The Cryptid Factor - 47: #047 The Qualm Issue
Episode Date: September 13, 2020Here we go again - The Cryptid Factor team on a roll! This ep sees qualms raised, jetpack conga-lines, kite flying 3 year olds, Bigfoot shooting uncles, Benny Hill Flat Earthers - oh and not to mentio...n we talk with 'X-Files - The Official Archives' author Paul Terry!
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The Cryptid Factor, with Rhys Darby and Dan Schreiber.
Hello. We are back. Can you believe it? We're still doing it. I'm Rhys Darby, of course, with me, the Usuals.
Usual number one. Usual number two.
The Usuals. That's a great name for a band, actually. Hey, this is crazy. I can't even remember. I've lost count of how many episodes we've done now.
This is how unprecedented this is, this streak of runs.
I think it's five. Are we on five?
No. Is it?
I think so. I think it is. I think it is. We've broken last week's record.
It's amazing. I'm applying right now as I speak for the world records.
I've actually spoken to the editor-in-chief of the Guinness World Records. He's very interested to see where this goes.
He's said, thanks for getting in contact. Four's a very impressive number, but it's not quite 4,000, but keep me up to date.
We'll see. This is very exciting.
I'm excited about that. We have to talk about the Schreiber in the room, which is the fact that Dan, for the listeners, is in complete black background.
Are you in the dark? What's going on, Dan?
I'm sitting in a children's playground in a field in Cornwall. It's 9.22 at night here, and we're on holiday in Cornwall.
Are you wearing an anorak?
Yeah, I've got a big...
He's wearing an anorak holding a microphone lit by the screen of his laptop. That doesn't look dodgy at all in a kid's playground, does it?
I had to because we're staying in a hotel and they don't have any rooms for me to record this in.
I had to warn everyone who works in the hotel that there's going to be a man in the kid's playground talking about Bigfoot.
And it's gone round the whole hotel. And just before I left, they gave me a torch, so I've got a torch.
This is crazy.
And it's cool. It's so cool.
Can you shine the torch on some stuff so we can see? We can literally see nothing but this figure.
And I want to see what's around you. Oh, there's some light, some slight lights coming.
So you're in the playground.
I'm in the playground. There's no street lights or anything. It is like completely pitch black.
Oh my God, this is like a horror film.
Can you see this guy?
This is a giant frog.
Oh my God.
It's a freaky looking giant frog right next to you there. That's definitely...
What kind of a playground is this?
There's giant frogs. That's a scary looking frog.
Well, you know what playgrounds are like. It's probably something you ride on, is it?
Yeah, you go through its mouth. You go through a big mouth.
This is terrifying.
This doesn't sound like a playground. It sounds like a horror park.
You get consumed by a giant frog. You get shat out the arse of a goat.
And then what next?
Well, I think Dan's outdone you this time, Buttons, with his location.
In the past, you were the one who used to record inside cars or cafes or in the middle of a...
I think you're in a Bunnings at one point.
That's right.
This takes it to the next level in the middle of a night in complete darkness in a dodgy playground.
Well done, Dan.
Thank you. And it's very scary. Lots of nature is coming up.
A cat came up earlier that I didn't see until...
I heard the rustling next to me and I pointed the torch.
This huge rattle happened next to me.
And there's lots of bird activity over the top.
I mean, it's a pretty odd and mysterious place, Cornwall.
So it's, you know, the Beast of Bodmin' Moor. Have you heard of that?
The Big Cat of Bodmin' Moor.
That's a 45-minute drive from where I'm sitting right now.
So that cat could have been the Beast of Bodmin' Moor.
It could have been the daughter of, yeah, maybe not fully grown just yet.
It might just be an infant.
You know, there's an owl man of Cornwall as well, like the moth man.
Yes, I've heard of this. Yeah.
Yeah, he exists.
There's the Nessie equivalent of Cornwall, which is only a 45-minute drive that way.
It's called Moorgoir.
And there's Moorgoir Mile where all the sightings happen.
Only 45 minutes that way.
Yeah.
All going on, man. And you're in a haunted playground.
And I'm in a haunted playground with a giant ceremonial frog for sacrificing children.
It's amazing.
This inspires me to take this season to new levels where we should try and report
or do our segment of the show from somewhere weird.
And yeah, now you've got me thinking about where I could go here in the States without...
I just built a studio.
I just finally got myself sorted out.
I built an encrypted studio.
I got all this old junk here for...
I know you're saying we've got to go out and about.
No, not you.
You should be the one who stays in the studio.
You've got all the buttons and knobs to deal with.
Yeah, good point.
You're the one who...
You've got to stay put.
You've got too much machinery.
We're the field reporters.
Oh, okay.
Okay, that's fair enough.
Well, you know, next week we expect something very, very impressive from you, Rhys.
Oh, well, you know, I can't promise you anything.
But in a nutshell, listeners, that has been this week's issue of the Three-Way Vibus Update.
Yeah!
Nice!
So, yeah, see what I did there?
I'm trying to keep the Vibus Update going.
I've written it on a pad, so I remember to say it.
We don't really talk about the virus, but, you know, that's because talk of it is dwindling.
I've heard from people in the UK, a couple of my mates who say it's not on the news so much anymore.
Isn't that odd?
Well, it's just not as popular as it once was.
It's still horrific, and it's still out there, but people are like,
you know what, we've got to start talking about other things,
otherwise we're never going to get through the year.
