Our Plausible Cryptid Tier List - Bigfoot, Ghosts, Aliens, and More!

Hello friends! In this fun video, Malcolm and Simone go through their personal tier list for how plausible they find various cryptids and paranormal phenomena. They logically break down why they find things like Bigfoot somewhat plausible but ghosts less likely. Malcolm explains at length why he thinks UFOs could actually be time travelers from the future based on his unique metaphysical framework. The two recount spooky stories from staying in haunted houses, and debate whether emotional imprints can linger. Simone wants to hear your real-life cryptid encounters in the comments. Overall a thought-provoking look at evaluating extraordinary claims and events with nuance and evidence. Let us know which cryptid explanations you find compelling!

Malcolm: [00:00:00] The tier list goes flathead monster, moss man, almost certainly not real.

Malcolm: Loch Ness monster, almost certainly not real. Bigfoot. \ Plausible, but probably not real. UFOs, probably real, but not actually aliens. And crop circles, probably real, but maybe alien.

Simone: And girths, I don't know, but probably carbon monoxide and or weird gold. Oh, girths, yes. Yeah.

Simone: Girths.

Malcolm: Girths. Spooky. But now you'll get to see why we think all of this.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Okay. Okay. Before we get into the main topic, this is sort of related. I was walking around our backyard this morning. Malcolm. And I heard the weirdest noise and I was so confused. And I was by the chicken coop and I hear what sounds like a goose. It was like, like that basically. [00:01:00] And I was like, is there a goose?

Simone: Like, you know, but the previous people who own this house used to have geese in the chicken coop. So I thought like, I mean, I don't like, has a goose broken in to the chicken coop? Has it like assimilated with our flop? But no, turns out. That when, when roosters, we have one male chicken, when they're going through their little puberty and they start to try to like, like, they, they like do it very awkwardly.

Simone: And it was just him completely failing to like,

Malcolm: he's trying to be tough and he's always trying to be tough to the other. Yeah, he's always like, He goes around and bosses them about and like, Yeah. And sometimes, cause we have big chickens, we put them in the big chicken coop to try to get him to handle the big hens cause they're kinda dumb and, and annoying.

Malcolm: And they'll end up just bullying him and So this is him trying to be cool. Like he's, he's like this teenage, but yeah, it's like his voice crack is about like trying to be [00:02:00] masculine and cool and just utterly failing.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. Bullying everyone's smaller. And then as soon as he gets put with the bigger chickens, he freaks

Malcolm: out.

Malcolm: He's trying to get back to his coop. So we put him back in the, one of the birds.

Simone: Yeah. We don't want to hurt his feelings or anything, but also like you've started

Malcolm: giving him chicken trauma. Yeah.

Simone: I, you know, I'm so sorry,

Malcolm: afraid of giant women now, but,

Simone: You know, this is not, you know, there, there are many people who experience extraordinary transporting things like this, like mysterious homes.

Malcolm: So, I, some of our listeners, by the way, hello, Simone, it is wonderful to be here with you today. Hello husband. So one of our listeners was like, yeah, you've mentioned in other videos that you're like. Really into cryptid YouTube and like aliens YouTube. And not just that I've actually spoken on it on other podcasts.

Malcolm: So there's another podcast that like goes into this stuff. I don't remember the name of it, but it's by like a professor at, I want to say MIT or Yale. So like a educated [00:03:00] professor type guy, and like the way that he is being secretly under, under the system is he believes in aliens visiting us and was, was talking to me about that.

Malcolm: The question here is, as somebody who consumes a ton of content on ghosts and aliens and cryptids and all of that, do I believe any of it's real? If so, which of it do I think is most likely to be real? So I'd say the first and like the most interesting thing about asking me this question is I actually sort of don't like, I don't really think that any of the stories that I have heard have a high likelihood.

Malcolm: And yet I keep consuming them like I find them just so interesting to investigate. You can't get enough of

Simone: it and it's enough and I will have to say to the public that you will watch a [00:04:00] lot of them to the point where you will also leave your closet doors wide open at night.

Malcolm: Yeah, well, that's because of Mr.

Malcolm: Bolin and all the murderers who hide in closets and kill people. So I also really like true crime. So it might be sort of the same category. It might be two different categories, but I don't think it's impossible. So I think something that's really important, and I think a lot of people have had their eyes open to this a lot, sort of in the post COVID era, is that both the media and the government are like really comfortable lying to people.

