NOTE: This transcript is made through an auto-generation program. I apologize for any errors.
Jenna: Hello, happy people, and welcome to Office ADHD. All right, everybody, welcome. And I want to introduce my sister, Julie.
Julie: Woohoo.
Jenna: Yeah. Hi, Julie.
Julie: Hi.
Jenna: And FYI, even though, yes, we are sisters, I’m going to put a picture that shows both of us there so that, you know, I wasn’t just talking to myself because our voices, I’m sure, sound similar enough.
Julie: I was actually thinking that when you invited me to be on, I’m like, is it going to sound like a monologue? She’s talking to herself.
Jenna: So, Julie, I did some crazy editing so that I could talk at myself at the same time. So Julie runs a podcast. That is awesome. It’s a horror podcast. Julie, why don’t you tell us about it real quick?
Julie: Yeah. So the podcast is called Believer, a paranormal mystery. It’s a full cast audio drama. So instead of like this, where it’s people talking, it’s a podcast where it’s like a radio play. And so it’s all fiction. It’s the story of a fake psychic who becomes a paranormal investigator. In the first season, she goes to a small town in search of her ex girlfriend who’s gone missing, and she encounters all sorts of crazy things, or does she, et cetera. Also, my dog is in it, so it’s fun.
Jenna: Sorry about I started that early.
Julie: No, that’s fine. Sometimes I struggle to know how scary it is. So what I’ve heard is it’s about as scary as early seasons of The X Files.
Jenna: Nice. I like that. I like that. So your show is awesome, and we would talk more about your show, except for that I want to know about the research that you did for your show because season one, I know there was a lot about bigfoot.
Julie: Yes, yes. I did a lot of bigfoot research for season one. There’s a character who is a bigfoot researcher in the show, and I basically channeled every bigfoot documentary I ever watched into this one guy. And I’ll tell you, I’ve talked to people who are like paranormal podcasters and they love him. So apparently I did something right. But yes, I got to learn lots. Cool.
Jenna: We’re going to have to get a resource from him, of him, from you. We were just talking before we started the interview about how we both have Add. And so this is going to be quite the interview.
Julie: Yes, I forgot. I was going to say that I have ADHD. I have minus combined type. So I’m both hyperactive and inattentive. So if I just get up and leave in the middle of the interview, that’s just what’s going to happen.
Jenna: This is over. That’s it. That’s fine. I’ll just wrap it up. All right, tell me, what are some of the coolest things you figured out about Bigfoot?
Julie: Okay, so, yeah, I did a lot of research on Bigfoot, partly also because Jenna and I are both from Oregon, which is one of the hotbeds for bigfoot sightings even now, at some point in my brain, when I was growing up, somebody said that Bigfoot lives near Esticada, Oregon. And I just totally internalized that. But, yeah, there are actually several ways to think about Bigfoot. One thing I learned is that it has indigenous origins, so comes from the coast salish people who lived in Oregon, Washington, and southwestern Canada. So I invited onto my show another show called the Historical Natives who Tell Creepy Indigenous History and Folklore. And they talked about the First Nations version of Bigfoot. It was really interesting. Yes. Indigenous people, they thought of Bigfoot as kind of a benevolent spirit who guards nature, kind of I don’t want to oversimplify or make it sound silly, and a lot of the stories sort of describe him as a large, hairy man. Actually, a lot of older descriptions of Bigfoot, he’s basically a wild, hairy man. There’s a version from Central America and South America that is very similar to how we describe Bigfoot, except his feet are backwards.
Jenna: Wait, so, like, his knees bend normal, but his feet are just backwards?
Julie: I think just his feet are backwards? I’m not sure, but that was CC mete, which I’m not pronouncing correctly. If you’ve heard of the yeti. That’s the snow Bigfoot, the abominable snowman. So over the last, like, 50 years, people have been trying to find evidence of Bigfoot as, like, an undiscovered animal. There’s these skeletons for a giant ape. It was somewhere along the evolutionary line between apes and humans. That’s called gigantopithecus. So there’s some researchers who believe that’s what Sasquatch is. I mean, personally, I lean more toward the mystical side of things just because I think that if there’s a large animal, there’s going to be evidence of a large animal.