Well, that's why we're here.
That's why we're five episodes in.
Absolutely.
Do you know why I've got it?
They're not talking about the virus as much,
because we're out there now, and they're talking about us instead.
Are they?
You sure?
We're on all the news outlets.
We're disrupting the news flow.
We interrupt this virus update to give you the cryptid factor update.
They're back at it again.
In an uncountable number of episodes in a row,
the three have joined each other in various parts of the world,
now in a complete darkness, dodgy children's playground.
With a BBC microphone.
An uncountable number.
Only uncountable, because they can't remember.
Guinness World Records said to me,
meh, that's sort of interesting.
Possible records on the way.
I don't know why I turned into a BBC reporter there myself,
but the other exciting news we've got this week, folks,
is we've got an actual real-life interview.
Yes.
How exciting.
Isn't that weird?
We haven't done that for years.
I know.
So this chap, Paul Terry, got in touch with us.
He has released a great book.
I will say, not just great, absolutely fantastic.
I've got it with me here, and it is called
The X-Files, The Official Archives.
This has just come out,
and I'll read a little bit from the blurb here.
The Official Archives offers fans the chance to pour over
autopsy results, mugshots, newspaper clippings,
pages ripped from books on the occult,
security camera printouts, and more.
It's the top 50 cases that involve monsters of the week,
cryptids from the beginning right through to the end of X-Files,
which is, you know, if that ever really does end.
And the amount of detail in this book is phenomenal.
It's exactly the sort of thing, if you're a fan,
that you'd have on your coffee table,
and you would just pour over any time you felt the need,
which, if you're a big fan, would be, you know, probably every day.
So I was kind of excited to speak to him very soon
in this episode about how this thing came into being.
Well, that's interesting, isn't it?
Because they've had some fantastic monsters and creatures on there.
A lot of real cryptid creatures that they have featured on the X-Files.
And have used as, I guess, material for the show.
And they've had some amazing actors play some of those creatures.
Oh, yes.
I see where you're heeding with this.
I see where you're heeding with this.
I just want to know if there's any bias towards this book
and your review of it.
Because I just to be open and honest with the viewers.
Top 50, right? These are the top 50.
Yeah, absolutely.
But I will look, there isn't, and I will tell you why.
And I've got a little qualm with the guy.
I've got a little qualm.
And so when we interview,
when we come to that point, I will divulge my qualm,
which is another great band name, divulge my qualm.
But more about that later when we interview.
I thought that was that late night TV show that you started.
Devulge my qualm.
Devulge my qualm.
Late night edition.
Season three of that was great. It was so sexy.
My qualm got so divulged
that I had to actually go and get it looked at.
Wow.
I rubbed some ointment on it and to be honest,
I just keep it flares up.
I don't know whether you saw the third season,
but it was almost an inflatable thing
that you could all sit on in the pool.
Such a qualm.
Third season.
Devulge my qualm. It's had three seasons.
Not many people know about that.
Because I can't talk about it.
You can't divulge.
That's one of the first rules of the show.
That's the sad thing. Bad PR.
Devulge my qualm.
Same PR agent as coronavirus.
None of it's getting media now.
I can't wait.
I've got a very exciting X-Files fact.
My favorite X-Files fact to tell him later.
Watch out for that as well.
And also, I think I have spotted in the book
quite an Easter egg.
A Ristavi Easter egg.
A Ristavi?
Oh, no, not with your terrible titles again.
I told you, Dan.
It's not your forte.
Weren't you kicked off the poetry circuit?
Back in 98?
Honestly, Shriver, please stop coming to these events.
All right?
All right, let's get on with the news.
Weekly World Weird News.
Crazy. Freaky. Watch out.
Well, I don't know about you guys,
but I couldn't go past this week's Jetpack news
without talking about it.
That was good behind you.
I wasn't now, but you knew.
You must have known that I had to be the one
to have a chat about this.
I had backup news, to be honest,
because I knew you've been in LA
and you've been into Jetpacks.
No doubt would jump all over the story.
I'm sure all the listeners know about this,
but if you did not know,
two pilots spotted a real-life rocketeer
while coming into land
at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday.
Yeah, that's right.
A man flying a Jetpack at 3,000 feet.
This is the weird thing, because that's really high,
even for a Jetpacker.
So two planes were coming in, LAX,
one of the biggest airports in the world,
and suddenly someone sees a dude off his wing
at the 3,000-foot mark coming into land,
and it's a dude in a Jetpack, and he's like...
Do you guys see this guy in the Jetpack
off to the left here?
And there was another...
That's an actual recording.
Oh, of course.
Another plane coming in,
and there's another dude, another pilot.
Roger that.
Right side.
You got that? I got eyes on that.
That's how they talk.
The weirdness is they don't know
what sort of Jetpack this was.
There's the famous Vez Rossi experimental winged Jetpack,
which could be capable of this type of height.
However, any flights that this has done in the past
has usually been done in a high-profile manner
because it's sort of marketing how good it is,
and it's also done in remote areas.
The fact that this was done near an airport,
highly illegal because of the airspace
and highly dangerous,
really begs the thought of who was it
or was this a spaceman from another dimension?
Thoughts, guys.
Wow, yeah. This is LA, did you say?
Yes.
Okay, so I mean, this is kind of tech territory, right?