Malcolm: And they will lie about like stupid stuff that there is obvious evidence is either true or not true. Just like going to the academic establishment within our society and using what it is saying or the media establishment. As, as true and untrue is sort of useless in terms of determining what's true.

Malcolm: It, so I can't say that because they say that aliens don't exist, they aren't true. I have to sort of logic it, right?

Simone: Right. So in other words, you're not [00:05:00] going to say just on a blanket basis that cryptids and aliens aren't real. You are going to really question it, so what's

Malcolm: it is like, easier to disprove, right?

Malcolm: Okay, all right. You know, so, the, the the flat headed monster, right?

Simone: Not familiar with a flat headed monster. I mean, Bigfoot, I know.

Malcolm: Well, so, sorry, yeah, okay, sorry, I might be going deep with Curtis here. Yeah, maybe you're a real thing.

Simone: Or just one of your weirder dreams.

Malcolm: No, I'm, what's it oh, Flatwoods Monster. Okay,

Simone: okay. Is what it's called. Still haven't heard of it.

Malcolm: Well, it's, it's similar to Mothman, Owlman, it might even be the same thing. But, but these, this category of stuff like Mothman, Owlman, you know.

Simone: We've watched a bunch of videos analyzing them, right?

Simone: And like the conclusion for a logical person is pretty much always the same, and the answer is... Owls. Owls. It's always owls. Big

Malcolm: glowing red eyes hovering above the [00:06:00] ground. What an owl would look like that. And two, like of course in the wrong context you would think that was a monster. And three, the real reason is that these monsters are typically only spotted.

Malcolm: For very short periods of time in a location. Now there's other types of cryptids that are seen like a lot longer over a period. Like something like the Loch Ness Monster. But the Loch Ness Monster is pretty easy to dismiss for me, at least, just because there's no photographic evidence or good photography.

Simone: Oh, come on. There's the iconic toy sticking out

Malcolm: of the lake photo. I've gone through all of the photo videos. None of them have convinced me. Whereas now in an age of cell phones. Literally everywhere. I know, I know. Like while the quality of cameras and proliferation of cameras has increased, the number of pictures or plausible pictures has decreased, which makes me think that a lot of those very large cryptids that live in places where they might regularly contact humans are almost [00:07:00] certainly not real.

Malcolm: And here's

Simone: another thing that convinces me that cryptids and aliens are also not real. At least many of the reports, which is that when you look at movie releases and like what the scary either aliens or monsters look like after one of those movie releases for a decent period, a lot of people see that thing.

Simone: So it's like, I'm actually, I just read because

Malcolm: it's not the truth. The Loch Ness monster, the Loch Ness monster

Simone: in like, yeah, that's its own thing. That's not, that's not like the movie inspired thing.

Malcolm: No, no, no aliens. It came after, no, no, no, the Loch Ness Monster there's Trey the Explainer does a really good thing on this if, if people are interested, but yeah, if you look at the history of the Loch Ness Monster, it's changed what it's looked like to be like local recent movie releases.

Malcolm: Oh my gosh. Amazing. And it used to look very different than we see it today. Like now it's just very Dinosaur like and it, in a, Original iterations I, I, I believe it looked pretty different from that, but I forget what it looked like. But, but hold on. I'm not actually going for the, I don't think they're real.

Malcolm: Now I can get into [00:08:00] more plausible cryptids.

Simone: Okay, yeah, let's go, yeah, what is real? Well, actually, first I want to ask, like, Bigfoot, real or

Malcolm: not? Plausible cryptid, Bigfoot actually falls into the category of plausible cryptid to me. Wow. So we'll get into why I think it's a plausible cryptid. Cryptid. Okay.

Malcolm: There's a new paper called Bob Giblin who does a thing and he presented this theory and I found it marginally convincing. I still think very likely it doesn't exist, but it's possible it exists. Okay. So here's what it is. If you look at how much Humans have changed. So what this would be as a human subspecies, almost obviously if it existed, it would be a, we know that humans co existed with many subspecies of humans for a very long time.

Malcolm: Like this is something we know. Yeah. Like Neanderthals, right? Like Neanderthals and stuff like that. So what Bigfoot would be is a human subspecies that evolved a specialization in its sort of mental processing to stay hidden [00:09:00] from other human subspecies. So it would be like, let's say like 10 standard deviations or 20 standard deviations above a normal human.

