Ep. 299 - Book Recommendations!

Ep. 299 - Book Recommendations!

January 27, 2025 • 47 min

Episode Description

Cliff Barackman, James "Bobo" Fay, and Matt Pruitt discuss their favorite 'squatchy and 'squatch-adjacent books! Originally recorded and released in October of 2023 for our members-only podcast "Beyond Bigfoot & Beyond," this episode offers a long list of excellent books that listeners should read! 

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bubo.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
These guys are your favorites, so like to subscribe and
read it five star.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
And meon Righteous on us today and listening watching them
always keep its watching. And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman
and James Bubo Fay. Greetings everyone, This is Matt Pruitt.
Just wanted to hop on and give you a quick
introduction to the episode that you're about to hear. You know,

(00:37):
over the years that we've been doing these Q and
A episodes, we've gotten a lot of submissions from people
asking for book recommendations, you know, required reading, essential reading,
things of that nature. And so in October of twenty
twenty three, Cliff, Bobo and myself recorded in an episode
for our members only podcast, Beyond, Bigfoot and Beyond, dedicated
to some of our favorite books about the Sasquatch and

(00:59):
other really to topics. When I was compiling the questions
for the January twenty twenty five Q and A episode,
we had quite a few more requests for book recommendations,
so I thought it'd be a good idea to take
the members only episode that we recorded back in October
twenty three and release that here on the main feed,
so you're going to hear a member's only episode being
released here on our main podcast feed for the first time.

(01:22):
And we also compiled a list of all the books
that are mentioned in this episode. So if you click
the link in the show notes to our Patreon to
the membership section, you'll see that post available there if
you want to see all the books listed in one place,
so you don't have to write them down if you're
driving or traveling or anything of that nature. So hope
you enjoyed this episode that we originally recorded for our members,
and hope you find the recommendations useful. So we're thinking

(01:45):
that maybe we could just wrap about some of our
favorite Sasquatch related books because we're still getting so many
questions about what books would we recommend to people. Yeah,
remember we talked about like the Klobo's Book Club, which
we will do deep dives in the future on specific books,
but maybe for now we just talk about our top
three or top five recommendations that you would offer to

(02:07):
people those sorts of things.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Okay, cool, Well, what would you recommend We've already started recording.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Oh, okay, there's a wide range people. People that have
like a extensive Bigfoot libraries of their own personal books.
And then there's people that just kind of are fans
of the show that don't really have any So I
guess who we start with.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
That well, I'd say, just yeah, just choose one, I think.
And because you know, there's been people, there are people
who have been into this thing for a while, and
maybe they haven't read the book you're mentioning because they
a different book got them going.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
You know, yeah, I think, you know, I think, well,
I mean, if you're a reader, I mean, if you
should read one book, i'd say prove it the phenomenal
Sasquash if you want to really kind of go through it.
And I enjoyed the historical I love the historical parts
of it. And I think if you start with Sanderson,
you know, back in sixty one, nineteen sixty one, I
think that's a great place to start.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
It is. But I don't like his writing style. You don't, no, no,
I don't like it. It's a little archaic and weird
to me.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
I kind of like that about it.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
I like the book, don't get me wrong. It has
a lot of great information in it, but that's not
it doesn't flow easily from the page to my brain.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
I would agree with that. And a lot of the
language is sort of archaic because you know, we were
still in like the figurative dark ages of understanding of
apes and hominoid evolution, and a lot of the fossils
that are relevant hadn't even been found yet, and so
there's a lot of things that are a bit outdated
in terms of the unfolding discovery of the history of
pre human ancestors and human relatives. But yeah, I would

(03:40):
that is one of my top five for sure.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
But it gives you an idea like what people were
like when you read the next books, like this is
what they're like, this is the first thing they went
off of. You know, it kind of just gives you.
It lets you into the mindset of the people of
the time and when you factor and how would they
do about what you just the things you just mentioned,
how little was done in Garston nowadays, Like how the
thought process that came to their conclusions and stuff is

(04:05):
I think pretty fascinating.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Oh, I would agree with that. I think it's good
to visit after maybe, I mean, to me, I would
always recommend starting with greens, apes among Us. That would
be the first ultimate first book.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
See, I don't even know if I would agree with that. Well,
you were wrong, Cliff, Well, I could very well be wrong.
But here perfect here. But here's my complaint about it.
I love the first half or more of it, but
by the time you're getting two thirds of the way through,
it comes down. Apes among Us turns into the thing
on February ninth, nineteen seventy four, so and so and

(04:39):
wherever Kentucky and saw one run across the road. Bubba,
it was brown. And then the next paragraph is a
different rattling of statistics. You know, it kind of runs.
At some point, it seems to me that Apes among
Us and I love the book. It's a great book.
I'm not bashing it. But if I have a complaint
about it, which I kind of do, it turns into
a rattling of this happened, this happened, this happen, and

(05:03):
it kind of loses the narrative thread that I felt
that really held it together for the first part of
the book. Yeah, yeah, I mean, am I raw? I mean,
like you agree with But what about you, Matt. I
know that you're that's a that's your number one go
to book. Am I off base on that? Or what
are your opinion? What's your opinion on that?

