduced the world to genetic analysis through MTDNA. But

• 40:22Josh Clark?

  He just made a mistake, or leapt to a conclusion, I think, is the the thing that everyone's being too polite to maybe say. But he shared all of his data on GenBank, which is this huge database. And other people came and analyzed and said, no, it's just regular bears. And then other people analyzed and said, yeah, it's totally just regular regular brown bears that we already know about.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that it, science at least was getting involved and scientists kind of roundly were like, you know what? This is great because we're using real science finally. And regardless of what result we get, like, we're doing it the right way. And that's really kind of the thing that counts. Like, don't

• 41:03Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Don't be disappointed that we're not finding the yeti. Because, and if it's not clear to everyone listening, it seems like the yeti are are almost always just bears.

• 41:16Josh Clark?

  Yes, that not just the, the, um, the, the like tissue samples or the fecal samples or the hair samples, but also the tracks, the sightings, all of it. Are probably just Himalayan bears, brown bears and black bears. And that's actually the opinion of Reinhold Messner, who actually is such a mountaineer around the area. He has a museum in the mountains. And his, one of his yeti samples were one of the ones that Sykes analyzed. His turned out to be the tooth of a dog. But he says, that doesn't surprise me because I think they're all bears. I think all of his bears, including his own sighting. He became infatuated with searching for the yeti

• 42:00Josh Clark?

  because he spotted something in the Himalayas that he couldn't explain. And then through his own methodical research, he wrote a book about it. He talked to other people about it. He did his own studies and he kept his mind open and his mind became converted to, it's all bears.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty much. The Russians got involved, you would think, oh, in what, like the 1960s? No, they got involved about eight years ago and went searching for the yeti in Siberia. And what they came back with were things like, oh, look at this, these twisted tree branches were made into beds or sleeping pods by the yeti and they twisted these branches and look at this, it's evidence. But it turns out that they were clearly man-made, they were tool-made cuts and they were located on a, not in a remote area at all.

• 42:52Josh Clark?

  Just like right off a trail, I think, right?

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, and what people think is, oh, they just cooked this stuff up to try and bring tourism to a not very tourist-friendly area.

• 43:03Josh Clark?

  Right, Siberia. Like they, and apparently there's a longstanding tradition among Russians and former Soviets of basically drumming up tourism by playing on people's beliefs in the yeti and the abominable snowman. And I think there was a period of time, one of the people interviewed in this great BBC article about the yeti, the, this Russian scientist says, there's a period of time where it was like very fashionable for the intelligentsia of Russia and the Soviet Union to basically go on trips in the summer looking for the abominable snowman. And they would show up in these towns and every town had a designated

• 43:48Josh Clark?

  yeti witness. And the yeti witness's job was to basically regale them with tall tales that were supposedly true, take them on these tours into the forest and then make a bunch of money off of them and say, thanks a lot, I'm sorry we didn't see anything this time. But that they, apparently in 2011, the Russian government orchestrated another one of those through this conference. And from the conference, they announced to the world, they had found indisputable proof that yeti exists from this bed and these broken branches and supposedly a few hairs attached to a clump of moss. But some other people who were attending, anthropologists and biologists were like, no, it's totally made up. This is all just

• 44:32Josh Clark?

  a big tourist PR stunt.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:35Josh Clark?

  Which is hilarious.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Way to go, Russia.

• 44:39Josh Clark?

  And Putin supposedly tried to do it again in 2016. He announced that he saw three yeti from a helicopter tour of Siberia.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Oh, that's funny.

• 44:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think so, too.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  So, I mean, I don't have much else. Yeti are bears, right?

• 44:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we couldn't, we couldn't talk about cryptozoology, though, without mentioning that Selacanth argument. And, and the thing about the yeti is that there, there was actually a species of ape called Gigantopithecus that was like a nine-foot-tall ape, the biggest ape that ever lived, that lived in that very area and went extinct about 100,000 years ago. So, the people who really believe in this are like, you know, we thought the Selacanth went extinct like 60 million years before. We just think this guy went extinct 100,000 years before. Who's to say? So, that seems to be the thing that's carrying on this belief. That and the fact that, as somebody put in one of these articles,

• 45:44Josh Clark?

  all it would take is one yeti to prove that yeti exists. But no matter how much, there's no such thing as evidence that can prove it doesn't exist. So, people are always going to believe it.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Just like Nessie.

• 45:57Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  And Bigfoot.

• 45:59Josh Clark?

  Exactly. So, there you go.

• 46:04Josh Clark?