Malcolm: In IQ, where that IQ is relevant to not being seen or staying out of, of, of the sight of human populations. Bigfoot. God of Honeysick. That is not an impossible thing to have happened. Yeah, sure. And it is, it is something that there would have been evolutionary pressure to have happened. And it would explain why we have so little evidence of them, yet we see recurring stories of things like this.

Malcolm: Yeah. across sort of regions. The biggest evidence against Bigfoot is their geographic distribution. They just seem to be way too geographically distributed for me. For something that's that rare. Well, they seem to be sort of everywhere in almost every culture. And that leads me to [00:10:00] believe that there is some sort of human predilection to see something like this in our environments.

Malcolm: But what

Simone: about also the human predilection for some humans to be crazy Bushmen who decide to live in the forest and who naturally get pretty hairy.

Malcolm: Yeah. So this is a phenomenon that could happen across areas and then could lead to recurring Bigfoot sightings. So we know for a

Simone: fact that there are men in many different national parks who just like are known to be like that weird guy who now like lives off the land in this park.

Malcolm: Yeah. Now what's interesting is they've done calculations on this. And it couldn't be, because what a lot of people think is okay, like are wild men real, like populations of wild people who live in our national parks.

Simone: Oh, like actually not just one offs, but

Malcolm: like, Not just one offs, they like differentiated from normal human populations, maybe like in the 1800s or something, like they broke off and started living alone in the parks and became like weird cannibal groups or, or another way, some sort of weird, you know, [00:11:00] inbred offshoot of humanity.

Malcolm: Okay. Likely not, because you need about 80 individuals to maintain the genetic health of a population. And a population that size living in the national parks You'd see it. Would be seen, especially if they had the types of mental deficits you would associate with that kind of There's not much inverting.

Malcolm: Okay. So I guess, you know, I'm, I'm walking through this from , less plausible, plausible to most plausible. Okay. So, so we're going from first like really low down, I think very unplausible stuff. All right. Okay. Ghosts. Again, I think that it's something that we would see on camera more.

Malcolm: Like, this is why I think ghosts, for example, are less plausible than Bigfoot. The idea of a human subspecies that was just like so much dramatically smarter than a normal human that it could evade them. Fine. I get that. Yeah. Spiritual events that could be easily recorded on camera, and yet we're seeing less of these recordings as time goes on, rather than more of these recordings as cameras [00:12:00] become more distributed.

Malcolm: That strains credulity to me. But, aliens are the real outlier here. Okay, alright. First, when I say aliens, I'm just gonna say UFOs. So

Simone: they're kind of a difference, right? I mean, like UFOs, just like it could be anything. I mean, it could be like a spy plane because it's just

Malcolm: an idea right here. I'm talking about unexplained aerial encounters or yeah.

Malcolm: Unexplained aerial encounters or unexplained encounters that are usually attributed to being UFOs. Now, the number of these hasn't. Like hasn't declined as much as I would expect other types of things. In fact, it

Simone: seems like a lot more were released by the U. S. government recently. Like it has

Malcolm: been identified by the U.

Malcolm: S. government. And it seems to be something that one of the reasons we don't see it in our every day is their high altitude phenomenon frequently, right? So where you see this most frequently 90%.

Malcolm: Actually, not even 90%. I'd go higher than that. [00:13:00] 98%. There are some very strange high altitude phenomenon we do not have a good explanation for.

Simone: Okay, sure. I think most people would agree

Malcolm: on that. Well, no, because when you hear a lot of There's a video of it. stories, right? People will discount it. They'll be like, Oh, that's this phenomenon.

Malcolm: We have an explanation for already like some form of ball lightning or something like that. And remember, we didn't figure out what ball lightning was until fairly recently.

Simone: It's freaking cool. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Magnets, man.

Malcolm: I'm just looking up. Ball Lightning, oh, so it says it was discovered June 1195 1995?

Simone: Come on, we were like, I don't know, conscious humans

Malcolm: then, 1195, 1195. Oh,

Simone: oh, like the year 1195, not

Malcolm: 1995. Yes, sorry. So that's not useful.