Like this could be a sort of Elon Musk-esque billionaire
sort of just flaunting a new invention and thinking,
screw it, I'll just do it out in the open.
I mean, you know, this could be a whole new Jetpack.
And I agree, but I think because it was only 300 foot away
from these aircraft,
I mean, they clearly were flying it in a zone
where they would know that there were commercial aircraft coming in.
So it was almost that they were showing off, right?
Because you wouldn't...
Yes.
If you had gone to the effort to build a Jetpack,
you're clever enough to know where the airport is
and where the planes are coming in.
And so you wouldn't go there and go to that exact altitude
and be only 300 foot off the wing
if you weren't sort of trying to go,
look at me, I'm in a Jetpack.
But that's insanely close, right?
Yeah, 300 foot.
300 foot.
Did they see him with a giant map holding up sort of the flight path?
Because how would you...
How would you judge that?
That's insane.
Well, no, I think he had Google Maps.
Google Maps.
It still doesn't work.
Not at that height.
Flight paths change all the time.
Well, they do.
That's actually a really good point.
They do.
One of the pilots was reported saying,
only an LA.
Like, they literally...
So they sort of took a little joke on it.
They didn't get really angry.
And I like your point buttons, too,
of the fact that there's no way they didn't know where they were.
So, and with all the press that this has gained,
it's got to be a marketing stunt of some sort.
So I think it will come out in the next few days or a week
as to who this was and what type of Jetpack it was
because people are like, wow, 3,000 feet up.
Because I think the record now,
it's not so much the height of these things.
It's the longevity of how they can stay up.
And I think the best they've come up with is about 30 minutes.
And back in the day, like in the late 60s,
when James Bond was getting around in a Jetpack,
you were looking at a maximum of 30 seconds of flight time there.
So it has got better.
But it's still that futuristic item.
We're all going, okay, when can we go down to Target
or Walmart and pick one of these puppies out?
Yeah, it also does make you think of a kind of future scenario
where instead of bird strikes that planes are getting,
there's sort of Jetpack strikes, like Miracle on the Hudson,
Sully Sullenberger having multiple Jetpackers
smash into the screen of his plane.
What I wanted to get to is the point where
if these things do get really user-friendly,
why can't we then attach them to the seats of planes?
And so if there is any issue, you just push a button
and you shoot off from your seat.
And every passenger has a Jetpack situation
so they can safely get away from a plane that's going down,
that type of thing.
That would be ironic, wouldn't it?
Everybody Jetpacking out of a plane to save themselves
after a plane to get a Jetpacker.
A Jetpacker going in the way.
Who may have Jetpacked out of a plane that was in trouble.
This is your captain speaking.
We have a Jetpack in the way here.
We're going to ask you all to please immediately emergency
Jetpack out of the plane.
The plane is going down due to a Jetpack.
I'm confused. What's going on?
Just use your Jetpack to get out because there's a Jetpack.
So who's Jetpacking? Are we Jetpacking?
Everybody Jetpack now. There's a Jetpack in the way.
Is that me? No, not you. You go as well.
Everybody. Am I going dead?
Yes, everybody Jetpack now.
Oh, fuck it. I'm just Jetpacking.
Fuck, there was a Yeti on that plane.
You never know with these stories.
You just never...
I can't wait for this future.
This future sounds awesome.
All the Jetpackers, Jetpacking out of the plane,
collide with the plane behind, forcing that plane,
and it becomes a conga line of Jetpacker tragedies.
Everybody Jetpack, everybody Jetpack.
Do you know what?
At some point, somebody's going to have to go,
why are we still in planes?
Everybody's got Jetpacks.
That's the moment.
That is the moment that happens, but it's...
That's when someone realises,
all right, let's just ditch that massive thing
that all the Jetpackers are in.
We're all just Jetpackers now.
All right, let's move on.
Okay.
Well, to follow up that, we haven't done headlines,
so I'll just follow that up with a story.
Yeah, we've moved on from headlines this week.
But my backup story to that was still another person
in the air story,
but this one was a three-year-old girl
who luckily survived just to get that out there
at the start of the story.
Oh, good, because you're known for your sad stories.
I was going, oh, here we go.
And ruined them.
Bring the vibe down.
A three-year-old girl survived a wild sky ride
caught in the tail of a giant kite.
Oh, yes, I heard about this.
Yeah, so it was in Taiwan,
and it was at the International Kite Flying Festival.
I'm glad that was still on this year.
I know.
It's the one event that coronavirus didn't take down.
To be honest with you, they're thinking about it.
They're saying, you know what?
It's up in the air at the moment
as to whether we can do it.
Anyway, this somehow a little three-year-old girl
got entangled in the tail of this ginormous kite,
and she was taken more than 100 foot 30 meters in the air,
and she was in the air for almost 30 seconds.
Wow, that's like jetpack time from the 60s.
So here we go.
Wow.
It is not a kite.
That is a little girl stuck on the tail of a kite,
so she was 30 seconds up in there like that
until they got control of the kite
and brought it back down to the ground.
The thing that I want to point out with that
is, look at the other kites that are up there.
Oh, yeah.
There's like extra-hored kites.
There's like massive squid kite.
There's two astronaut kites.
Somebody, when I first saw this picture,
I was like, is nobody going to mention the fact
that there is giant astronauts flying through the air?
And then I realized they were actually kites
at the same time.
That was probably going to be the headline story of the day.