Speaker 1 (05:20):
I think he does a really good job. First of all,
he's such a reliable narrator, and he has a much
more accessible writing style than most because he was an
Ivy League educated journalist and so he was a great writer,
and he had sort of an editorial mind as a writer,
which is probably extremely helpful, you know, for writing a
book as big as that is. I like the way
it's broken out, you know, it does become sort of

(05:40):
a presentation of various cases, especially because essentially you have
those beginning portions where he's like introducing the subject, talking
about the historical record, and then his sort of entry
through the centennial Sasquatch, Hunt, Bluff Creek, the classics Patterson.
But then it does sort of move into these regional

(06:00):
breakouts of reports that have occurred. So there's you know,
like the Mississippi water Web, Wolli Booger is, the Canadian scene,
Eastern action. But once he gets through that, then it
shifts back into like, all right, there's a chapter about footprints,
where are the bones, screams in the night, you know, vocals.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, the statistical analysis that stuff is cool, but in
the middle there, I think it gets trapped in this quagmire.
You know it does.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
But I think for a lot of people who are
new ish to the subject, it's really enlightening for them
to see the number of people across North America that
were reporting these things even in the mid twentieth century
and all the things that we think of now, because
it's really easy to get stuck in modern times. And
I did this with Sanderson's book too, where things would

(06:43):
sort of emerge out of reports that seemed new to me,
and then I would revisit Sanderson and go, oh, he
picked up on that same pattern in sixty one, where
you see, oh Green picked up on this same pattern
in the late sixties or early seventies. And so that's
sort of a reinforcing thing to think that the some
of the things that feel like newer discoveries, like twenty
first century discoveries, were actually present even back then, which

(07:08):
strengthens the case for the reality of the subject.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Right right now. If I had to modify this at all, see,
I wouldn't go to apes among us first, I would
go to the best of Sasquatch Bigfoot, which of course
is a compilation of John's three other books that those
smaller pamphlet books. I find those to be more readable
and digestible. And the fact that they were all put
together into one book by Hancock House Press, The Best

(07:34):
of Sasquatch Bigfoot, I think that would be my go
to John Green book for the newbie, because that covers
a lot of the historic stuff, the foundational things in
Bluff Creek and British Columbia, the stuff the early things
that John everybody else looked into. But and of course
Apes among Us is the next step after that. See,
I would have gone to Best of Sasquatch Bigfoot first

(07:55):
for that reason, because at that point Apes among Us
build upon best of you know these other books. You know,
you're the Sasquatch, and then the other ones that are
escaping me right now you know what they are.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
No, that's a great point.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
See.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
I started. The first book I read was Crets's book,
and so it was very because I hadn't studied any
like evolutionary biology or anthropology at that point, and so
it was very difficult because I just that was like
first contact with a lot of those terms. And I
still love that book, and I revisited a lot, and

(08:30):
so Green's was more like, I'm following a reliable narrator
who's walking me through this whole world that is the
Sasquatch subject. And so yeah, I do think that's a
great point though, that the best of Bigfoot Sasquatch would
be a great one. Another great one is Chris Murphy's
Either Meet the Sasquatch or the second edition Know the Sasquatch,
because there's just so much. There's a lot of information there,

(08:52):
but you will never find a better collection of images.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, it's the perfect coffee table book on Sasquatch. Honestly beautiful,
glossy book. The pictures are all in color, or at
least the ones that were taken in color originally are
all in color, because there's certainly black and white photographs
in there. And it's big, it's glossy, it's very very visual.
There's a lot of but despite the fact that it's
very visual pact full of pictures, there's a lot of
really great informational texts in there as well. Yeah, and

(09:20):
they have the text and the information combined with the photographs.
It's a really powerful thing. It's just fantastic and and
a lot of people may not remember, but there it
was originally published I think with the like a leather
bound cover or something like that. Really yeah, and it
was also in a hardback. I don't know if you

(09:40):
guys have the hardback version or not. I have an
autographed hard cover by and you know John Green and
Steinberg and Murphy, they all autographed that one that was
the original one. But I couldn't have. I believe that
there was a leather bound edition as well.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Oh I did have that. I think I still have it.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
You should, I hope. So it's probably worth quite a bit.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
I think I paid one hundred and fifty for it.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
You know, you have a hell of a book collection, Boves,
You really do. Steven Stroyford, who the owner of the
establishment that was once so it's called big Foot Books,
said you were his best customer there for a long time.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah. I spent four grand in there in one year.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Geez geez, Well what was some of the walkaways you got?

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Man?

Speaker 2 (10:18):
What would would you walk away with?

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Just like first edition stuff like rare stuff.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, and this all goes in You're safe, right, Yeah?

Speaker 3 (10:26):
I had more, but I gave him I gave him
away his presence.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, you're kind of like that. You're generous to a
fault if I don't say so myself. Yeah, but you
mentioned Krantz's book, that Krantz's book was really influential upon me.
It wasn't the first big Foot book I ran across.
I think one of John Green's, one of the paperback ones.
I don't remember which one on the Track of the
Sasquatch or You're the Track Sasquatch or something like that.