Malcolm: But I, I think it was like heat lightning or ball lightning. Like there was some astro, astrospheric phenomenon that was only discovered recently. And we also need to remember that the giant squid was only discovered recently and would [00:14:00] have been considered a cryptid before that as well.

Malcolm: Yeah. So we see some of these phenomenons. Now with other deep sea stuff, I think there's likely lots of big creepy stuff we don't know in the deep ocean. Yeah. Because we do know about deep ocean gigantification. So that's not even like a cryptids anymore, I'd say like that there are giant monsters living at the bottom of the ocean.

Malcolm: Yes. Now these monsters could be giant crabs or something like that. Like we don't know, but they would be called monsters in common parlance. But yeah, because crabs. This is something I want to talk about. What do I think is going on here? With missing time phenomenon, even like low to the ground atmospheric phenomenon where you see things happening.

Malcolm: I think that the very least likely explanation for this is extraterrestrials. Of all the explanations, I think that's the least plausible. And I would say it's dramatically less plausible than them being humans from the future. So this is where I need to get into why I think it's so less plausible.

Malcolm: So if we're talking about. The most [00:15:00] plausible is that it is an atmospheric phenomenon we don't have an explanation for yet. Okay. Something to do with electricity or gases or something like that. Yeah. Oh, another thing that we need to note which is just really common for me from a lot of mystery stories, because I really love like 411 cases and stuff like that, is I used to be a schizophrenia researcher and people don't seem to realize how common Like, like psychotic episodes are and that they can happen in somebody who's never had a history of them.

Malcolm: Like a lot of the stuff that you see, it's just tragic example of that. Like there was a recent case of the guy never done anything wrong, takes his, his truck into the woods, like a giant, like 16 wheeler truck into the woods and like terrorizes this forest for a while, and then it's found dead randomly somewhere else in the woods and the truck is found abandoned.

Malcolm: And people are like, Oh, like mysterious, like, no, that's just like a pretty obvious psychotic break. Like for me. Somebody saw him in the middle of this cycle and they were like, he's like, it wasn't me. It wasn't my fault. Like that's a common thing [00:16:00] someone would say during a schizophrenic break. So a lot of this, what you're just seeing is schizophrenia or other types.

Malcolm: Now, a very common, like if you have like a lower level of schizophrenia, a very common symptom of schizophrenia, where I theorize that all the symptoms of schizophrenia come from is that you have a lower level. Threshold for activation of your theory of mind detector likely to see a theory and bind in things that don't have a theory of mind.

Malcolm: So it's like store window displays, or you could see it as I've seen 3 helicopters today. That must mean that there's a plan and they're tracking me. And like, that's applying theory of mind where theory of mind shouldn't exist. And so you'll see this in a lot of, in a lot of psychotic breaks or sort of low level schizophrenia cases you know, so anyway, which isn't actually exactly the same thing as like schizoaffective disorder where some people might think it is, but I don't want to get into all that.

Malcolm: Because

Simone: we're talking cryptids and UFOs, get back to the aliens.

Malcolm: Get back to UFOs, okay? Come on, man. So most likely explanation is atmospheric phenomenon we don't have an explanation for yet. Okay. But, but [00:17:00] that's not an interesting explanation. So let's go with the more plausible, interesting explanation and why I think future humans is more plausible than aliens.

Malcolm: One, you have to keep in mind, I'm going to be heavily biased by my own theology. As you know, Simone and I have a theology around future humans, influencing humanity to manifest their own creation where I think it is. Almost an inevitability that a million years from now, if humanity or whatever we become is still around that we, those beings will likely be closer to gods than the way we conceptualize humans today, and they would likely relate to time very differently than we do today.

Malcolm: So, I'll do a little bit about time right here, because somebody was like, you should talk more about how you conceive time. And we talk about that in two other videos that you should really check out, the Free Will vs. Determinism video, it's very important to our understanding of time. And what's behind the fabric of reality video is really important to our understanding of time, but to talk a bit more about this, when we look [00:18:00] at the ways that we as humans right now engage with physics, you know, we can engage with like physical matter and move it and stuff like that.

Malcolm: And a lot of our physics is around different and unique ways of engaging. physical matter, like moving it around this four dimensional plane. The one dimension we don't really engage with this time in any meaningful context right now. And yet we know that you can engage with time. We know from gravity wells and stuff like that time is warped.