As they took that photo, they thought,
got a good shot of these astronaut kites,
and then suddenly, old three-year-old pops up into the air.
Are you sure they're not jetpack men, those astronaut kites?
I mean, they could be.
But I've got to say this, that girl,
she's quite high up there.
That must have been absolutely horrific for the parents.
Oh, yeah.
They were running after the kite, obviously.
Was she tangled up in it?
Yeah.
She got tangled in the tail.
But quite hilariously, you can see in the video,
I mean, hilarious.
In a horrific way?
Yeah.
Horrifically hilariously, everybody,
the whole crowd was sort of underneath the tail
of the kite running around.
Oh, ready to catch her.
Yeah.
Ready to catch her.
And so they're all sort of looking up,
running around, bumping into each other,
and tripping up.
That's the type of humanity I love.
We do that.
And it's when people jump out of buildings as well,
and we try and catch them,
our honest instinct of good human nature comes in,
and we want to save each other.
And I love that.
And I love that she survived.
And if we were in a field and this happened,
we'd all do the same.
We'd all run like hell to group around and try
and catch this poor wee thing.
So, yeah.
Do you remember, I think it was two years ago,
there was that little child that was hanging over the edge
of a building.
It'd gone over the edge.
It's in France.
And a dude, it's on footage,
scaled the side of the building up all these floors,
and got him and put him back over.
And he got given French citizenship for his actions,
the French Spider-Man, they called him.
And it was extraordinary.
And everyone was at the bottom waiting to catch him.
And the reason that he was over the edge is the kid's dad
had gone out to get some groceries really quickly,
was on his way home, hurrying home,
when suddenly he noticed on his phone
there was a really rare Pokemon for Pokemon Go.
No.
Around the corner.
Yes, he disappeared to find this Pokemon.
And in that time, the kid found himself over the side
of the balcony.
But did he get the Pokemon?
And which one was it?
That's the bit of the story that, regrettably,
they did not report on.
I'm still trying to follow that up.
Thank you.
If you could update us next week, Dan,
that would be really, really helpful.
Thank you.
All right.
What do you have, Dan?
My story this week is that Italian flat earthers
have completed a mission to the edge of the world.
What?
What?
Yeah.
Oh, no.
They were right.
This was my biggest fear.
Yeah.
The outside of ghost children coming out of frogs nuts.
That was also another big fear.
But this is the other big fear.
Sorry, I just had a freaky noise near me.
Oh.
Oh, man.
No, genuinely.
Genuinely.
That was really scary.
What was that?
I so want to see you get dragged away.
That would be horrifying, but also hilarious.
We know also that Dan does scare easily.
Remember that mission we went on for the Thunderbirds?
Yes.
Yes.
When you suddenly pulled the car over,
because you heard some howls, remember?
So you pulled the car over and you wanted us
to all suddenly get out.
And I'll never forget Dan's face.
He's like, what?
No.
We're not getting out.
Go, go, go.
Drive, drive, drive.
We happen to have this on audio.
And I think you'll find, Mr. Darby,
that you petrifyingly screamed.
Oh, did I scream?
Go.
So I definitely was good.
But anyway, so Flat Earthers complete their mission
to the edge of the world.
I neglected to mention unsuccessfully in the headline there.
They were attempting to do it from Sicily.
They believed that they could reach the edge of the world
by traveling 60 kilometers to a place called Lampedusa,
which is the south of Sicily.
So they set off in their boat and it was a total disaster.
They ended up in a place called Astica.
They were tired, thirsty, and they were on the brink of shipwreck.
And if you look on the map, which I just did
before we started the show, you've got Sicily,
where they thought the edge of the world was below Sicily.
They somehow managed to go north of Sicily,
completely on the other side of the island.
What?
They used a compass to get there,
which obviously is a bizarre choice for Flat Earthers.
Yes, they don't believe in them.
They don't believe in them.
Terrestrial magnetism is the basic principle of a compass.
So they used that.
So they landed and the local mayor got told about this
and basically they got put into quarantine
because they did this during COVID.
So it was highly illegal.
They were not meant to be doing this.
Flat Earthers were put into their boat
where they were told to quarantine.
But they made an escape and they spent three hours escaping.
But because they were such bad navigators,
they basically circled around and landed back
where the coast guards were,
sort of like sailed into the people looking for them.
So they were arrested once again and put into quarantine,
arrested with quotation marks.
They were taken and put away and said,
you have to sit here.
But they still didn't want to sit.
So they escaped again.
And this time they bumped into a guy
who they ended up living with,
who was a guy who told wild lies
and said he was COVID positive
and he had all these mad theories.
So they had to escape him.
Oh my God.
They were then...
This is a great plot to a movie.
Yeah.
Are you sure you're not reading a draft script from so some?
This is amazing.
So they escaped him and were caught again.
And eventually they were just literally returned home
to where they lived, which is Veneto.
And that was done by land.
No more sea for them.
So yeah, it was a story of lockdown,
flat earthers edge of the world and...
Quarantine escapers.
Yeah.
Wow. Truth deniers.
I can just hear that whole story being told in my head
to the tune of the Benny Hill music.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that's a great point.
I think the whole flat earthing community
should have the soundtrack of Benny Hill
underneath it at all times.
Because that's how mad it is.
My favorite flat earther story was a guy who showed
conclusively that we live on a flat earth
by taking a spirit level with him on a commercial air flight.