(10:51):
Those may have been amongst the first, because I remember
looking through the college library that I often mentioned is
what kind of got me into this, And I think
I ran across thows and oh this is kind of interesting,
and kind of started leafing through it, you know, the
or the Sasquatch file. That's the last one I finally
came to me. It was kind of like looking at
those and oh, this is interesting, and then I ran
across it was either Mysterious Monsters on Trial or no, no,

(11:16):
is that right? Mysterious Monsters on Trial? That's right, like
monster man like okay, the other yeah, another m word
man like Monsters on Trial? Or was it there was
one called Sasquatch and that's always called at a yellow cover.
I think A Mrcotic was his name. He was one
of the It was a compilation of journal articles written
by scientists. Yeah, and Krantz was a co editor on

(11:36):
one of those, I think.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, he submitted some of those papers. So yeah, there's
the big compendiums. Yeah, or the scientists look at the
sasquatch one and two man like monsters on trial and
then the sasquatch and other hominidsmids.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, that was my baptism into the science of bigfoot.
I think I might have like perused through some of
the sighting reports in the John Green book, But when
I started reading those cover to cover multiple times, that
really struck me. That really really struck me, as like,
holy crap, these things are real. You're kidding me.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
I revisit those a lot, and you know, I reference
those in writing the book too. And I'm the Krantz
book too. I love It just wasn't the best first
contact for a kid from North Georgia, you know what
I mean.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
I suppose you really read down there.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Well, it was sort of like a calling to Okay,
well I need to learn these things. And I rose
to the challenge of trying to be more equip more
well equipped to make sense of everything. So those sorts
of like, that's why I really enjoyed challenging reads or
technical reads, because it's an opportunity to learn. But in

(12:43):
terms of yeah, I think I came to it expecting
a different thing that I eventually found in apes among
us I had.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
I still have my weather beaten copy of the Krantz Book.
I would take that to Bluff Creek every time I went,
starting in nineteen ninety three or four whenever that I
think was four, and when I started going, Yeah, it
was nineteen ninety four when I started going to Bluff Creek. Yeah,
and I just beat the crap.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Out of that book.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
It's like missing a cover, I think maybe the title,
page two. Just that poor book has been all over
the place with me. I used to take it and
read it on the trips, read it at night, read it.
And I probably have read that book, The Krantz Book,
probably no less than thirty times, wow, and probably much
closer to fifty because I would just plow through that

(13:30):
thing once or twice a year. You know, I've been
doing this for twenty nine years now. So like assuming
that in the early days, if I'd read that book
three or four times in a year, or in certain
chapters more than others, by the way, maybe I wouldn't
do it cover to cover. I've been through that an
awful lot, an awful lot. It's very very influential upon me.
It has as flaws, of course, but it was very
very influential upon me realizing that, like, oh, yeah, you

(13:53):
can do stuff. Because I've always been interested in amateur science.
I'm an amateur astronomer. I've got a pretty good telescope,
for example, and I love that. I'm certainly an amateur
marine biologist, which is hence my love of fishing in general.
And I saw that there was a niche, there was
a place for amateurs here to contribute, because frankly, the
academics aren't carrying their weight. They aren't doing what they're

(14:14):
supposed to be doing, which is following their curiosity to
the extent they find answers. Therefore it's up to us.
And when I started reading about the science that was
being done, it's, oh, my gosh, what an opportunity here,
What an opportunity to possibly contribute just a little tiny
bit for the good of a subject that is larger
than me. Oh. Absolutely, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and

(14:38):
Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. Will be right back after
these messages.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
And you know, I love both of Bennernagle's books. The
first one's almost impossible to find now, you know. I
got a copy many years ago and always try to
find a second one. But it's tricky because when they
do pop up, they go for so much money. But
his second book, The Discovery of the Sasquatch, is probably
my personal favorite book ever written on the subject.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
It's almost like a survey of the philosophy of science
itself in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah, it's very conceptual, very philosophical, but he does present
a lot of factual information to be derived from reports
and from the physical evidence, and so it's sort of
the blending of both of those sort of worlds of
the hard evidence, let's say, combined with the anecdotal evidence
and eye witness testimony, but various philosophies of science. And

(15:34):
he makes just such a great case about how could
these things be real and yet unrecognized? And I think
that book's an incredible contribution. I wish they would put
it in a Kindle format so more people could access it.
Leela Hodgechik's Ford is an excellent essay too. I mean
that Ford alone is awesome, you know. I wish that
would get digitized and put on the internet as a

(15:55):
standalone document for people to read. But his first book's
amazing too, which is The Sasquatch North America's Grade eight.
But it's very, very difficult to find. But readers could
get the Discovery of the Sasquatch from Amazon still, but
hopefully they'll put those in digital format. The problem with
a lot of the Sasquatch classics. Now, those two Vender

(16:16):
Noogles books were published through a company called Beachcomber, so
I don't know what their process is like.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
I think that was the Bendernaggles thing. I think they
kind of self published.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
It, yeah, I said him and his wife.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Because Hancock House, what they've done for most of their
titles is to scan and upload the books as PDF images.
So usually if you're in an ebook format, it's a
text file so you can search within it, which is amazing,
or you can highlight notes and export those or just
go to your highlighted sections. But literally, if you get

(16:48):
apes among us or Krantz's book on kindle or ebook format.
There are image files of the pages, so they're very
you can't highlight notes, you can't they're not searchable, which
is a little frustrated because that's part of the benefit
of reading the e book versions. So maybe they'll do
something about that at some point in the future. But
I would definitely if I had to pick one for

(17:11):
me that was a personal favorite, it would without a
doubt be the discovery of the Sasquatch.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Well, you know, if we're talking about bender Augel and Krantz,
we have to talk about Meldrum's book. Absolutely, Yeah, Meldrum's book.
It is just fantastic. It's the number one book I
recommend to people. I mean, I'm clearly a Krantz sites,
you know, like if you're I always I think I
might may have said this before, but if you're looking
at the four horsemen, I think most people kind of
fall in line behind one of them, and I definitely