Malcolm: This is like an incontrovertible part of physics right now. Time. is malleable. Now it seems to be with our current understanding of physics, you cannot travel backwards in time. That is, that is true in our current understanding of physics. It does not appear, well, okay, lots of caveats here, like particles might be able to travel backwards in time, but like large intentional macro things can't travel backwards in time, like very small.

Malcolm: Things or information can't travel backwards in time, depending on which model of physics you're using. But we do know that you can sort of play with time in [00:19:00] different ways. It would be interesting, and where I think the biggest... Breakthroughs in physics that we are not anticipating with our current model of physics are going to have to do with relations of time.

Malcolm: Like, as I said, I suspect that future power generation might be through manipulating time. I mean, if you had asked people a couple hundred years ago, did they think that by splitting atoms, like the fundamental building block of matter, that that would be, A major way that we could capture power I think people would be like, no, it's insane.

Malcolm: If you ask people today, do you think that by I wouldn't call it splitting time. I don't know exactly how it's going to work, but in some way, manipulating time would be a major source of power generation. No, I don't think so. But I think if you just look at our current understanding of physics, it seems like it would be the most sustainable power generator out of all conceivable power generators.

Malcolm: Like, it wouldn't burn material in the same way that all [00:20:00] existing means of power generation burn material, which would allow you to do really interesting things. Another thing to remember is, with our current understanding of physics, like, it does look like time bubbles are probably possible, and by that, what I mean is, Is you can likely bud off parts of our universe into other universes where time in one universe doesn't interact with time in the other universe anymore.

Malcolm: Now this is far beyond our ability in physics, but it seems consistent with our understanding of even like basic physics today. So the idea of like isolated time bubbles are not necessarily impossible. This is why when I look at a foaming AI, how is it going to generate power? I suspect it'll be in ways that are very, very, very difficult for us to conceive today,

Now that I think about it, this might actually be the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox. Which is that when an entity is VCs, whatever reaches a certain level of intelligence or technology, that it begins [00:21:00] to be able to generate energy and potentially even matter. In a way that is non-destructive. Uh, so when we think about energy today, you know, humans. I assume that there will be a fight or a conflict over future energy, but if energy. I can be generated from the very nature of reality itself. Then there's not as much reason to continue to expand outwards at least. It might also mean that aliens like this when they expand may find it, energy cheaper to expand across dimensions then to expand, It spatially within the existing solar system. So there's all sorts of things like that. Where when we look at things from our very, very myopic view right now, in terms of our understanding of physics, we can be like, why aren't there aliens everywhere. And the answer might just be super obvious, like, well, it's so much cheaper to go across dimensions to your own planet than it is to try to go to a different planet or, well, I mean, why would you [00:22:00] expand when you can just, you know, generate. Energy from time or something like that.

Malcolm: but keep in mind that AI isn't the only thing that can boom, you know, humans that can begin to edit their own DNA and edit their own brains can also begin to film.

Malcolm: You can have a biological film just as much as you can have a synthetic film. It's important to remember that there's many ways. That our species, or whatever we end up becoming, ends up fooming. And when those things are fooming, they will relate to time differently.

Malcolm: So, that's, that's one thing. So, I, I almost think it's an inevitability that a future iteration of humanity...

Malcolm: Would relate to time differently than the way we relate to time. Now the question is, can it go back in time? So let's talk about what we would know about these aliens. Like, suppose they're real, suppose they exist. What do we know about them? We know they go to great care, even though they seem to visit us fairly frequently.

Malcolm: To not be talked about in like a big way was impressed or acknowledged by mainstream society. Like, they appear to care [00:23:00] about discretion. They also appear to be astronomically more technologically advanced than us. And they appear to be here in fairly small numbers. By that, what I mean is this is not some big invasion force or something like that.

Malcolm: We, we haven't even had one like planet size ship with thousands of aliens trying to integrate with our species. I think that reptilian theories are to me fairly easy to disprove the insider access that Simone and I have to elite corners of society. That, that we would know if these things were, were happening.

Malcolm: So, that, that being the case, okay, so, I don't believe in the Reptoids. And I don't think the, so why don't I think aliens are from another planet? Okay, so, a few reasons. These features that sort of unite modern alien sightings would make perfect sense that it was Future humans. If it was future humans, they likely wouldn't want to disrupt timelines that much.