He was up in the air flying over...
No.
Yeah, he was flying over America somewhere
and he has all these pictures and videos of him
with a spirit level going,
so how come it's still level?
What's good?
And when they travelled back down to earth,
it remained level the whole way through
and that was his proof.
Oh, come on.
And he's right.
These people are...
He's right.
Yeah.
But honestly, I mean, there's science deniers
and then there's thick as pig shit.
And it's just, you know, it's...
It's hard to live in a world where there's so many idiots.
In fact, I'm going to put the theme on now.
The one that only they deserve.
I'll do a version of it and then you can also play the real thing
if you get the rights.
No, we're going to do your one.
Yeah!
You should be considered an official instrument.
That was amazing.
I always say, what instrument do you play?
I play the restabi.
That was amazing.
I don't know why I know that theme so well, but you know...
That was incredible.
All right, well, it must be just about time
for our big interview.
I'm a bit nervous.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, here we are with our first official interview
of this season.
Please give a warm welcome to Paul Terry.
Hey!
That's the sound of two and a half guys clapping.
You can't hear it.
Paul, but there's thousands of people
welcoming you right now.
In the audio world, there'll be so many listeners clapping.
Stop clapping, everyone.
Please calm down.
Take your seats.
Now, Paul, great to have you on the show.
Congratulations on this fantastic book.
I have it right here in my hands.
Is it actually available in the shops yet,
or did I get a very advanced copy?
You did get a very advanced copy.
It's out on September 15th.
And actually, we've got a copy before I did.
Really?
This is a real classic thing,
sometimes in publishing the author's copies.
Find their way via a black hole in a warehouse.
It's an expire in itself.
Like, how they've not reached me.
And I did a stock signing at a shop
in Dark Delicacies in a Burbank last night,
and I saw them for the first time.
So they were going, oh, it's your book.
And I'm like, yeah, can I just look at it for a second?
From one author to another.
I've got to say, isn't it amazing
when you see that hard copy, that real thing
that you've created in the shops?
There's nothing like it.
It's better than a newborn baby, just quietly.
It's like, wow, look.
And there's more than one.
There's a lot of them.
And then you come back a couple of months later,
oh, they're all still here.
And you go, excuse me, are they selling?
But it's just an amazing feeling, isn't it?
I'm just going to read a little bit about this thing here.
So it's 50 cases of cryptid's biological anomalies
and parapsychic phenomena.
From fluke man to pusher to guy man is mentioned.
I mean, in the thing here,
which, you know, classic guy man.
Who's that?
Who's that guy?
Whatever, guys.
Whatever, guys.
Tell us.
Whatever.
This book, Rhys, was so passionate about getting you on
to interview you.
And we're not sure why we can't figure it out.
Can you shed any light on that for us?
It's like...
I'm more shocked than you guys, to be honest.
Oh, no.
You get back to your about, you know,
an exile book about cryptid's.
And guy man being mentioned is such a random name.
I don't even know what the...
Yeah.
Maybe Rhys can, you know, shed some light.
Yeah, Rhys.
Shed some light, Rhys.
Let me shed some skin.
Oh, sorry.
Some light on...
You know, all the listeners know that I did wonderfully get the
opportunity of playing that character in one of the later
seasons of this fantastic, phenomenal show.
But look, this isn't about me.
This is about your amazing creation here, Paul.
The amount of detail into this book.
And I'd love...
I can't wait for...
I know a lot of the listeners are going to get it.
But can you just go through how long this thing must have taken?
Because this is insane.
That's the best word for it.
It is insane.
It was an insane idea.
It was actually just after season 10 was announced, you know,
the limited series, which of course you're in.
And I just had an idea.
And I contacted 20th Century Fox and I said,
I pitched the book in 2015.
You know, X-Files is coming back.
You know what book X-Files fans would really want?
The X-Files.
The actual X-Files.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
It's obvious.
And he said that.
He went, yeah, why haven't we done that?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Let's do that.
Then it basically, as I say, as one author to another,
you know that these things get flirted with by various publishers.
And then it was one of those random moments at a full place.
A full place is of course, San Diego Comic-Con.
And I'd met this guy, Eric Coughlin,
for the first time who worked at Abram Books.
And I just felt the moment and said, do you like the X-Files?
And his eyes went crazy wide because I didn't realize
he probably is more obsessed with the show than me and any other fan.
He wrote to the government in his teens,
asking for disclosure of things.
He was 100,000% all in.
And he just looked at me and said, yes, what is it?
And I mean, the X-Files, the actual case files in an in-world book.
And within a few months, I was contracted to the book at the end of 2017.
Wow.
Crazy journey.
So cool.
What it does is people already believe the X-Files show is pretty much a real thing.
It crosses over into real life with so many of the folklore on the cryptids
and the monsters and obviously UFOs and aliens.
And so because it crosses over from fiction into non-fiction so many times,
it has a belief structure behind it for the fans
that is second to none.
And so what you've effectively done here is made the world of the X-Files even more real
to the point where, I mean, these documents,
if you have a look at just anything from the Federal Brewery of Intelligence there
with all the, you know, with the actual official stamp at the top,
bits blocked out.
You could swear that, you know, this is the genuine stuff.
There's like clips.
There's like little paper clips.
It's just, I'm gushing about it because it's the type of book I really love
because I'm an Indiana Jones fan.
