 And they're recording a free thought radio hour on W. O. Zio radio 103 point. Hold on just second. I didn't start recording. So that's my bad. Hello and welcome to digital free thought radio hour on W. O. Zio radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, July 31st, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes or doubter five. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Sky, I'm blinded by the lights. He's being taken by the gods. So save this man. He's doomed. I still got a glare going there, but good for radio. I feel like I'm in a what's that guys who directed Star Wars? I'm not her Star Trek. I'm not. Right. Yeah. Quite doing. This guy is one of our guests and dead pirate Higgs. Welcome to Western Canada, John Richards from England. Welcome from Texas, of course. Digital free thought radio hours to talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, gods, holy books and superstition. And if you think you're the only non-believer in your town, while you're just not in the middle of the Bible, but we have a group of over a thousand of us. So you can imagine that you have quite a few in your town that just need to get together. But tell you more about our group after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's our topic today? UFOs, Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. Oh, my. Oh, my, oh, my, oh, my. It's going to be a really interesting topic on folklore and skepticism today. But that, in my opinion, is the meat and the main course. I'm ready for some appetizers. How about some noodles? We'll throw it up to our own Dreadpower Hicks for weekly. All right. Our noodley Lord, who art in a colander, I'll daunte be thy noodles. Thy blood be run, thy sauce be yum with meat, as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing as we free of those who cuss against us and lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. I mean, are the meatballs and the sauces and the grog whenever and ever. Raw. You know, speaking of a weird folklore in American history, it would be good to do an episode in the future on a weird diet folklore as well. Yeah, veganism. I want to know about stuff like this, too. So get ready. Shots are in the chamber. Anyway, before we get into it, how about we go around the table and see how everyone's doing today? Skies still being taken by the light. You know, it's called a drape. You could just like drape that. OK, OK, hats. Hats good to the right. Either one. We're talking good radio today. Guys, I'm feeling really good. Better. I'm no other way to drape behind you. The window behind you. No, that's better. Don't move. Don't move. Don't move. Anyway, guys, I'm feeling good today. I'm at my I've been at my target weight for like the last month. And my weight loss journey has finally gotten to the point where I'm OK at being at the weight that I want to be at. Like getting out of the mindset of not being losing weight or trying to diet is a hard one to get into. But once you're in it, it's also hard to turn it off when you're done. So like I'm finally at the point where it's like, I don't feel guilty if I do need to like eat and stuff like that. And my weight's not going up and I'm not checking it like every day. But when I do, it's at this right point. And I'm like, oh, fantastic. It's not something I have to like. I hope you're giving yourself a little bit of a window there. Yeah, I have a range. Absolutely. I have a rain. Yeah. You don't want to panic if it gets a pound or two off. Exactly. And if anything, I know how to take it off, but it's really just been the adoption of a bunch of outdoor activities and and like the stressing and and like really productive ways. I found like it's been a really good way to stay healthy. And these are practices I'll take with me all the way to my grave. And who knows what comes after that, but I'll be ready for it. If anything, Larry, let's throw you under the bus. How you been doing? What's going on with you under the bus here? It's just fine. I can see up between the wheels. Nice. Thanks for the report on the bus, Larry. All right. But no, I haven't got my motorcycle out and filthy stuff. I think guilty, but it's awfully hot out there. It's hard to get out. But I'm looking forward to fall to get it out then for sure. Yeah, you're going to have two good weeks and then it's going to be too cold and you'll be complaining about, hey, it's too cold out there. It's nice over the road. OK, well, enjoy the two weeks when they come. I'll tell you when it happens. I've seen the cicadas out already. I love it. I love it. John Rogers, weather patterns over there. What's going on up in the grand old UK? Well, our buses are double deckers, of course. So being under them is not harder than you have in the US. Now, everything's pretty fine here. The lady of the house is out of hospital and making a good recovery. And yeah, it's too hot. But we're all taking out a nice seat. Nice double-decker buses are something I definitely want to have a chance to ride on. That's like one of my bucket list things. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They all keep looking around and saying, where's the driver? Yeah, you know, the problem is it wouldn't work in America. We have a weight problem. And I think the suspension is going to handle it. I just don't think so. I just don't think so. We'll throw it up to Skye. Joe Skye, how you been? Good morning, sir. Good. I'm well. Nice. Looking good. Thank you. I am keeping busy. I've been having people ask me if there's going to be a book any time soon. And I thought about anthologizing some of my essays from my blog. And then I thought, no, I'm going to write about something close to my heart. The title of the book is going to be the dialogue why theists and atheists should be talking and why they aren't. Oh, yeah. All right, good. I'm going to be talking online. Can we put you I think that was both the case and maybe even the answer. But it's a good point. Good point. I'm looking forward to the book. Maybe when you get close to a title and production, you can give us excerpts or we can even make it a show topic in the future. Looking forward to this guy. Dread. Yeah. Higgs and the chaos. Tell me what else have you been up to? Have you been putting like have you been changing the bags of cereal inside of boxes at grocery stores? Because