(17:36):
find fall in line behind Krantz, and Meldrum is the
next in line in that same line.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Indeed, I'm a greenient.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
In fact, the second edition, the second edition of Krantz's
book acknowledges doctor and Belgrium, because in the first edition
Jeff wasn't on the scene yet. He wrote that in
probably ninety one or ninety two. I think he published
in ninety one or ninety two, so he's writing it
in the late eighties early nineties. And the second edition
he had a little addendum there and he mentions Jeff
is on the scene now and a trained an atomist

(18:06):
looking at these things, and he acknowledges that doctor Meldrum's
recognition of the mid tarsal break. And of course if
you read Krantz's book, if you go back and read
those early chapters on footprints in Krantz's book, he does
acknowledge it as well, but he doesn't come to the
name of it. He doesn't do the mid tarsal joints.
He doesn't talk about pressure ridges and all that stuff.

(18:26):
He does talk about I think the words are something
like again I don't have the book in front of me,
but the word is something like considerable flexibility in the
mid part of the foot I believe is what he said,
something to that effect. So he does recognize it, and
he does give Krantz gave himself on a little pat
on his back in that little chapter where he talks
about chef in his work. But yeah, Meldrum's book built

(18:50):
upon what Krantz had done and expanded upon it. And
for what it's worth, Rumor is Jeff's writing another book
that will be released around the same time as Doug
Hizek's Legend meets Science documentary rumors happened. Yeah, well, if
it's out there, good. I mean I knew it was happening,
but I didn't know if it was officially mentioned or

(19:11):
not yet. Yes, no, Yeah, So I'm looking on that
because looking forward to that, because doctor Meldrim will certainly
build upon his own work because his book is I
mean it's not dated to the point of being useless,
but what it was it published in two thousand and
six or two thousand and eight. Yeah, that's you know,
it's twenty twenty three right now. That's kind of a
long time ago, and so much has happened, and there

(19:33):
have been so many advances in science and various disciplines
that come to bear on this topic. So I'm very
much looking forward to doctor Meldrim's next book.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, those would be my five required reading to me.
If you read these five books you would have a
very thorough education. The ones we talked about Sanderson Green's
Apes among us, Krantz, Meldrim and Bitner novels Discovery the Sasquatch.
And then there's other books I love, you know, those
sort of narrative journeys that aren't necessarily a deep dive

(20:06):
into the subject, but are sort of again, sort of
following a narrator who's seeing the subject in a broad
view through their own particular lens. We already talked about.
I absolutely love John Zada's book In the Valleys and
the Noble Beyond. And I know we all loved Robert
Piles Where Bigfoot Walks. That's another great one in that category.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Did you see the movie?

Speaker 1 (20:25):
I still haven't watched the movie because we did that
interview with him and hearing about you know, he wasn't lamenting,
but hearing the differences between the way he was represented
in the film and the way they toured with the
timeline of his life sort of turned me off a
little bit.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Dude, he ruined Bob Pile in that movie. He'd been
able to look the biggest kop See.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
That's what I'm worried. Didn't they also make him look
like like totally inept in the outdoors.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yeah, total, totally totally clueless, like just a door. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
So yeah, and Bob is anything but man, he did
that solo trip across s Gipfard Pinchow. You don't do
a solo trip if you're some loser in the woods.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, So listeners, if you haven't listened to the Bob
Pyle episode that we did around the time. We also
did an interview with the director of that film. But
you know, I do enjoy those books too, because they're
just very well written. So it's not necessarily going to
give you an education on the Sasquatch, but they're very
enjoyable reads, especially John's Agis book. Like, I just really
thought that was a beautiful book, you.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Know, I think a valuable mention. I don't think it's
one of in my top five or anything, but definite
worthy of mention, especially for people our age, you know,
you know, but was my age, and of course you
two met, you're a little younger than us, but still
legend of Boggy Creek has affected all of us in
various ways, right, I mean, that was some of my
earliest memories of the Bigfoot thing, and it's been just

(21:45):
a profound effect upon my life in so many ways,
to the point where when I met Keith Crabtree, the
guy in the suit, like like I teared up, like
I was so moved by meeting the dude in the suit.
You know.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
That got thrown through the door.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
We bet Oh yeah, that guy. I also teered up.
Then I got his autograph, like I got both all
these they're up in the museum. They mean so much
to me. So Lyle Blackburn's the Piece of boll Eu
Creek has to be.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a great one.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
It's because it resonated so strongly with with my youth,
you know, in this that sort of way.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
And you know, a little book I love is The Yawi.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
That is one of my favorite mystery eight books of
all time, the two thousand and six Yawi. I'm still
reading the Yawi File. You know. It is just sort
of a not to detegrate it, but it is just
a compinium of reports, whereas the original book that they wrote,
the Yawi in two thousand and six. It's just that
is absolutely one of my favorite books on the subject
of mystery as historically speaking. One of the most amazing