  If you want to know more about the yeti, go to the Himalayas and look for it yourself. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Or, we should mention, if you're in Disney World, there's a roller coaster ride called Expedition Everest: Colon. Because you know, every good roller coaster has a colon in the name.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Colon: Legend of the Forbidden Mountain. There are, there is a track on display there that, the reason it's not in a scientific museum and it's at Disney World is because it's a yeti track. But you can go look at one.

• 46:42Josh Clark?

  From a TV show?

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, this guy named Gates, who is not a zoologist at all, but he's an actor and an animal tracker. Or I don't even think he's an animal tracker, is he?

• 46:52Josh Clark?

  No, no, he's, he's an actor. And a TV presenter and a producer.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they, they presented one on his TV show and now that's in Disney World.

• 47:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so, um, and if you're in Disneyland, there's a Yeti on the Matterhorn ride.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Like a real Yeti?

• 47:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they have one chained by the neck inside the Matterhorn. It's really scrawny. They clearly aren't taking very good care of it.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 47:17Josh Clark?

  Well, I already said it's time for listener mail, Charles.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got distracted, sorry. So, uh, I'm gonna call this a follow-up on the Chili Finger that Jimmy Stewart planted at Wendy's.

• 47:31Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Uh, and, and quick shout out, this is a local listener from Georgia Tech, but I just wanted to say hello to a couple of people I met last weekend at the High Museum when I went to the Infinity Mirrors exhibit.

• 47:44Josh Clark?

  Oh, isn't that amazing?

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you always kusama.

• 47:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  I thought it was... Here's what I think. I think it was really cool. And it would have been a lot cooler if it's just like, yeah, you just walk through all these things and you don't wait 30 minutes to spend 20 seconds in the room.

• 48:01Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  That took away from it a bit.

• 48:04Josh Clark?

  You, you and I went at the end of the day and people thinned out and we could just keep going in and staying as long as we wanted in them. So I, I totally get what you're saying.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  It was cool, though. And I also think, like, I went with my brother and his family and Scott was kinda like, "I could build one of these in my backyard by next weekend."

• 48:24Josh Clark?

  I wanted to see Scott's Infinity Mirror. I thought the same thing. It'd be awesome to build one of those and just like hang out in it, for sure.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  I don't want to take anything away from her, though. She's a great artist and it, and it was really neat. I loved the, uh... I think the one that was sort of like the Christmas lights was my favorite one.

• 48:41Josh Clark?

  What about the one that's like a, kind of like an octagonal box that you look in?

• 48:46Speaker 02

  That was awesome.

• 48:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's just like you see your future in the eighties or something like that.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got a couple of cool photos, but I largely kept the phone in my pocket and just tried to be in it, man.

• 48:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, man, I'm with you.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  So anyway, I met a couple of listeners that were, just happened to be there and they both came up and like, are you Chuck? And so my brother got a kick out of that as well.

• 49:07Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  But this was not one of those people. It just reminded me because it's a Georgia Tech student. Hey, guys, relatively new listener, have probably listened to about 100 episodes so far. Tend to hop around, as you can tell, I'm a Georgia Tech student and really hope to run into you guys at some point in Atlanta.

• 49:26Josh Clark?

  Did I mention I go to Georgia Tech?

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Anyway, I finally sort of had something to write in about. I was listening to the Wendy's Chili Podcast, suddenly heard the name of a place that sounded very familiar, Cole's Custard. Remember, we mentioned that at the end as a place where there was a finger?

• 49:41Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  He said it was one of the places where a finger had been found and it shocked me as it is just a tiny little custard shop that is not a chain on quite expensive beach property in North Carolina.

• 49:52Josh Clark?

  As a Georgia Tech student, I was shocked.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  I've been to the place probably five or 10 times as a frequent visitor of Wrightsville Beach and had never heard of anyone mention this incident. Just think it's very impressive that a small little store managed to stay afloat after such an incident occurred. Hearing about the finger incident will not deter me from going again, though. And that is from Ethan Lyons. And Ethan, maybe that is exactly why it endured is because people just want that custard so bad.

• 50:21Josh Clark?

  It must be pretty good custard, though, if you think about it.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it didn't make like big national news, probably because it's not a chain.

• 50:30Josh Clark?

  I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure that's part of it. Plus, they also did a better job spinning the PR than Wendy's did.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 50:37Josh Clark?

  I'm betting. Well, thanks a lot, Ethan, for letting us know, just kind of bringing that home. Hadn't really envisioned the place where that finger was found in the custard until now, so thanks for that. If you want to get in touch with us and kind of paint a more illustrative picture than we did about something we talked about, we'd love that. You can join us on stuffyoushouldknow.com, check out all of our links there, or you can send us an email to [email protected].

• 51:07Speaker 05

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:23Josh Clark?

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• 52:18Speaker 00

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