you have to do that. It's like, I want to tricks. I got to work on that tactic. Yeah. Yeah, I've actually been busy doing weddings. And I also do process serving. So yeah, yeah, it's been busy. I am likely to be heading down to the coast here anytime soon to just more work and the security end of things and private investigation. And so I'm looking forward to that. But yeah, I've actually got a wedding later this morning. So I won't be for the GAN review, unfortunately. Yeah, I'm going to the lake. I have a wedding at 11 o'clock Pacific time. So nice. But yeah, no, everything is good and staying healthy and wealthy and wise and all that. Dread, while we're on the topic of like random foods that are in grocery stores, jumping right back to this, does Canada have a franchise that is that serves food or is a food product that is closely associated with Christianity or like a conservative right like Chick-fil-A in the US or something like that? No, not that I'm aware of. OK, I always wonder how fair, you know, we actually while we do have a franchise here in BC is called White Spot, and this was started by a fellow named Bailey way way back in the day. And of course, it was White Spot. It was, you know, where white people go. And yeah, so unfortunately, they've not been self-aware enough to maybe reconsider the name. OK, in the US, that's associated to their branding. What's that in the US? That's just called Cracker Barrel. No one gets the cracker. But if there were more black people on this show, they'd be like, oh, he got me. Guys, I like watching a show called Baggage. I'd highly recommend it. It's an old show had Jerry Springer as the host. The whole concept of the show is there is a person who is about to go on a date with one of three people, but they all have baggage. And what they do on national television is air out the baggage first. And they literally have suitcases that increase in size. And the first part of the show is they open a small suitcase. And it's like, I'm a cat person or like, I don't have a car. And you're like, OK, OK, the lady gets aside from the three bags. What's the worst baggage and knocks that guy off the show? Then the next bag opens up. And sometimes it's like I'm an atheist and it's like, why is that baggage? And then the guy gets to defend himself a little bit. I'm just like, that's not baggage. He's still a good guy. And the other one's like, I brush my teeth 20 times a day. I'm like, that's a problem. That's a problem. And she'll kick off the atheists. And I was like, why'd you kick off the atheists? Jerry Springer would say. And she's just like, I just need a man who is like a faith. And then finally they do the final review. What's the biggest baggage? And it's like my girlfriends must cook me food 14 times a day. I was like, yeah, that's of course. He's a 20 tooth brush. Sure kind of guy. Of course, you're going to get some sort of thing like that. That's what you asked for. You could have had a perfectly normal atheist and said, you got the toothbrush guy who's going to have to cook for all day long. And that, but before the guy accepts the girl, the girl has a baggage case of her own. And then the last episode of baggage, it was very interesting because she opened it up and said, I had been abducted by aliens. And the whole time you're like, I thought this was like a lady who, you know, kind of had her feet on the ground, who knew what she wanted, was ready to commit, turns out she was convinced that she's been abducted by aliens twice and it got me thinking because I am the kind of person who's not willing to or who isn't afraid to say that I am convinced that there is most likely life somewhere else out in the universe. I think if we know the mechanics of what biology here it's and how large the universe it is, it's not a far fetched conclusion that there's life out there somewhere. Also, I would even go as far as to say that there's probably modes of travel for advanced life forms and intelligence out in the world or out in the universe out there somewhere. What I just find to be spectacular in terms of skepticism is that that intelligent life has visited here and abducted that lady on baggage to the point where she would kick off the atheists and keep the toothbrush guy. Like, why is she so interesting that they get her twice? So I want to talk about UFOs. I want to talk about Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and other confusions and see, are they really as far-fetched as they seem? Or as we tend to brush off as skeptics? Or maybe there's some validity in there that we're willing to, you know, examine and compare. And so I'm going to throw this out to John Richard. Seems like you're biting at the chomp. I'm going to throw something out at you. What do you what's your opinion on UFOs? Unidentified falling off. Talk to me. OK, yeah, there's there's a woman I think she's called Louise somebody. I'd have to check on her name, but she claims that she's not only being abducted by aliens 14 times, but also raped by them in their spaceship. Now, I think I think that's pretty far-fetched that story. And I unlike you, Ty, I think, yes, it's highly probable that there is alien life as to whether it's intelligent life. That's a different matter. And as to whether it could get here, that's another kettle of fish entirely, because so far as we understand at the moment, it's too dangerous even to attempt to travel at the speed of light. So we're looking at many years of travel, probably longer than the expected lifetime of the person involved. And then why would he undertake such a arduous exercise in order to fly over or just rape some woman is ridiculous. Still have problems over there, right? Yeah, it's a lot of circles. It's very true. They just they still do because when you're bored, you have nothing better to do than draw on corn. But John Richards, I have a I have a contentious point. I want to fill out. Yeah, I want to poke at this idea. Isn't it far more likely to be visited by an intelligent life than intelligent life? Because when we have a space program, what's the first animals we shoot into space humans? No, we shoot dogs. We shoot crabs. We shoot shrimp. We shoot mice. We shoot monkeys chimpanzees into space over and over and over again until we get everything working right. Then we do the human guy with this nice teeth who