(22:45):
collections of information that I've seen that suffers from and
I don't know if this person listens, but if you listen,
I'm sorry, but suffers from. I think one of the
worst titles was there was a book that was released
a few years ago called Far Out Shaggy Funky Mind.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah, that guy Daniel Green Green, Yeah, yeah,
Daniel Green. There you go.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Man. There's so much incredible information and it's a compendium
of personal correspondences, print media articles, happenings, newsletters, bulletins, all
just a tremendous amount of information from the end of
nineteen sixty nine until the very beginning of nineteen eighties.
So it really covers the nineteen seventies. And so the
title is sort of a nod to terminology of pop

(23:30):
culture in the seventies. But I think a lot of
people have missed that book because the title is so goofy.
Sorry Daniel if you're.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Listening, because great book. Great book.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Absolutely, I learned so many things that I wasn't previously
aware of.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, because the seventies, sixties and seventies are like kind
of the heyday of the Bigfoot thing, when it first
became public knowledge that these things may be out there.
It's when, certainly, when I was growing up throughout the
nineteen seventies, I saw the various shlockumentaries and loved them all.
And that book encapsulates the feel, which is what I
think he was trying to do with the title. Of course,
you know, but to see the primary sources in a

(24:09):
way of the newspaper articles reporting the things that we
would later read about in other books. I think that
is a really really great book and certainly one that
I love thumbing through. It's not a cover to cover
short of book. It's one that you just pick up
and like, oh, I remember that. That was cool.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
And there's a lot of great regional books too. I mean,
I have to mention my dear friend Mike May's book
Valley of the Apes, which is about the nawac's work
in Area X. It's a great book. I loved reading that.
You know, I know a lot of those people and
I've been there many times. But Mike put it into
a great narrative and also really love I know you
do too, Raincoast Sasquatch. That's a great book.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, that's one of the better ones. I think it
really opened my eyes to the ability of these things
to swim. For example, that's why I first heard of
reader reports of these things swimming. I think there's been
a few things here and there. Of course, you know,
even the Bossburg creature went in out of like Roosevelt,
which is of course the Columbia River, but it's just
dammed up at that point.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
Yeah, I love that. That book is one of my
that's top ten for me too.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
You know a book that I read that I just
love and I do go back to occasionally because if
we're talking about the history of the subject and whatnot,
you know, the whole big Foot thing. Yeah, of course, sasquatching.
That term was coined in the nineteen twenties, and Bigfoot
kind of came on the scene in nineteen fifty eight
and stuff. But before that, the world was in this
like this, this tizzy about the ambomitable snowman, the Yeti

(25:29):
in general. So when I when I plowed through Tom
Slick in The Search for the Yeti by Lauren Coleman,
good book. Yeah, great book. I think it has some
of the best yeiritten YETI knowledge in written anywhere anywhere
on that particular part because Lauren is a fantastic what

(25:51):
was the word I'm looking for, not just author, but
like his his his perspective of history is fantastic, and
the fact that he was actually doing stuff back in
that time too. He was a young man. I think
at that point he's been looking at this thing for
seventy years. I think he told me, And there's nobody
like that in available nowadays. Yeah, so Tom's looking The

(26:12):
Search for the YETI is a fantastic book because it's
it's part biography of Tom Slick and then part informational
about the investigations into the Yetti at that time, which
dovetailed into the Sasquatch thing that we're all enjoying today.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah. I read that book probably three times. I thought
it was great. And you don't link to that though.
It's a good one, except for the endings of bum
out is was it? Heinrich Messner?

Speaker 1 (26:35):
The Reinhold Messner Rhinhold.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Messner, Yes, Yetti book and he kind of he caught
so much crap. I mean, it's a great book, and
then he tries to write it off at the end
as a whistling, upright running bear that he saw like
so he quit catching crap from all the people about
saying he saw YETI Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
That was a super big disappointment because at the beginning
he was saying, oh, yeah, I was upright, I had
a lot, but he was describing or yedi or a sasquatch,
was describing something that could not possibly be a bear
in anyway, And at the end he goes, yeah, it
was a bear. So so what are you a bad observer?
Is that? It like you're just shooting yourself in the
foot by saying it's like, I wrote all this stuff earlier,
and I'm either an incompetent observer or a coward for

(27:15):
changing my mind at the end, very very disappointing to me,
very disappointing. He's going, oh, clip, just called that guy
a coward.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
I did, I did. I said all kinds of stuff.
But I was like, yeah, I was so bung like
I was a hero. And then all of a sudden,
I was like, dude, you're being a bach like just
because you can't stand up by like he saw it,
he saw it, and stick to your guns. But it
was still a great book because he's such a badass,
he's been so through that area. Just his His writing

(27:42):
about that area was was, you know, pretty pretty compelling.
It was. It was a good photow to make you
really want to go there and check it out. Myself.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
Will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, I was gonna see if you guys had favorite
books that were not about the Sasquatch but directly related
to it, you know, the analogous Hmmm.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
I don't read much nonfiction. I mean fiction, I don't
read much fiction.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
No, No, these are not fictional. I mean they're just
they're about other animals. Like I would recommend all our
listeners read David Peterson's Ghost Grizzlies, about the potential survival
of grizzlies in the South San Juans of southern Colorado.
Any of the Jim Corbett books, especially Man Eaters of Command,
some of the most riveting nature writing. David Kwalman's Monster

(28:40):
of God is a fantastic book about belief systems associated
with certain animals. You know, I referenced some of that
stuff in my book. And then there's a great writer
named sim Montgomery who wrote an awesome book called Spell
of the Tiger. She wrote a book called The Search
for the Golden Moonbear, which has this sort of like
cryptozoological angle. I guess because it's the search for this

(29:03):
as yet sort of undiscovered species of bear, or I
guess at the time it was somewhat undiscovered or thought
to have been lost, maybe like a Lazarus species. I
don't know a lot about it yet, but I'm about
to dive into it. But the Spell of the Tiger
was amazing. She went to the Sundarbans, which is like
the tiger death capital of Asia. There's more people eating
thereby tigers than anywhere else, and so her writing is fantastic.