Jenna: Okay, so you lean towards the mystical side that if there was a giant animal, we would find that giant animal, right? Yeah.
Julie: Well, I think it would leave other evidence behind. There was some researcher I found that was like, guys, where are the droppings of this animal? And I was like, oh, that’s actually a really good point.
Jenna: That’s a good point.
Julie: Yes.
Jenna: They would have to be really crazy smart to be that. I’m going to hide even my dropping.
Julie: Yeah. Unless it’s, like, identical to a bear.
Jenna: Yeah.
Julie: So that’s why the average Bigfoot sighting is I want to say it’s 10 seconds or less. And my theory on that is because I think if you look at it for longer than 10 seconds, you realize it’s a moose, because mooses also are giant and weird and move strangely.
Jenna: That’s true.
Julie: That’s my theory.
Jenna: When you were talking about the original one, I wondered if it was kind of the same origin as werewolves, where it was the one disease where the guys are hairy and they can only.
Julie: Come out at night. Yeah, that’s a good point, because there are a lot of old stories about hairy men. I don’t know hercitism, I guess. Also, the other thing I learned is that bigfoot smells really bad.
Jenna: Which is funny, because I’m pretty sure there’s this whole sasquatch brand for deodorant these days.
Julie: Yeah, you should avoid that, because sasquatch is described as smelling like a mix of sulfur and ****. Like, he smells bad.
Jenna: That would be awful. Sulfur, ****.
Julie: And most people, they smell him before they see him. When people are being generous, they say he smells like ozone. But that’s usually when they’re trying to say he’s an alien, which there is an ancient aliens episode on sasquatch where you can find out all about how sasquatch was created by aliens.
Jenna: Oh, he was created by an alien. So he’s not an alien. The aliens created him?
Julie: I think that was the theory. And also, the same people who see sasquatch tend to have alien encounters, which they conclude means that sasquatch is affiliated with aliens in some way or associated, I would think maybe sasquatch doesn’t like aliens. If sasquatch is a forest protector, he doesn’t want visitors.
Jenna: But, you know, maybe it’s a predators versus aliens deal. Who knows? And now, the other thing I wanted to ask you about is now isn’t season two. We encounter some crazy parasites and fungi that are not fun.
Julie: Guys actually, first encounter the fungus in season one, and then in season two, it continues. So I’ve done a lot of research. Some of it is very disturbing and probably not great for this audience.
Jenna: Yeah, we’ll pare it down.
Julie: Yeah. Fungus is genetically more similar to an animal than a plant.
Jenna: Wow.
Julie: Yeah. So you are more closely related to a fungus than a tree is weird. Yeah, it’s weird. They don’t know what fungus is. It’s its own kingdom of the animal kingdom or whatever. You know what these are called? Because you studied this, the different kinds of it’s like animal and vegetable, class order, genius species. Yes. Whichever one of those separates animals from plants, fungus is their own one of those, because they don’t know what it is. Yeah. I mean, even though they’re commonly found in gardens, like, little mushrooms and stuff, and you can cultivate them, they are weird, and they don’t know what they are. So the part that is the mushroom on a fungus is just like that’s, like the tip of an iceberg. Most of a fungus is underground, and they are these massive structures. So, in eastern Oregon and the malure national forest, there is a single fungus that spans for, like, miles. I forgot to write down how many miles, but it is one of the largest single organisms on earth. So it’s larger than, like, a blue whale.
Jenna: That’s crazy. I wonder how much it weighs.
Julie: Yeah, I don’t know, but it’s basically, like, underneath that entire national forest, there’s one interconnected fungus. And so when you see different mushrooms, they’re just pieces of one thing. A lot of the time, they’re not separate creatures. Yeah, aspens can do that, too, right? Yeah, they’re underground little thread fingers, which are called mycelia. They connect up with tree roots, and then the trees are able to communicate with each other through the fungus.