Malcolm: They might be attempting to [00:24:00] disrupt the timeline, but in very specific ways to guide future possibilities to come to exist. That's their goal in interacting with the timeline. Then they're less likely to like abduct or mess with high profile people. Instead, they would likely use butterfly effect, like abductions where they abduct relevant people, mess with them in ways that ends up messing with influential people to do things they need to do, because if you were, you know, Painting reality, you would want to interfere in the minimum way possible while still having the sorts of effects that you're going to have in the future, and that interference could even look like floating bowling balls of light, you know, floating.

Malcolm: Glowing balls of light, you know, flying around a plane or something like that, like that could have butterfly effects. So it could be that these balls aren't even that sentient or anything like that. They are just being guided to look that way for the impact that has on the timeline. That would be a, a very [00:25:00] logical thing to do if you were the super intelligent

Simone: entity.

Simone: I just love this, this theoretical conversation of like future humans that are godlike in power. And they're like, yeah, I mean. How do we change the entire timeline? It's like, actually pretty simple. I mean, just a glowing ball, believe it or not. I don't know. It just works. It's just weird.

Malcolm: I don't know. Well, I mean, it, it would work and it would be the way they would be engaging with us because it would be harder to predict all of the variable outcomes of wide scale interaction, like interacting with us through a television show or something like that.

Malcolm: Which is why I would. Another part of the theory would be that while aliens are real, the least likely to be real aliens are the ones you see the most media coverage on. So the

Simone: least likely No, the giant eyed, weird looking ones. No,

Malcolm: no, no, no, no. The, like, so like an incident that gets a lot of coverage, like the Phoenix night, night lights.

Malcolm: Like, there was this one instance where it was over a major city and like Oh, and

Simone: like tons of people filmed

Malcolm: it, that kind of thing. This would be a [00:26:00] likely to be fake sighting. Whereas Random person who says they were abducted with their wife or random pilot who says, I saw lights outside of my, my, my plane, they're most likely to be telling the truth.

Malcolm: Which is pretty interesting because this future entity would know what ends up getting caught in the media, what ends up being told about in the media, what ends up getting covered in the way it gets covered. Now why do I not think that they're aliens? Well, there's a few reasons. One is I just don't think it would be worth it for most aliens to travel all the way to earth.

Malcolm: To f**k with us in the way that aliens seem to be f*****g with us. It is very trivial and weird ways to mess with people to be interacting in the atmosphere in a way where you're not really communicating with people, but like just. Flying around in our upper atmosphere. Yeah. To randomly fly over a city and then disappear to, to randomly fly and then crash in a way where it can be [00:27:00] like recovered by the military.

Simone: It's kind of funny to think that like they would develop the technology. To do interplanetary chan like travel and then they like get to us and they're like, Oh, I can't drive anymore. Like, I don't

Malcolm: know. Just, yeah. Yeah. Well, they see the way of messing with us is just f*****g with us. It would be like teenage aliens come to earth just to f**k with us.

Malcolm: To prank us. But then also they have the self control to not be caught by us. That seems unlikely. I don't

Simone: know. It kind of reminds me of that Rick and Morty episode with like, show us what you got. Like, you know. Yeah, we couldn't always end up on some intergalactic game show.

Malcolm: Well, also we've got to think about what would be the nature of most alien species.

Malcolm: So there's sort of two types of alien species. One is an alien species that's like very thoughtful and expands slowly and is... You know, this is the kind alien species, they run into us and they're not interested in wiping us out. But then you have grabby aliens, which is the other type of alien species, which is just interested in super, super fast expansion.

Malcolm: Okay. Did you say grabby? Grabby. It's a technical term. You could look it up. It's used in a lot of math [00:28:00] equations on how aliens would expand in the universe, and you should expect to see the first other aliens. Now, we might become a grabby alien species, if we turn out to be a very expansionist system.

Malcolm: Might. Well, and you know that Simone and I, if our faction, if our vision for humanity ends up spreading, we will become a very grabby species. Grabby species. While they may let a species live, they're typically not awesome to have in your neighborhood because they're typically so interested in expansion and they're typically, you know, very technologically advanced compared to native species.

Malcolm: These species expand as a civilization almost as fast as they can travel. So if they develop speed of light, travel, they are expanding as a civilization. You know, and when I say as soon, I mean, they might go to a new planet, set up, get set up for like 100, 500 years. That's not really that long in the scale of the universe.