And once the Indiana Jones, his kind of diary came out,
there was someone published that and it went through the same kind of,
had the same kind of look and feel of,
you might have just picked up Indiana Jones' actual diary, you know,
there's leather bound and you go through and you see the notes of his adventures.
Yeah, dude, I just want to say congratulations on a,
what I would call pretty much a masterpiece for the, for the fun.
It's funny you mentioned the Indiana Jones connection because, of course,
one of the, one of the tasks was to find these paper props, you know, photographs,
whatever was used on camera for the episodes.
And I got to go to this warehouse in this secret, crazy, you know,
crazy secret location and literally it was like an aircraft hangout,
just like the end of Raiders.
Wow.
And see, you know, I piled into this project as a big, you know,
nerdy fan of all the stuff that you guys love and of course the X files,
but I didn't think that these paper props have been stuffed in warehouse boxes
for 20 plus years. I hadn't seen oxygen, I hadn't seen the light of day.
Wow.
So it was this crazy process of digging through.
I gave the archives team at Fox are incredible and I gave them my wish list
after re-watching the whole show again and making loads of notes about what was on camera.
What I thought could legitimately be in the field report.
That was the crucial thing.
And they kindly said, well, there's these boxes which may have stuff in them,
but we didn't archive stuff back in the day like we do now digitally.
So that was probably the most exciting part as a fan.
Wow.
Going through these dusty boxes with the gloves on, the classic gloves,
pulling out things and going, oh, it's an x-ray from the Werewolf episode.
Tick put that on the list.
Wow.
And putting that for several weeks.
And then texting my editor going, you won't believe what's in here
because he was based in New York and him freaking out as a fan going,
I want to be there now.
And I'm like, sorry, dude, classified access, you know.
Amazing.
And so that's once again, you've crossed over into the reality of the fiction,
which is blurring the boundaries, which is what the book does.
What was the most interesting monster for you to properly go research heavy on
that you thought, God, there's way more to this than I realized?
Outside of Guy Man, of course.
We'll just put Guy Man to the side.
Sorry.
How are we spelling Guy Man?
Is it G-U-I?
Is it just Guy Man?
G-U-I.
And then, yeah.
So that's the...
He's a human for the first time.
So they just used the two words Guy and Man.
So when you were young, you were a boy Guy Man?
You haven't even seen the episode, have you, Dan?
No, I remember the episode.
It's got the only actual kind of sex scene with Gillian Anderson,
with Dana Scully in it.
And Reese is the man having sex with Scully,
which was terrible for the fantasy part of anyone's head if you know Reese.
Completely unplanned segue, but brilliantly done, Dan,
is that one of the funniest things to find was those sketches
of the Guy Man in his original Lizard Form character,
which were drawn by Gillian Anderson's daughter, Piper, for the show.
And so I wanted to find those in the archives, and there they be.
You're kidding.
That's Gillian Anderson's daughter. That is amazing.
No, she did the sketches. That's not her.
But yeah, that particular, not because it's Reese,
but that particular case file was that it was obviously people at Fox
and the Archives team loved that episode too.
It was one of the favourites of that season.
To your question, Dan, it's hard to pick one because the writing
in character, I think, was probably the hardest thing
and the most fun thing, because you really have to listen
and watch the show in a completely different way.
You have to listen, you know, the classic voiceover
where Scully is doing a draft of her report or Mulder is,
or whoever it is, and then weaving that into what would they report?
What things would they maybe leave out?
How were the relationships with, you know, the bosses at the time
with Skinner or with any of the higher ups?
That part of it was really challenging.
And the cryptids of it all, I mean, I'm a huge cryptid fan.
I love the big blue episode with the kind of Lake Champlain
or the Nessie-type creature.
That was really fun finding the map of the lake.
And just the cool props like that were just, you know, really cool.
There was a dog called Kwee Kwee on the show briefly,
which was Scully's pet dog.
And there was this one photograph in the props folder
of the little dog next to this, what was it, fake footprint,
fake monster footprint.
And I just thought for the fans, we have to put that in.
And I justified it by saying something in the case file like,
okay, this photograph was included with Kwee Kwee to show scale.
The pet dog is there showing the scale of the fake monster footprint,
which is kind of a red herring in the episode.
So stuff like that was just, you know, a cryptid fan's dream come true.
That's amazing.
When we started recording this episode, Paul,
Reese let us know how excited he was to talk to you.
But he did also mention that he had a bit of a bone to pick with you.
A qualm.
A qualm.
He had a qualm.
I wish to divulge my qualm.
I will prepare to receive said qualm.
The only qualm I have, and I might, I think I might have the answer
as to why you neglected to do it,
but there's no photo of me in this book.
You've got the picture of the monster, you know,
you've got the drawings, not a single photo of the Dabmeister.
And one of his big acting jobs.
You've got Kamal here, Ninjani.
Oh yeah, he was great in that.
And I was thinking about it.
It must be because did my agents say something like,
look, it's going to cost you.
You want a picture of the Dabmeister?
You were looking around the 25G mug, my friend.
But I hate to say, I hate to be this nerdy
and this authentic to the project,
but as I said at the top of the show,
and this is absolutely true, this is the only reason
there's not a photograph of Guy Mann in the book
is because if you rewatch the episode with this in mind,
there's no photos taken.