can come back and give a nice little issue. And we don't. If you think about it, there has to be a multitude of unintelligent life, just a cloud of it, just streaming through galaxies. And just randomly hitting the lens and be like, oh, aliens are dumb. But I agree. What the hell is going on here? What do you think, John? I like what Sir Patrick Moore said famous, sadly dead British early astronomer who was talking about the possibility of finding intelligent alien life elsewhere. And he said, well, I'm not sure that that's going to happen because we haven't found any intelligent life here yet. I can hear that, too. Dred, love to get your thoughts. You have. Well, you know, it was interesting because certainly when you were talking about the different precursors to humans going into space, I think at this point, it would be, you know, if we were ever to send something to another another star, another where we discovered a civilization, it would be robotic, right? Right. Because, you know, it's unlike a human who would have to go into some kind of a suspended animation or or one of those generation ships where generation after generation, you know, propagates until they get there. Robots don't don't have that sort of a temporal restriction. So that's probably the way it would go, I would think. So you think it's more unlikely, you know, I'm going to twist the question around that perhaps there's an alien life that also is well versed in in circuitry robotics or maybe they had whether they had a similar path to technology as we did, they see the benefits of why are we sending organic bodies through space? Let's just send, you know, a smart spaceship to where we wanted to go. And I'll just collect data and feedback, the information. And instead of like a giant UFO that visits us that has people walking out of it and trying to abduct people, it's just no, we're the spaceship. We are the alien. Yes, we're just representing. Let me interface with your internet. I'll tell you what I can do. I'll talk to your technology. And, you know, the the the reason was well illustrated by HGOLs, you know, the fact that, you know, they come from a different, you know, they'd be coming from a different biosphere and, you know, if, you know, if it turned out that DNA was a common, you know, a common form of foundation for our life, they would be susceptible to viruses like the indigenous peoples were when, you know, the Spaniards came over and and infected them with smallpox. And, you know, so it would be prudent in all circumstances for whether we send something off or someone else sends something to us that you don't infect the planet inadvertently or vice versa, right? So to poke at this, I do like the idea of like the uncertainty principle applies also when you're looking at like very, very small molecular phenomena. You don't want to overexcite it or else you'll never see it in its base state. You'll never really characterize its, its, you know, native state. And so if you go in and you're trying to look at organic beings on another planet, but you're an organic being yourself, you are contingent on a particular biome, you have a potential of contaminating the area that you're working at that may not be ready like you bring a virus or a new flu or new kind of COVID to this planet, you're killing millions and millions of beings that you could have potentially, you know, made peace with or work with or study. So why are you going to risk all that? Just sanitize like some sort of like technology, whether it's so advanced that we can't interpret it or like some sort of like mechanical structure that we can clearly see and then send it over and through deep space and then whenever it reaches, it's just like, oh, it's a machine, you know, like it's, it's hopefully not going to damage too much, maybe even do long distance viewing. I don't know. There's some, there's some validity to that. I can see that. Larry Rhodes, what do you think? No, I've been reading some video, I mean, reading some articles and watching some videos on the fact that the aliens did visit us. It wouldn't actually be the aliens themselves. It would be probes. And sometimes it could be self replicating, self repairing probes that they would just send out into space in any direction. They would, if they came across the solar system, they would sorry, my daughter just walked in. But they, they could be in our solar system right now. Right. 2001, I had a pretty good example of that in the movie. But many of the articles say we should be looking for those probes, not just listening to the signals. So I think that's a good idea if we could find out some way to find them. Yeah, like honestly, if you're nailing to a point where you can travel across the galaxy, couldn't you just observe a planet from like at the edge of the solar system and be like, oh, there's some new gases generating. They're making way more plastic than they used to be. All right, we'll just keep watching that. John, what do you think? Well, I wanted to bring up the possibility of there being life on Mars because there was a conversation recently between a space scientist and a biologist and the biologist said he thought there was life on Mars because and it would have come from Earth because we've taken it there on the vehicles that we've sent and the space scientist said, no, no, no, I know exactly the measures that are undertaken to sterilize these vehicles before they are launched and the biologist said, yeah, but I know exactly how difficult it is to. Larry, what are you going to add to that? Oh, you're on mute, my friend. I was just going to say that there is a planet in our solar system that we know is is totally populated by robots. That's true. That's that's Mars. Yeah, and and to a small extent, Venus, if any of those probes are still, you know, not working anymore, they're probably not. They're all they're all for Venus. This is like, I'm a planet, too, guys. Why do you keep going that way? He's like, I'm closer to you or tightness. Yeah, but you've got to ask the atmosphere. Yeah, how do you know that you can't live up there either? Come on, guys, come on, guys. No, I mean, I love you guys. Love me at least exist there. So the whole thing is like if there is this technique that seems to be more favorable, like probing and like long distance viewing and observation, why