Malcolm: And then immediately be moving to the next planet or planet system. But realistically, they're probably moving [00:29:00] like 50, 20 years after they get to a new planet. So, they would expand incredibly quickly. And, and, and why this is relevant is you're not likely to get multi hundred year scouting parties on Earth with this type of species.

Malcolm: Yeah, because

Simone: they would just take

Malcolm: us out. They would just take us out or they would be here and not care because expansion to them is more important than any sort of prime directive or anything like that. Right. Why would they do, like, what is the prime directive other than like a weird zoo that's like was in your empire, but you don't, what?

Malcolm: Like that seems unlikely to me.

Simone: Okay. So let's recap then. Hold on. Hold on. So we got Bigfoot, maybe other cryptids, mostly not UFOs. Probably just future humans doing time travel nonsense. And, anything

else?

Malcolm: Hmm, what other aliens? Oh,

Simone: oh, like most other cryptids, owls.

Malcolm: Owls, always owls. Owls, I mean the joke was cryptids, in the cryptid, like, skeptic community.[00:30:00]

Malcolm: Owls. Owls.

Simone: It's always owls. It's always owls.

Malcolm: Which gets sad because you run out of cryptids. I always want new cryptids to look at or new cryptids. I

Simone: love owls. Owls are great.

Malcolm: So another thing about ghosts, which I should note from.

Simone: Oh yeah, ghosts, probably

Malcolm: not. Well, so we have two reasons. I mean, one is personal experience.

Malcolm: So I worked at the Smithsonian's Anthropology department. Evolutionary anthropology. Which is

Simone: famously haunted? What? Like, how is that? Well,

Malcolm: so, I like working at odd times, as people know. So I'd regularly get there at 2 in the morning. I'd regularly leave at 2 in the morning. Almost every day I'd get there around 2 or 3 in the morning.

Malcolm: I was one of the first people in the Smithsonian. People don't know this about the back rooms of the Smithsonian. I'll even see if I can find pictures of them. But the department I worked in was floor, To sealing human bones.

Simone: Who said bones are haunted? Well,

Malcolm: these aren't just human bones. They're often Native American bones that were taken from their resting sites improperly because the Smithsonian has been around for a [00:31:00] long time.

Malcolm: And they have Try to return what they can, but their labeling systems aren't always as good as a person would like. I don't think we have

Simone: empirical evidence to suggest that like, indigenous bones are more likely to create

Malcolm: ghosts. Well, it's not just indigenous bones. The point being, if they have bones...

Malcolm: From many periods taken likely improperly from almost every culture in the world at a density that is likely unmatched anywhere in the world. And I was there at all the spooky times working with lots and lots of human bones.

Simone: You weren't nervous at all? You were not nervous at all?

Malcolm: At all! It actually felt very comfy and safe to me and the reason it felt comfy and safe to me is, so I actually worked in the department where Bones was supposed to be filmed at one point.

Malcolm: So Bones, this is something that the Smithsonian does. What Bones did. If people have seen the show Bones and you actually act a lot like Temperance Brennan, which I, which I absolutely love that I saw that show and I'm not like a real Temperance Brennan. But anyway So the show Bones takes place where there's this [00:32:00] crime detective unit at the Smithsonian that like looks at corpses that are too decomposed.

Malcolm: This is a real thing. They actually would take Bones to my department at the Smithsonian if they were too decomposed. And it was a department that at one point I actually ran, not because I technically ran it, but because everyone else Went on a dig in Africa and I was like, look, I've done field work for the last five summers in a row.

Malcolm: I want to just sit here and work. You're just the one who was left. And they went fine. So I was the only person in the department. Not because of like, I was technically actually writing anything. I was just writing it because I

Simone: was the intern who was

Malcolm: left behind. I was the intern who was left behind.

Malcolm: But they only get like one case a year or something like that.

Simone: And they also don't have a beautiful, like, glass office. Oh,

Malcolm: no, no, it was really small. Yeah. So the point I was going to get to is the reason I always felt so safe there is the hallways are so cramped and the rooms are so cramped that somebody like me who always likes to, who really feels safe in environments with a lot of clutter and a lot, but like organized clutter and sort [00:33:00] of an, a musky smell.

Malcolm: And like your, your back is always to a corner. Like I felt really safe in this environment. Now a corner filled with bones, but Well, you

Simone: can always use the bones to impale someone who attacked you. So bones to fight everywhere.