Jenna: Oh, my gosh. Now that you say that, I think we saw a Magic School Bus about that. My son used to watch Magic school bus.
Julie: Yeah. The way that information is transmitted in my podcast is by a murderous doctor. So if you would like to learn about that, I definitely recommend Magic School Bus. Okay.
Jenna: But that’s neat that it goes back to the Northwest both times because bigfoot up there in the Northwest, and then you have the giant mushroom up in the Northwest, too.
Julie: Yeah.
Jenna: Perhaps they are related.
Julie: Yeah, right. Maybe. Or they know each other.
Jenna: I mean, I guess it could be that somebody was eating the mushrooms and then saw the Big.
Julie: That’s also extremely likely. Yes.
Jenna: FYI to any of our younger listeners, never eat mushrooms that’s fast. Way to not be eating other things.
Julie: Yeah. Don’t ever eat wild mushrooms unless you’re with a very experienced mushroom hunter, because then they know what’s what because a lot of them look real similar to each other and one will kill you and one will be tasty. Yes.
Jenna: And this experienced mushroom hunter should be an adult.
Julie: Yes, absolutely.
Jenna: Okay, so the murderous doctor talks through the mushrooms. That is a very clever plot point. Okay. I like that.
Julie: Yeah. She’s the one who gives you the information, but it’s while she’s trying to kill me. Okay.
Jenna: So I have to ask, though, do you have any ideas for what is coming up next down the line as far as what crazy paranormal thing you may be researching next?
Julie: Yes. So for season two, a big thing I’m looking at is The Mothman, which is ironic because I’m actually really scared of moths, and I didn’t think about that until way through using it to write the second season. And I went, oh, no, how am I going to do this without having to talk about or look at moths? But this is the first one also, that’s not from the Pacific Northwest. The mothman is seen around like Virginia. But it’s a weird. He started having these appearances, and he’s called The Mothman because he or a cape, and then he has bright red lights that when people first see them, sometimes they think they’re eyes. So that’s why they thought he was a moth. A time traveler who, around the 70s appeared a bunch of places. There was a movie called The Mothman Prophecies with Richard Gear in it that talks about the Mothman. Or there’s a book with the same title by John Keel.
Jenna: Wasn’t the mothman prophecies like down in New Mexico? No, I’ve only seen the movie, like, once.
Julie: I don’t know the original. I know the things that all happened were in Point Pleasant, Virginia.
Jenna: Wow.
Julie: Resistably named.
Jenna: You went from one coast to another. Yeah.
Julie: So I’m playing with ideas about time because what The Mothman did was he predicted a major disaster that happened in the area. Like he told someone it was going to happen, and then it did. I’m using that to kind of play with because the main character is a fake psychic. So I’m using it to kind of play with ideas of psychic because they seem to be able to predict what people are going to do or is it something else or what’s going on. Yeah.
Jenna: So psychic or does she talk to The Mothman?
Julie: Yeah, exactly. I talked to a professor of anthropology named Michael P. Masters who has a theory that all aliens are actually time travelers. I talked to him about time travel.
Jenna: It was that awesome.
Julie: It’s because he’s an evolutionary anthropologist, and the way people describe the little green men type aliens, he’s like those kind of sound like if you projected human evolution, like, a million years into the future, what we would look like. So that’s his theory.
Jenna: That’s interesting.
Julie: Yes.
Jenna: So if you project it okay, that’s interesting on two levels. One, that he thinks they’re time travelers, and two, that he thinks eventually we’re going to get green skin.
Julie: Yeah.
Jenna: Maybe photosynthesize or something.
Julie: Yeah. I don’t know. Or maybe he’s thinking more about grays, which are like, almost the same, but they have gray skin. Like we’ll just get super pale.