would it seems more unlikely to me? That's the part that starts to draw the line of like skepticism is like it doesn't seem worthwhile for an alien race to go across the galaxy and talk to or abduct one person when they can get far better data with undisturbing a population from a distance and just reporting the naturalized from really far away. That's the part where I don't believe when people say I've been abducted by advanced alien species that came to this and is like, why would you do it that way, like from just a scientific pursuit that just seems like such a disturbing quantity of, you know, of handling it? Just guy, what do you think? Do you all know who Charles Sport is? No. Back in the early 20th century, he was a collector of bizarre facts or bizarre occurrences and they have a society called the Fortean Society that has a website and they talk about all kinds of unusual things. Charles Ford had a theory that UFOs were actually living organisms. Oh, OK, OK. OK, I mean, they don't have to be. But like I can see them, I can see the idea of like something so smart that it could qualify in some weird context. Yeah, I can see it. So the way the thing how I put this is science comes up with terminology to describe things as a model. It's not a declarative statement. It's sort of like a classification post post dealing with data. And so if we get something that blurs that line so badly, then we'll have to come up with a better classification. And that happens all the time. And so we get like a piece of technology that's just like I can't tell the difference between this and organic being we're going to have to come up with a different way to distinguish the two. Though UFOs are an interesting concept because I do believe in UFOs. I do think unidentified flying objects are fairly mundane. It's just a question of whether or not they have alien origins that are the ones that, you know, rise on an alarm with me. Larry, you're nodding your head. What do you think? Still on mute, my friend. Sorry. Here we go. No, I was just going to say that unidentified flying objects are common. They're unidentified. We don't know what they are. That's exactly right. I mean, they could be balloons. They could be experimental aircraft. They could be weather phenomenon lights in the light and the sky. Life's strange lightning. We don't know. UFOs are common alien aircraft. Not so much. Hmm. Very true. John Richards, do you have a thought on that or have you ever seen a UFO? Would love to know. No, I haven't. But my mother was struck by lightning. OK, that's new information for me. Well, I hope she I hope she came out of it. OK, she was OK. Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic. As a flying spaghetti monster, would that qualify as a UFO? Potentially. Would what qualify at this? Flying spaghetti monster to have potential being identified as a UFO by those could be misidentified as something other than the flying spaghetti monster. So yeah, yeah, certainly. It could be a UFO for those for those who are, you know, not quite past a curious yet, you know, a past a curious person might misidentify the flying spaghetti monster as a UFO only because they haven't figured it out yet. OK, OK, I also say this, too, on the subject of aliens. They tend to, in America, be wrapped around two particular descriptions that are that surround around two popular movies that have come out. You have the gray men and you have the green men. And when you ask people, what does an alien look like? And from the 1960s, they have very, very differing the points of view, like purple skin, sparkling skin, horns, 14 legs, two legs. Then this movie comes out in the 1970s. And then next thing you know, you ask what people an alien looks like. And they're like big head, black eyes, short. Every single every single version of it is almost on par with the same thing. Then another popular movie comes on immediately after with the green men. It's like it's green skin, but big heads and black eyes. And I'm like, that is a very interesting notion. And I feel like religious stories tend to have a backbone in this same phenomena. And that people can retell different stories in the same way to the point where people are convinced that they actually are true, that they've had. Sure, it's like a common thread, right? Yeah, Larry, what do you think? It's like Dante's Inferno. I mean, our common view, our images of hell and the devil come from Dante's Inferno, not from the Bible, but it's popularly held now. Correct. Yeah, it's attributed to the Bible. Right. Generally, right. It's then they're much less fun than the aliens in the movies, though, aren't they? The aliens in the Bible. Because you you can run away from the aliens in the movies, because you know that they can only walk slowly. You've got a chase scene to enjoy. I didn't want to touch on this religious point again, because I have seen people at like a gym, some guy described like I once like lost a jacket and the guy's like, oh, I found my jacket and I'm like, OK, great. And I'm like looking for the guy who found my jacket and I'm like texting him because he texted me and he's like, I'm the guy that looks like Jesus. I'm coming right behind you and I'm looking behind me and I see no one that looks like Jesus. He's like, I look like Jesus. I'm like, OK, if you say so, just bring in my jacket. And then, you know, a guy comes up to me and he's got long blonde hair. He's got blue eyes and he's got like a square jaw. And he's got this little mustache thing going on. I'm like, thank you for the jacket. Guy who thinks he looks like Jesus. Like, has he been to Jerusalem? Well, but if you go around and you ask people, what is what does Jesus look like? They have that very classical look of the Italian style Jesus with the lean body, six pack, the marble-esque form and very strong, Catholic approved Italian features, which are conspicuously Italian Roman and designed despite the fact that, you know, he comes from a place where most people do not look like that whatsoever. Yeah. And of course, if you went to if you went to Taiwan or or Japan, exactly, it's Japan. Jesus up on the cross there and I've seen the eyes and yeah, totally. California, there's a Korean town and I've seen Korean Jesus on the cross and I've gone to well, not to Nigeria, but I'm a Nigerian family and it's a much