Scully, you know, men in brief in the shop,
but there was no questioning, no appreciation, no photograph,
no security camera footage captured of him,
and it's actually part of the episode.
You talk about that, well, who is this guy?
That's what I thought would be the other reason
if it wasn't that I've overcharged yet again.
I get on the phone to my wife, Rosie, come on.
The guy's just trying to make a book.
I make a buck.
I don't know that's the reason.
I don't follow that through.
I don't follow that through to the bitter end.
But thankfully it isn't.
There's a little Easter egg, which,
whether you've seen...
Oh, here we go.
It might make up for the absence of...
Paul, do you mind if I try and spot the Easter egg
because at the start of the show,
the other thing that I pointed out is that
I think I spotted an Easter egg.
And can we call it what it is, a Easter egg?
Could you please, Paul, have some respect?
It's a Easter egg.
Not another Easter egg.
On this show.
I'd love buttons to take a shot,
because I think he's got it.
Oh, do I get a prize?
Do I get a book to author?
Because out of the four of us,
the one thing that I've noticed,
that one of these things isn't like the other,
because it seems I'm the only one who has an author to book.
So...
That is true, because...
Send to you buttons. That's all I'll do.
Right, here you go.
Oh, okay, here we go.
So at the very end of the reports,
the very, very last part of Intel
in the file for Guy Mann
is a report from 2015,
a pre-report that has been linked to the file
from a person who says
that they saw a type of monster,
and the name of that person is M. Ledbetter.
Oh.
M. Ledbetter.
Oh, my God.
Mary Ledbetter from my Short Poppies show.
Yes.
It may or may not be...
Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho.
Put it this way.
How could I resist, you know,
putting something like that in from, you know,
a possible other eyewitness that was,
that maybe...
Brilliant.
...has to be in the area, maybe on a trip?
I don't know, but I just thought, you know what?
Brilliant.
For another, as you say, what was it?
A rooster egg.
I love that.
A rooster egg.
I could not resist.
That was one of my favorite things to sneak in there.
You know what I have to do now?
I have to do the voice.
I have to read this out.
This is Mary Ledbetter. Here we go.
I found myself, unexpectedly, I might add,
in the quaint little town of Shawan, Aragon.
Okay?
That's when I got a good look at it.
It was a very curious thing, all green and scaly,
and kind of jaunting through the woods,
not running, just jaunting.
Very chully monster, whatever it was.
And I told Brian...
Not wanting to complain.
Brian, go chase that, will you, Brian?
Wow.
Brian!
So, obviously, that was terrifying for me to write,
but here you say it.
Did I pass as in writing?
You did.
That was absolutely perfect, dude.
What was the deal?
So, there was a TV series that was produced
by a fantastic production company.
Run by Leon.
Run by me.
That Reese wrote and starred in called Short Poppies,
and it played on Netflix,
and so it had an international release.
And in that, Reese plays five different characters,
six different characters.
It's actually nine.
But who's counting?
Seven.
He plays lots of characters,
because, you know, we're not good at counting on this show.
And one of them's Mary Ledbetter,
who is a busybody older lady,
and she is exactly the person who would, A,
get the chance to see a cryptid.
And B...
Definitely call a radio station about it.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm very impressed that you spotted that.
And therefore, I'm true to my word,
I will get the publisher to wing a copy of the book.
Oh, that's great.
You're in for a treat, Buttons.
It's got me wanting to watch the X-Files from the start again,
yet again for the second time.
Can I do my big, exciting X-Files fact?
Yes, let's do it.
Well, it's just my favorite X-Files fact,
which is that, and you probably know this already, Paul,
but Michael Bubley was meant to be in the X-Files.
Oh, what?
Yeah, but he was fired.
He was fired because he stole a hot dog
off the craft service table.
What?
No.
Yeah.
Wait a minute, Dan.
This is pre-fame for Bubley.
This is when he was trying to make it,
he was an up-and-coming musician,
and he was trying to do some acting jobs,
so he was an extra hired to work in the background
of an X-Files episode,
and he took a hot dog off the craft service table,
got caught, the person fired him,
not only fired him, but said to him,
you will never work in this town again,
and Bubley was off.
The classic.
The classic, even the classic.
That's amazing.
I'm just picturing someone shouting,
probably a mispronunciation of Bubley across.
Hey, bubbles!
Bubbles!
That's Bufleys!
Take your hot dog.
He's from east London, of course.
Yeah.
Hey, bubbles.
You'll never amount to anything!
He would have been like,
Hot, Diggity-Doll.
I'm out of here.
I got my lunch.
Well, to wrap this up,
the book, the X-Files, the official archives,
cryptids, biological anomalies,
And pericyclic phenomena is available from 15th of September, I believe.
So this, by the time this podcast, this particular episode will already be out, I think.
So it's available now, we can pretty much say, I think.
And written by a hardcore fan, written with passion, like that's the difference.
Honestly, this is, I mean, a lot of people wonder that whenever there's an official
book done on a TV show or a film, but genuinely, you know, my 16-year-old self tuning in to
see it on the BBC, I can still remember the night because it was
tailored really heavily up to being broadcast back in 1994.
And, you know, that's been my favourite show ever since.
So it's really weird to put this project together and then see it, you know,
last night for the first time, see it in the flesh, so to speak.
So, but, you know, it's an amazing show.
So I think it's a good one to have as a favourite show.
Yeah, absolutely.