Jenna: Oh, yeah. Gray green. Okay. Yeah. Maybe we’ll have to get better at absorbing sunlight or something.
Julie: Yeah.
Jenna: Okay. I was going to say, I mean, it would be cool if we could photosynthesize, don’t get me wrong.
Julie: It would solve a lot of problems.
Jenna: Yes. No more world hunger. Everyone just gets chlorophyll photosynthesis. It’s going to be great.
Julie: But yeah, there’s a lot of weird paranormal stuff, and a lot of it I found. So, like, this person I met, he lives in Montana, but I met him in Mcmanville, Oregon, where we grew up, because there’s a UFO festival there every year, and people come in and talk about different paranormal topics, and that’s what he was talking about. And I was like, I got to get to know this guy.
Jenna: Nice. So that’s another thing, too. Yeah. Get into the paranormal. Go to the UFO festival.
Julie: Yeah, it’s fun. And then you can see our hometown.
Jenna: True enough. True enough. Good old Mcmanville. Watch quarterback, princess.
Julie: Yeah, that’ll give you the Quarterback Princess is a movie from like, the 70s or something that had Helen Hunt in it and was all set in our town, but they called it Minville because they didn’t want to pay for the mic, I guess.
Jenna: Yeah.
Julie: It’S about a girl who plays football.
Jenna: Crazy.
Julie: I know.
Jenna: The 70s. Okay, side topic. Actually, I’ve been watching Murder, She Wrote the Old Ones, and I was just watching one where yeah, there was a boxing gym and the old crusty owner had a sign that said no women allowed. Yes. This is an old show.
Julie: Did you know on that Angela Lansbury used to create parts for her friends that she acted with when they were younger so they would get health insurance?
Jenna: Oh, I didn’t know that. That’s so sweet.
Julie: Yeah, there’s, like, an older lady who has a recurring role in some of the later seasons that has it was because she was diagnosed with something like Ms or something, and she couldn’t work, but she only had health insurance through the actors union. And so Angela Lansbury was like, well, you’re on my show now.
Jenna: So she’s actually like, how the sweet old Jessica Fletcher?
Julie: Yeah.
Jenna: That makes my heart happy.
Julie: I know. She’s amazing.
Jenna: All right, so before we go, since I try to keep my episodes kind of short, don’t get me wrong, we could talk about these paranormal all day. I was going to ask you one question, but tell me if it’s a spoiler alert and then you don’t have to answer it. Okay.
Julie: Okay.
Jenna: Does Bigfoot come back in the second season?
Julie: I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Okay. It’s a little bit of a spoiler that Bigfoot appears in the first season, to be honest.
Jenna: I figured since he was on the picture of your podcast oh, yeah.
Julie: You talk about Bigfoot from the very beginning, but you do eventually get to meet him, and so does my dog. My dog Archie got written into the show because he’s very clingy, and originally I was joking about it. I was like, how am I going to record without Archie in the room? I guess I’ll just have to write him in. And then I did, and now people love him. So there are two episodes that are there are two different stories that I wrote that are from the perspective of the dog, the character he plays, his name Soda Pop, and people, like, love them. You like a dose of heartwarming dog story. Nothing bad ever happens to the dog because he’s my dog. So if you like happy dog with your horror yeah.
Jenna: You may have to create a spin off story. Spin off cast that’s just about soda spot. Soda Pop.
Julie: Yeah. No. The first soda pop story. Also, my cat got to play a role in and then in season two, I will say my other dog has been cast.
Jenna: Exciting things. Yeah. All right, well, we are going to put some links to Julie’s podcast in the description and on the blog. So definitely go check those out. And I’ll put some more links to some of the other stuff we talked about, too. Thanks, Julie, for coming on the show.
Julie: Thanks, Jenna. I love your show. Thanks.
Jenna: You’re awesome, everybody. Have an awesome day. As always, thanks so much for listening. And if you want to know more about anything we talked about today or if you want to be part of the discussion, join us at officeadhd.com thanks so much for listening. See you next time.