but undistinguishably black Jesus. And it's not so much on a cross, but like it's not like a chiseled cross. It's just like a two slabs of wood. Anyway, it's actually branches. Go for it. John Richards. I've been to Soweto, you know, in South Africa and in a church there, they actually have a crib with a black Jesus. Nice. It's all a cultural thing. And pre pre the the Roman stories, we had the Greek stories and they have I can't remember the name of this particular God. It was a boy God who people think that the image of Jesus was derived from. But he had the golden curly hair of of that sort of ethnicity. Right. Right. Right. Dred, you're already looking up something that you're going to. Well, no, I was I was going to point out something in just going back to the UFO thing is that recently scientists have been working on the idea of communicating across interstellar space, right? I told you I saw contact and I like it. Why do you keep trying to like rub this in? Why do you try to rub it in? It's OK. It's a good. No, no, no, this is different. This is wrong. This is different. They're they're actually trying to determine whether or not the fidelity of quantum communication across interstellar interstellar space can, you know, in effect, do something like subspace. Remember in Star Trek, they could communicate much more instantly through subspace. And so this is a technology that is possible. And, you know, say there were you know, other intelligent civilizations out there that they could potentially already be beaming singles signals at us and we have just not developed the technology to receive them. And that once we do, we may solve that Fermi paradox like where's all the life? Sure. Because, you know, it just may be it just may be that we don't have the right listening devices to hear the signals that are actually being out there. Sounds to me, we need to invest more in science than in order to get closer to that than praying harder. Larry Rhodes, yeah, it's time for the break. We need to go ahead and do that. Stay tuned, though, for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on W.O.Z.O. radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm Dr. 5 and we're on W.O.Z.O. radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville for just a moment. ASK was founded in 2002, where in our 20th year and have over a thousand members. We have weekly in person meetings in Knoxville's whole city at Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria, excuse me. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have a Tuesday evening Zoom Ask meeting. If you'd like to join us, email us at askanatheist at Knoxvilleatheist.org or let's chat us at gmail.com and we'll send you the link. You can find us online at Facebook meetup.com or go to our website at Knoxvilleatheist.org, by the way, that if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Right. Well, I'm back. Where do you want to pick up? We're going to be talking about the Loch Ness monster today. You know, and and I guess I guess I see the excitement though. I can't imagine anyone better to speak to it than our own John Richards. John Richards, what is Loch Ness monster? How many times have you written on him and how much how many songs are about him in the Grandville, UK? I guess he does belong to you since it's United Kingdom, right? Like, well, do you mind? It's a she. My bad. My bad. Thank you for the correction. Go for it. You're talking about Nessie here. And and and she is a great tourist attraction to the highlands of Scotland. I actually spent a few days in the summer of one mid 60s. I'm an old guy, so it was in the mid 60s actually hunting, not for Nessie, but for Morak, who's the monster in the neighboring lock known as Lock Mora. And unfortunately, we didn't find her, but we had all the gear. We had side scans, so now we had boats with under the water cameras, you know, and I must ask the questions. So for the Americans who are a tour about geography, are you saying there is an actual place called Lock and that Ness is just the name of the monster in the lock? Is that how the convention works? Lock is the Scottish Lake and these are particularly unusual lakes because they're very deep. They have a V shaped valley between high mountains. OK, and and there's a number of different locks and Ness, Lock Ness is one, Lock Mora is another and there's a whole host of them. They're plentiful. OK. Oh, that wasn't me. Yeah, it could have been Nessie. She makes a noise like a Nessie. So there's a lot. OK, go ahead, Dredd. What do you got? Well, you know, so certainly everyone's heard of Lock Ness or Nessie, but here in British Columbia, not too far from me about two and a half hours is Okanagan Lake and that is purported to be the home of the Ogopogo, which is another sea monster very much like Nessie in most respects. Yeah. And, you know, similar investigations have been conducted over the years in search of this elusive picture. Well, interestingly, there is a great deal of evidence that it's a bit of an optical illusion. And it usually happens where essentially where the waves go in a harmonic pattern so that they actually, you know, they, you know, interfere with one another as to create stronger undulations and then flat spots, stronger undulations and flat spots. And I've actually seen that myself. And, you know, it is like if you just caught a glance of it, or even if you kind of looked at it and didn't know what was going on, you would think it was an undulating creature. Yeah. Well, the situation in Lock Nessie is that lots of pictures and movies have been taken of mysterious effects, like Dredd was saying, a wake traveling mysteriously across the top of the water. Sticks have been misidentified as culprits. And hawkers. And indeed, yes, but the most convincing still photograph, a black and white still photograph showing this head rearing out of the water and moving along the perpetrator of that admitted recently. Well, not that recently, but admitted in the near past that it was his toy submarine with a fake head stuck on it that he was radio controlling in order to create the effect. Yeah. And it was interesting, too, because without context, like without context and size, you couldn't tell how big or small that thing was in relationship to the other things around it. And the quality of photography back in