You can't go wrong.
And, yeah, congratulations again on a perfect piece of history and to be officially part
of one of the world's biggest phenomenon, which is oddly a show about phenomenons.
Thank you so much, guys.
I've been listening to the show for years and it's very surreal to be chatting to you guys
about cryptids and cryptids in this book.
It's got this weird meta reflection via some echo chamber experience.
So it's it's my honour and it's been it's been so much fun.
Thank you so much, guys.
Awesome. Thank you.
Oh, brilliant, brilliant.
What a nice guy.
So good and a privilege to have someone else to talk to besides you two.
I love you guys, but just just another voice, you know, he was good.
I'd get rid of us two. I'd get rid of the usuals.
Get another.
Oh, I've written it down.
I've written it. I've written it down.
You're slowly moving away from your position buttons as as a as a constant.
You're now in the possible to go segment on my yeah.
Well, I'm excited about that because I've always thought I was in the possible to go.
So to know that I was.
You've only just moved into it.
That's like knowing that you're a B student when all along you thought you were a C student.
You're like, oh, I'm now a C student.
You thought you're in the only got a few minutes left column.
You know, when you're playing pinball and you go, oh, this is my last ball.
And then it goes down.
It goes next to one left.
And you go, oh, I thought it was.
That's where I live.
That's where I live my whole life.
Well, it's great being you.
Lucky you.
Now, we are coming to the end of the show, but we do have quickly enough time
for a segment we haven't done for a while.
It's called Notice Board.
Notice Board.
What, you didn't notice it?
No, it's too bored.
Notice Board.
Dan, I believe you have some, some noticing.
Yeah, well, I noticed.
I noticed one thing this week.
I'm currently reading a book called Memoirs and Misinformation by Jim Carrey
and Dane of Ashon.
It's a sort of novel slash memoir of Jim's life.
So he mixes insanity with truth.
And there was a sentence in it which caught me for this show, particularly,
which is that he had an uncle, Jim Carrey had an uncle called Des,
who was shot on the way to a party while wearing a Bigfoot costume
because someone mistook him for Bigfoot and tried to try to take him down.
So I thought, oh, wow, OK.
But the thing is, is that this is a book where you can't tell what the truth is.
You can't tell if that's real or not.
But there's so much in it that is tangibly real that this could be real as well.
So I've been trying to investigate it.
I've been online.
I've been looking into it.
Was his uncle killed in a Bigfoot costume?
And I didn't get anywhere.
And then just yesterday, I was on the phone.
I had a Zoom call with Dane of Ashon, who is the co-author of this book.
So I asked him, I said, is it true that his uncle was killed
while wearing a Bigfoot costume?
And sadly, well, fortunately, it's not true.
It was completely made up.
But it was a last minute joke that Jim Carrey added to the book
and refused to budge on.
He thought it was the funniest thing that his uncle would have been killed
while wearing a Bigfoot costume.
So much to the point that the one thing that Dana Dana, let him keep it in the book.
The one thing that he managed to talk him out of is Jim wanted to dedicate
the book to Dez, his made up uncle.
He was killed in a Bigfoot costume.
That's how much he loved that joke.
The whole book was going to be dedicated to his uncle killed in a Bigfoot costume.
That is so awesome.
So anyway, that's what I noticed this week.
That was that's your notice.
And the only other notice that I have is the Texas Bigfoot Conference,
which is still happening this year.
As far as I know, I've got to promote it here.
October 16th to the 18th, 2020.
And that is in, of course, Texas.
Hence the name that happens every year.
And it's still happening this year.
Bigfoot presentations, physical evidence, track casts and more.
So please, those of you that are in Texas and listening, go to the conference.
And yes, Craig, Woolhita, we promise one day the cryptid factor will make it there.
But it once again won't be this year.
No, definitely not this year.
And guys, I have one message has just come through,
which I think is worth of the notice board.
Oh, yeah.
Series four has just been commissioned of Air My Quarm.
No, it's got a new title.
I can't believe they've changed the title in the fourth season.
No, it wasn't called Settle My Quarm.
No, it wasn't called Devulge My Quarm.
Devulge.
You know, things always fall over in the fourth series.
I can't believe that.
I knew they were going to have a meeting about changing the titles
because we did a Zoom call in November.
And I said, don't you dare change that.
And someone had it in their head.
It's going to be called Air My Quarm.
My suspicions is it's turning into a podcast now.
It sounds like it to me because it's the airwaves.
But how dare they get away from that?
The word Devulge was one of the main sellers of the of the whole show.
Oh, yeah. Oh, hang on.
I've just speaking of which I've just received an email.
You have been commissioned to write the book buttons.
This is your first.
You're finally going to be an author.
You're doing the.
Yeah, you're doing the scripted book of Devulge My Quarm.
Season four, Air My Quarm in quote and quotations.
Oh, you've got to write the book about why the title was changed.
Oh, that'll be fun.
I congratulate. No, that's amazing.
Can I call the book?
Write My Quarm.
Because Air My Quarm is a podcast.
I think I can't see why not.
I can't see why not.
But you know what I really think?
What? I think I think we should head off.
I think that's the end of the show this week.
It's been amazing.
Love to talk to you all as usual.
Dan, I still I can't believe you're still in the complete darkness there.
There he goes.
All right. See you, boys.
OK. Bye. Bye, everyone.
Write My Quarm.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
You