(29:26):
So I'm looking forward to digging into that. But I
just think there's so many consistencies between a lot of
these studies and lessons to be learned about how people
find these other sort of hidden animals are very rare
animals that are just directly applicable, and it's great fun
to read those things.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
I don't have any books like that have really grabbed
me or I can think of off the top of
my head, But what did come to mind are a
couple of books by Ian Tattersall. Ian Tattersall, I think
he's head of the Human Origins department at the Museum
in New York, the Natural History Museum in New York,
American Naturalistory Museum in New York. I'm not sure what

(30:02):
the title I forget is, but he wrote a book,
the first one I read of him is called Masters
of the Planet, and basically his premise there is that
humans are special, not because of our tool use or
fire or anything like that. It's mostly for symbolic thought,
being able to put larger ideas into symbols, whether those
symbols are visual like photographs or pictures or hand signals,

(30:24):
or if they're auditory, which comes down the language. Because
if I say, if I say the word I don't
know tree, those sounds I just made to e like
that's not a tree, but the idea that that those
sounds symbolize are translated into our brain as a tree,
and he was arguing that that perhaps is the origin

(30:47):
of our humanity. I guess, in some sort of way,
maybe the kernel of our humanity, for lack of a
better term. So I really enjoyed that book because it
as well as my other favorite book by him, which
is called the Case of the Rickety Cossack. What both
of these books kind of eventually fall into in case
of the Rickety Cossack is also in a book by

(31:08):
Ian Tattersall. What both of these books eventually fall into
is almost like a brief history of paleoanthropology, which I
think is a fantastic topic and one that most bigfooters,
if not all bigfooters, should probably dip their toes into
a little bit, because not only does a shed light
upon ourselves as Homo sapiens, but also sasquatches for whatever

(31:29):
they are. But finding out the history of paleoanthropology through
these books and what we think we may have learned
about our ancestors and near relatives directly relates to sasquatches
in many many ways. It was I think it was
Masters of the Planet if I remember correctly, that book
is what kind of sheds some light on this idea

(31:50):
of mind that sasquatches are probably power scavenging on coyote,
you know, prey essentially power scavenging. I've mentioned before, is
this strategy of animals and hyenas do it for humans?
Did it? We still probably do in some places in
the world. Australla pithesenes did it where they basically let
some other animal kill kill the prey, and then we'd

(32:13):
move in and throw rocks and sticks and try to
make off with the biggest part we can and then
let the predator have the rest of the kill. And
I think sasquatches are doing that. I think that is
the connection between coyotes and bigfoots for the most part.
And it was this book Mashes of the Planet where
I picked up on that idea and started developing it
and reformulating it for as a sasquatch, molding it into

(32:34):
what might be ap plicable to our big friends in
the woods here. And of course the case of the
Rickety Cossack. That is definitely a kind of a history
of paleo anthropology written in a narrative sort of way,
which is really neatly. It's a really great book, and
it shows you not only how much we've learned, but
also how little we have to learn from I hear

(32:56):
people say, oh, evolutions just a theory. Well, that's as
we're missing so many pieces of it. I mean, evolution
is a fact period. It's just like the details that
we're still shaping. There's really no denying it. If you
win face with the evidence like that, and I hope
I'm not stepping on anybody's toes, but sorry, it's true.
And the case of the Rickney Cossacks shows you the

(33:17):
development of our ideas about ourselves and our origins over time,
and also some of the relatives that we have in
common and all that stuff is just so fascinating to me.
And the way he packaged it and presents it is
very palatable. It's just it's not exactly it is an
easy read. It's certainly not a difficult read. It's nothing

(33:38):
that you know, it's not an archaic language, and it's
not like his sentence structure is weird and you have
to get in your head. It's a great reading. Both
of these are fantastic books.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Absolutely. Have you read David Begans The Real Planet of
the Apes?

Speaker 2 (33:51):
Oh? I have actually, yeah, I actually have read that
is my library at home.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, that's one of my favorite books about ape evolution.
He makes a really strong argument for the evolution of
apes predominantly occurring in Eurasia. But it's a fantastic book
about the Asian apes and the Eurasian apes, apes that
evolved in parts of Europe as well. But That's one
of my favorite paleoanthropological books.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
There is another book I read and I really enjoyed it.
I think some of his theses that might not bear out,
but the information I picked up from was really nice.
And I forget who wrote it. I can look it
up real fast. But it's called The Red Ape. Yeah,
I forget. It's basically about orangutans. And this is when
I was. I wanted to find out more stuff about
gigantipithes scenes and I knew that they were closely related

(34:33):
to orangutans, so I wanted to read about those and
see what was up with that sort of stuff. The
Read Ape. Jeffrey Schwartz is the author of that one,
And after reading that book, I was just enamored by
orangutans and I could see that, you know, okay, maybe
they are somehow related to the Sasquatches in some sort