the day, right? Yeah, we need to make a point that Lock Nessie is not the name of the monster. It's the name of the lake that the monster shows in. And it was Frankenstein is not the name of the monster. Frankenstein is the name of the doctor who created Frankenstein. Frankenstein, guys, I also want to throw out another thing, too. It tends to be the case that these animals that are purported or purported to exist tend to be analogous to animals that are not as incredible, but are fairly mundane around the area. And I throw this out in the sense of there are snakes, right? If you go back as far as like even Norse mythology, there's the giant serpent, the world eating serpent, right? There are snakes in China. There's dragons in China who look a lot like snakes. There are snakes, you know, everywhere. And if you if you go back to like some sort of ancient mythology, you'll find really cool snakes, except for areas where snakes aren't as common. Like if you go to Egypt past snakes, but they also have giant hippopotamus scots and crane gods, and they don't have crane gods and hippopotamus scots in like Siberia, because those animals don't exist there. In fact, they have like ancient tigers and ancient bear gods. So it's just like it's cool that you can you can tie the gossip down to the initial observation of, hey, I think I saw something in the distance. Was that a giant mystical being or was it just another snake? Well, I'm going to make a story up and everyone else will have a reference point and then maybe that becomes the new, you know, cultural hypnosis sort of thing that exists through the power suggestion only. I feel like that's very common thing that happens all around the world. And we are susceptible to it. But I never knew the like Nessie had a sister sister and more. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, she's only the one just the one. OK, OK, for me, they're going to be. Well, I'm talking about snakes being the origin, maybe being the origin of dragons myths. It may also be fossils like, you know, you're a medieval farmer and you dig up a tyrannosaurus, a skull or a raptor skull. You're going to make up stories about, you know, early dragons that could fly and breathe fire. Yeah, that's a really fantastic point. So like the I don't know what the I don't know what the name of the dinosaur that looks the most like what we think the Loch Ness monster looks like, like a giant reptilian long neck monster. What is it, Alice? Bless you, sorry. Bless you, sorry. OK, I wonder chicken eggs sort of situation because we were working with a blurry image of a silhouette of something that was basically a log and a bunch of submarines. Was that informed by the fossil or and then afterwards we sort of retroactively made it like a green monster that had like these flippy paddle arms because we only have that picture of its neck and head to work with. I just wonder like the history behind that. But I could definitely see that as a enforcing quality to get to where we are now with the Loch Ness monster. We have a similar thing in the US because we have what while we do also have fossils in the US, we also have very, very hairy people that just walk around in the woods on a regular basis and also people with big feet. And so we have this very, very, you know, color, I believe image of a guy walking through the woods in a lumbering fashion. And what I propose is to most likely just a costume. But we've turned that into a whole cultural phenomenon of big foot. You know, Harry and the Andersons, I don't know if you guys remember that, but that was a show about a family that adopted a big foot or Sasquatch. That's been folklore as long as as far as I'm aware, Western, you know, manifest destiny was occurring. So like as pioneers are going further out into the woods, they've been making claims of seeing like giant, you know, apes or monsters in the past, blue bison, stuff like that. So like it's it's it's part of parcel with the American folklore. And so I wonder I will go on a round table. Have you guys ever heard of big foot and what's your ideas behind that? And we'll go into the validity of it. So Dred Pirate Bigfoot, have you ever heard of it? Canadian Bigfoot, more polite. Oh, that's the Sasquatch. And so that that comes from, you know, a Native American or indigenous peoples name for that sort of mythic creature. But yeah, you know, they made every attempt to identify one of those two. But, you know, of course, what you don't see are any bones. You don't see any poop. And you would expect to, you know, have other evidence, not necessarily, you know, because I can. I know a bear has been there, but I may not have seen the bear, but I know that it's eaten berries because I can tell by its scat. Right. Right. And so that, you know, it's it's just it's ludicrous that anybody could say with any certainty that Sasquatch exists when there is an even evidence of its passing, let alone a sound, you know, visual other other than blurry pictures, right? And videos and conventions and songs, how dare you? There's so much evidence out there. I can show you, I can show you at least 10 people who've seemed. Yeah, yeah, with their own eyes. That's pretty good. Yeah, how many how many anecdotes does it take to make a fact? Oh, you only found the only problem with that quote, and I wish it was true. I wish it wasn't true. But the people who can, the people who can pronounce properly pronounced antidote may not understand the validity of that statement that you even make in the first place. It's like as a metric to justify a true conclusion. John Richards, Bigfoot versus Sasquatch, you know, like the problem with Lochness is they've already claimed that it was a fake video to begin with. But that mystery is still unresolved in America. So does that mean Bigfoot's more possible? What do you think? Well, the thing is we all love to be scared and we don't get enough scaring these days in our safe manmade environments, you know? And it's it's an adrenaline rush, isn't it? You know, we have the fight or flight reaction to unusual things. And it's exciting. That's why we go on roller coasters, you know? Yes. And so a story of a monster is always going to be an attractive proposition. It's weird that it becomes a tourist attraction. Like, did you hear about the uncontrolled monster that lives in this part