(34:55):
of way. Maybe you know, the Sasquatch Giganto connection is
of the real deal because of the behaviors and the
intelligence level and whatnot of orangutans, because they seem to be,
depending on how one measures it, the smartest of the apes,
and just so fascinating in so many ways, and the
small details of their anatomy that they go into. It's

(35:16):
a really great read. Now, I happen to mention that
one time the doctor Meldrum, because we've been camping together
a few times, and around the campfire we start this
is the direction of conversation very often human evolution and
apes and all that sort of stuff, because I've got
so many questions and he loves to talk about it,
and you know, it's a rousing campfire discussion, and he goes, oh,
I wrote a review of that one time, an unfavorable review,

(35:37):
and I said, oh, my god. So but nonetheless, and again,
I think it was probably because there was some argument
or least suggestion in the book that perhaps humans are
more closely related to orangutans than we might suspect, or
that then the current evidence points to because of some
sort of anatomical detail in the cranium or the skull
or actually the roof of the mouth somehow, where the

(35:59):
sinus is going at this particular place, and no other
ape species but humans and orangutans have this. I don't know.
The anatomy of it was a little bit above my head,
and I'm pretty sure, that's probably what you've had some
disagreement with.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
So I need to read that book. I have not
read that one. That sounds like a very interesting book,
for sure.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yeah it is. Well, I've got a copy of it.
You know, if you when you're out for squatch Fest,
I can lend your mind if you want.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Well, if it's on candle, I'll by. I really love
reading on Kendle because I can read anytime anywhere, Like
I've probably got two hundred and fifty books on my
Kindle app. And the other thing is I do a
lot of reading at night because like when we go
to bed, I'm usually not very sleepy, so I'll get
like an hour hour and a half of reading in
before I actually fall asleep. And I don't need a
light because it's on the phone, you know. So that's
kind of nice.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
But I don't like reading on my phone or my tablet.
I'd like to have something in my hands.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
I love the Kindle, like I said, because you can
highlight portions you know that you find particularly useful or meaningful,
and then it saves all your highlights and then when
you're done with the book, you can export it.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, so you can just email it to yourself and like, oh,
here's all the high lights with references, so I can go, oh,
here's all the portions of that book I found particularly meaningful.
And then if I ever open up the book again,
I can just go straight to my highlights and go
back to those portions of the book when I reread
it or something like that. But it's just it's super
convenient that way.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah, I can see the convenient part of it, But
there's something about the smell of a book I can't get.
I can't let lousive.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yeah, if something comes out new, I'll buy it on
Kindles so I can have it like the second it
comes out. But physical books, I love used bookstores because
you know, like if I'm on Amazon, it's because I'm
looking for something specific, like oh, I heard so and
so just release such and such today, I'll go buy
it at the bookstore. I'm like, I'm going to look
at every title in you know, the Natural Sciences, and

(37:42):
if something jumps out at me that I've never seen
or never heard of or that sounds relevant. That's how
I discover things is through the used bookstore. So most
of the stuff like I'll order new books if it's
not available in kindel format. But like, I've got tons
of books, but most of them I get it used bookstore.
It drives my wife because I have to go into
every used bookstore that we encounter on the road because

(38:03):
I'm like, you never know what you're gonna find. And
you know, I found assigned Krantz book in Juno, Alaska. Oh,
I found a signed first edition of Jane Goodall's in
the Shadow of Man for a dollar. I guess they
didn't they didn't know it was And so I went
to my favorite bookstore in Nashville the other day and
I found a signed copy of Ghost Grizzlies, which already had,

(38:24):
but it was only three bucks, and I was like,
I'll get a second copy of Ghost Grizzlies because it's
signed to like Bob and Irma whoever they are. Yeah,
but if you're ever at a bookstore used bookstore and
you see a book, you already have check the inside
cover before you go, Oh, I don't need that. I
already have a copy because it's it's happened to me
multiple times now.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
So you don't find those old big foot books like
that anymore. That everyone goes on eBay, looks at the price.
Now they go, oh, I can check up the price
of this.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah. All the cool used big Foot books I got
were in weird places. I mean I found Dehindon's book
in North Georgia, which I thought was kind of an
odd place. I found several cool green John Green books
in Montana and Wyoming. And then when I moved to Washington,
I worked next door to a used bookstore and I

(39:11):
introduced myself to the guy and I was like, oh, hey,
you know, here's what I do. And he's like, oh,
if we get these in all the time. If anything
comes in, I will just put it aside because I said, look,
if I don't have it, I'll buy it. And he
never got one in in the three years that I
lived there. I used to go to Pike's Place. You know,
there's a cool used bookstore there. Never saw Bigfoot books.
So people don't let those things go very easily.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Minty Scott Minton a good friend of mine. He's the
guy with the record store in Sandy and actually he
got customers from her podcast. Somebody came in and came
to the museum and they were going to go to
the Scott's Record Store next because they heard us talking
about it on the podcast. How cool is that?

Speaker 3 (39:47):
That's cool? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
He goes to the Sandy Library because we live in
Sandy's and so does See. He goes to the Sandy
Library all the time because they often sell use books.
And he found an old copy of a Bontable Snowman
legend comes to life back there with a new cover
adit by lovingly put on by the librarian there and
with a laminated cover and all this sort of stuff,
and got it for like a dollar or something like that,

(40:09):
and and he was he picked it and he goes,
oh my gosh, what is this? And the library says,
I knew somebody would love that one. Yeah. I picked
Upman's I think it was Weevelman's said that his book
on sea serpents. I got one of those at the
library sale one time too. Another fantastic resource for use books. Yeah,

(40:30):
stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
Will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
You know, you know we're we're forgetting Is I still
love the Locals by Tom Powell? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, Tom, Tom? Yeahs as paranormal as Tom has eventually
ended up That book was was groundbreaking in its time,
and I think it may have been the first book
to mention this idea of habituation.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
I think it was the first that wasn't really out
there until Tom started writing about the Jay Halis project,
which was a BFRO project back in around two thousand,
a very successful project that frankly didn't get the its
credit because Tom, through the benefactor Richard Hucklebridge, who's still
out there kicking somewhere southern California somewhere, they bought all

(41:25):
this fancy IR night vision camera stuff that is archaic
by today's standards. They set that stuff up and lo
and behold, they actually got really really poor quality photographs
of a Sasquatch. I think it's the first time that
has ever happened with night vision and stuff. And we
have a whole display devoted to that those photographs. There's
two photographs that they got. We have a whole display

(41:48):
in the NABC devoted to that, including the original equipment
they used to get it.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Oh, another book, I have to mention, I can't believe
I've forgot it. It's just my other favorite mystery A
worldwide book is Gregory Forth's Images of the Wild Man
in Southeast.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
So that's what I was gonna say.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
That book is so and it's unfortunate that that was
published through the University Press because you know, he's got
his new sort of popular nonfiction book between Ape and
Human but his prior book in two thousand and nine,
Images of the Wild Man in Southeast Asia, is amazing.
But even brand new, it's at University Press prices, so
it's like sixty dollars and even the kindle version is

(42:28):
around the same price, which is fairly ridiculous, but that's
what you see all University Press books set up. But
it is absolutely worth reading. It's extremely well written. That's
one of my favorites.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, you know, you know it's a great great resources chat,
our men's historical Bigfoot, all the he's got like eighteen
hundred Newtrap articles pre nineteen seventy I think or something
like that, and there you don't talk about it's like.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great book.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
It's like, was it like twelve hundred pages or something.
I mean, it's thick.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
It's pretty great. We have some displays in the museum,
but I don't go like full bor on those because well,
people have done it better, you know, Like why would
I put out like a handful of a newspaper articles
for people to see when there's entire books devote it
to that.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, did you guys ever read Jean Paul Debonat's The
Asian wild Man?

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Yeah, I could remember the other's name.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
We have it on We have it on the shelves
here in the museum. Actually, oh, very cool.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, I just have the kindle version. I've never found
a physical copy, but maybe when I'm out there for
squadh Fast, I'll pick up one since you have it
on the shelf, because I love that book. That was
a really well written book.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, we can spend the lifetime talking about this, but
you know it is coming to the end of our
hour here.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
I forget. I'm forgetting. I know, I'm forgetting like probably
two books that I really like that I'm spacing.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Well, you know, maybe that's a good topic for a
future one. Then it's just what when don't we hop
on and that we can focus on a couple different books.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
We hit the big ones.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
I think we did. I think we hit most of
the big ones. I'm sure there's some that we're forgetting,
you know, Like I like Roger Patty. I think that's
a must read. For example. Yeah, Ken Garrethart's book on
Sasquatch or Bigfoot there is one of the best ones
written recently. That's a fantastic overview of the subject in general.
There's all then, as far as the regional stuff goes,
the British Columbia stuff that features Bob Timmins in the

(44:16):
cover that was put together by Chris Murphy, or Steinberg's books,
there's just so many that we can mention and go
deeply into.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Yeah, the doc in West Virginia, Rush Jones, he's like his,
like I enjoy his.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Yeah, there's just too many books to go into. But
I don't know, maybe a future episode, if our listeners
would like to hear us go on about this sort
of stuff, we can go maybe do a deep dive
into a handful of these, you know, that might be
a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yeah, this is a great first meeting of Clubo's Book Club.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, I wanted to call it Monster Piece Theater, except
that the Sesame Street already grab that one.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
Yeah, we can guess what you guys want to hear.
You can just let us know.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, because that's any thing about being members. You have
direct access to us. Essentially, you can write on Patreon.
Matt Prut reads every single thing and he pokes us
about us like, hey, this is an idea, or that
this person said this, this person said that. We get
emails that were sent by you guys to the thing.
When Matt says, oh, the guys would love it, he

(45:15):
sends it to us. We get the information that you
give us, So I want to encourage all of our
members to give us more information. This is your podcast.
You know, we are here specifically for you, and so
what can we do for you? How can we best
serve you? We are always looking for ideas because we're
four years in Man, it's hard to scramble for new
stuff every single week. But we're doing it, and I

(45:36):
think we're doing it pretty well. But we could always
use some help, and we might as well get help
from the people who care about the podcast more than
anyone except for perhaps us three and that's you. Guys
are members. We thank you for everything that they've been doing,
and we can certainly use a little bit more help.
By what's your idea? What would you like to have
us talk about what topic do you think we should do,
what guests should we have on anything like that. We
may not do your ideas, but we will listen and

(45:57):
consider every single one.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Well, I guess sit then for us this week.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Thank you so much members. We really do appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
All right, folks. Well that's another episode of Beyond, Bigfoot
and Beyond, and so y'all till next week. Keep it beyond, Squatchy, thanks.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
For listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you
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(46:42):
and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag
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