of the woods? I can't wait to go there. I'm going there this weekend. Yeah, it's definitely a spend the night in this haunted house there. Yeah. You know, when I was in the Boy Scouts, we've actually had a brush in with a bear once that came through our campsite and like was brushing up against the tents. And we knew it was an animal, but like we were like just so freaking out that it was like, this is the coolest thing ever. We didn't now as an adult, I look back and I'd be like, that was a dangerous thing that happened, but I did remember that we were like, we're going to call that bear Bigfoot. We're going to call it Bigfoot. We're going to all agree that we saw Bigfoot, right? OK, great. Let's go have fun. And just we can see that we can make weird interactions with nature pile on to the evidence of. Yeah, legend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. John Richards, what do you think? Because this is well many, many years ago when the school I was working at had a fundraising festival, it was to celebrate its first 10 years of existence. I turned the lower floor of the science department into a house of horror. And I blacked it out and I had all sorts of creepy noises going on from a tape. I had an iguana in a cage. Oh, wow. Strobe lighting and I had that people were groping through there in the dark and they suddenly they had to walk on a mattress, you know. So the whole thing was very spooky and we earned 200 pounds in two hours. Wow. At that time, that was a lot of money. But that still is a lot of money. I'd be happy with that rate. I have two questions. Why is a mattress spooky and then also to how confused with that iguana? Yes, it was very confused. Well, the mattress, the mattress was spooky because if you're walking along on a hard floor and suddenly you're not walking on a hard floor, then that's spooky. I like the tactile version of that. Yeah, I just hope it wasn't a haunted house with like a mattress on the floor and like a strobe and an iguana on a table. You're like, OK, I want my five dollars back. I want my five pounds back. We actually had people queue and go around and keep coming through. Oh, wow, that's so cool. That's so cool. All right, Larry Rhodes, Bigfoot in the heart of Tennessee. Have you ever seen it? And did you get a autograph? No, short answer. Sorry, I spent a lot of time in the woods when I was a kid. I used to do a lot of hunting and stuff, but no, nothing even close. Now, do you think there's any validity to the idea of Bigfoot? Like, is it something that you think could actually exist? We have great apes. We have bonobos. Well, if it is, it's going to be in some rarely explored area of the world. Like in the Congo or South, you know, in the Amazon basin, you know, that type of thing. Because we we've got so many monitoring devices in so many places in North America that it's not going to be here. I mean, air surveillance and everything. No, it's not surveillance society. Right. Yeah, Joe, I'm going to throw up the same question to you. What do you think about the idea of Bigfoot? Is there any validity to it? You know, I don't know. I have watched some documentaries about Bigfoot and it seems like they're always like, oh, we just missed him. Right. He was here, but we missed him. See where that branch is broken? He was standing right there. So it seems it seems like all the evidence is anecdotal. There's nothing like scat or real footprints, the footprints that were taken in plaster cast or when deemed a fake. So no, I think Larry's right. I think it'd be hard for something that big to just go without notice here in the States. So I do. Who knows, right? But I will say this and Larry, you brought this up when you first met. I think one of the first comments we had when we did a radio show was there's a show called Finding Bigfoot and back then it was in its first season. And like and Larry, you said, I'm never going to watch an episode of Finding Bigfoot because when they found it, they won't have the show anymore. They won't call it Finding Bigfoot anymore. And they are now officially in season 12. It's the same with the Ghost Hunters. They'll go strong back dynasty guys coming to shoot one. And and every season, I imagine it's probably like, oh, we just missed them. Ah, we were so close. Well, maybe better luck next season. Stay tuned. Yeah. Yeah. So it's surprising how gullible the audience can be. You know, here's the other thing, too. It doesn't cost a lot of money to film an episode of Finding Bigfoot. It's just two guys in the red and a barbecue at the end of the day. That's it. Larry, what do you think? Yeah. And if they do find it or find a ghost, you don't have to watch the show to find out it'll be in the papers over the papers and all over the news shows. If they did, it'll be we found Bigfoot, the show, and it'll be like one episode. It'll be like an documentary and it'll be followed up with a Nobel Prize. And then like everyone would just go home afterwards. The thing is I do think there's some validity to the idea of like Bigapes. If you want to see a Bigfoot, you can go to a zoo right now and see a Bonobo or you can go on YouTube and see a Bonobo. I don't really like big, smart animals and zoos anyway. So yeah, so like check them out in their own wild habitat. They're huge chimpanzees with body proportions, almost identical to a human being. They look they look like a missing link, though they are not a missing link. They're just a branch of our evolutionary path. But I do think it's really incredible that we could make up something, right? Like an animal, like a Sasquatch without being informed of what an animal that looks like an actual animal that that actually is walking around in Africa. Like Native Americans had a oppression of Sasquatch. They they they impression it on people. And then, you know, pioneers of America took it on and we made this whole cultural phenomenon Bigfoot. And meanwhile, there's an actual species of them roaming around Africa and no one cares about that. They just want that one that's in America roaming around somewhere. I'm just like, if you like that, look on YouTube, they're they those things exist. They're just not here. That's the that's the only thing that's the only thing you have to admit. And and you can still have the thing that you want with a Loch Ness monster that existed in Lake Michigan, be as popular as the one in Scotland. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. But I feel like first in the morning, like it's just right at that point. Yeah, if you want a monster that's a tourist attraction, you need to plant it somewhere near a large population that might travel to you. Right, right. And if, you know, we had an alien that came from Uranus and there was like, we are super proud of Uranus and we really want to talk about Uranus all the time. And we're all about Uranus. We want to get all the way up in there. It's just like, yeah, you guys aren't the aliens we wanted. Sorry, we were we were hoping for something a little better than that. It's like, oh, OK, we're going back to Uranus. It's like, I hope that means what I think you mean. Bye. Anyway, hey, guys, I think we had a really good show. We talked about Bigfoot. We talked about UFOs. We had some discussion on Loch Ness. The main thing is the things that are the backbone for why these folk lords are still alive and kicking around today are also the same pullers that hold up religion and dogma. It's essentially just lack of critical understanding and questioning. And if we apply the same tools that we applied in this discussion for UFOs, Loch Ness funds from Bigfoot, we actually find that it's the same tenants that are being held up for concepts of Jesus and gods all around the universe or world. What do you think, John? Don't forget and a desire to be entertained and a desire to be entertained as a desire to be entertained because there's no one worshiping the boring God. Everyone wants the one that likes those lightning bolts or floods. Pounds when they're angry, stuff like that. The one that just reads Wikipedia articles every day. No one worships that God. No one worships the semi-powerful, the semi-powerful, right? You got to go for the all powerful. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, very true, very true. There's no discount gods that are on any worshiping. Dred, where can we find your stuff at? Well, you can find me Sunday mornings here on my YouTube channel, MinePirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. I live stream it at eight or seven a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Cool. And then usually do the GAN or the Global Atheist News Review at eleven a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. But I won't be there today because I have a wedding to perform. Yeah, nice. He's got to put on a wedding. Yeah. Well, congratulations to your lucky couple, Dred. Congratulations. Turns out to be my accountant's daughter. So nice. You know, the more you do, maybe they'll give me a discount. Right. The more you do, the more you normalize, the more it's normalized, the more we can get, you know, progress to like uniform distribution of rights across the area. Skye, any we're looking for a good community on Facebook. What would you plug for skeptical thinkers? Well, I'm going to throw in a little bit of a plug here. One of the groups that I write for is called normalizing atheism. Nice. And they have some really good conversations on there because the theists found it and it's turned into another debate group, but it's a good debate group. It's it's got a pretty good vibe. Nice. What's the name of the group? Normalizing atheism. OK, OK. I've always my promise is whenever I search for that, I always get into normalizing abnormalism. And it's just the weirdest group ever. It's just like paradoxes all over the place. I don't know how to get it. But normalizing atheism, stay away from the paradox groups. John Richards. Yeah, well, I'm on Free Thought Channel, and it's not just me now. You know, I have a co-host in the form of Tersia Du Plessis, who's based in South Africa, but is actually visiting the UK right now. Oh, very cool. Yeah. Yeah. And I also have Swedish Steve behind the scenes doing all the production. And other contributors, including DP Higgs, who who now gives us reports to Global Atheist News from Canada. Oh, very cool. About the religious items of news that are going on in that part of the world. So we we've got a number of shows and we're branching out. There will be more shows coming soon. Free Thought Channel. We had a lovely chat yesterday with what's his name, Wygold, Doctor. I've forgotten his first name Wygold, who is a Californian psychiatrist. But it's well worth watching and listening to Scott Wygold. Yeah, take a look at that. There's no doubt in my mind that you have at least 72 hours worth of content now. You could probably just have a rolling channel on Free Thought Hour. That's just always streaming a content that you just insert new shows into the playlist as it does a live broadcast. Off we can even offer two hundred and eighty six shows on this from this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, basically just like, hey, it's a live channel. You can just turn it on and it's just constantly broadcasting. And then get new episodes at these hours on and then rotating. Yeah, play next. Yeah, no. I mean, like a live broadcast like Twitch, we'll talk about this. We'll have a conversation. You can find me. I'm less chat. I'm on YouTube and if you need to reach out to me, feel free to do so in the YouTube comments, we'll be happy to discuss your questions in next week's episode. Before we head out, we'll throw it up to Larry Rhodes, down to five to explain to us what atheism is and what it's all about, because he hasn't done it yet. And I don't know why he thinks souls exist, but he's really going to have to clarify this point with me. I have a lot of skepticism. Well, I wrote it down. It's kind of hard to go in two or three minutes of the show left. But I have a book out. It's on Amazon. There it is called atheism. What's it all about? So check it out. I hope you enjoy it. You can also go to my my website, my blog that has an awful lot of the articles from the book on that site. It's digital free thought dot com. Be sure to click on the blog button. If you have any questions for the shows, send them to us at askanatheistatnoxfullatheist.org or let's chat at gmail.com and we can answer them on future shows. You can find this show on podcasts everywhere. Just search for digital free thought radio hour. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next week. Say bye, everybody. Bye. And that's a rat.