Malcolm: Weapons every, yeah. But then the other environment it's like, okay, well, so it could turn out that bone ghosts aren't tied to bones, but they're sort of like imprints left by humans on specific locations.

Malcolm: Now you,

Simone: you yourself have admitted that sometimes we get into houses and it's

Malcolm: Well, what's interesting is our house is from the 1700s. Yeah. Many people have lived and died in this house. Tons.

Simone: In this very room, probably at least like five

Malcolm: people the master bedroom. At least five people have died. At least

Simone: five people.

Simone: It's the nicest room.

Malcolm: Astral phenomenon. Although you could say, everybody says the house feels like uniquely wholesome, like more wholesome than it should feel. And so it may have like. A positive haunting where it's just nice ghosts.

Simone: Yeah, well, and we've also been in other historical houses where it's like, [00:34:00] I do not want to be here right now, and I would not be okay.

Simone: Yeah,

Malcolm: I definitely feel that, like, bad vibe houses.

Simone: So, like, what's that? What do you think that is? You know, that's a cryptid thing. What's your theory? Do you think it's carbon monoxide?

Malcolm: No, I think the houses are structured in a way that feels very undefensible to a modern way, like it feels off in very big spaces.

Malcolm: The houses that I feel really scared in are usually the most mansion y houses, whether they're old or new, and they are the ones with the biggest spaces and the emptiest spaces. So in our house, Every space is sort of utilized for something like I'm in a, a bedroom right here and you can see the kids like bunk beds being built into the walls next to an old fireplace and everything like that.

Malcolm: Every room has a purpose and I think it's purposeless rooms that create that feeling of dread, but it could

Simone: be the only time I've

Malcolm: like literally a phenomenon

Simone: Yeah, at one point before I met you, I was in a hotel in New York, really tiny, tiny room because I was on a college budget. [00:35:00] But like, I had an experience in the early morning where I like, like, packed up right away and left.

Simone: I do think that there are some spaces. I don't know. Like, I do not believe in ghosts, but like, I believe

Malcolm: in there might be emotional imprints on the fabric of reality, but if that's true, that means emotions interact with the fabric of reality in a way that modern physics doesn't capture, which

Simone: I like also doesn't work at all with our metaphysical model because we just see emotions as signals.

Simone: Like, I don't think it's that. I, I think it's probably so, you know, we there's some skin Walker ranch, right? That's another really interesting,

Malcolm: very, very likely to be.

Simone: Yeah. So, so wait for background for those who don't know about skin Walker ranch, it is they, it is a branch that has been investigated for like.

Simone: Maybe over 20 years now for a strange phenomenon to take place. Like cows are found, like gutted out with people there, like see things and freak out and get really paranoid and start like bolting doors and covering windows [00:36:00] with nonsense and just completely losing it. And it seems really clear that there may be some kind of un, un, Not yet understood fungus.

Simone: It's like coming out from the

Malcolm: ground and yeah, my reading is probably like a, a, a time related fungus thing. Or it might be seismic activity, whether it needs to be like a mountain range in a unique spot where you would expect atmospheric phenomenon if they were like clustering in an area. Yeah. So it could be one of those things, but here's the other option.

Malcolm: Okay, suppose it was future humans. A lot of these phenomenon that we see, like, mutilated cows and stuff like that. Would that work? Why would, why would

Simone: humans from the future go to Skinwalker Ranch and mutilate cows? Well, they

Malcolm: would likely have locations that they would return to regularly that there are like they have a portal there or something with skin rocker ranches.

Malcolm: It's so well covered. I doubt it would be an area that they would return. Yeah, they might have a facility that like, maybe you need to build facilities to do this. But then, you know, if you're going back in time, earth is in a completely different location, vis a vis the Oh, maybe it's kind

Simone: of like, What is it, a transporter from Star Trek, but like, if you do it wrong, like the guts [00:37:00] come out the wrong side.

Simone: Like, it could be a side effect of time travel where like, oops, like the organs of this

Malcolm: animal. Well, so there's two options here. A cow's could be people experimenting with early time travel. That would be interesting. Now another thing is, is if you want it to influence human populations, like suppose you wanted to influence the evolution of human populations, you would want to influence us through our food supply.

Malcolm: Okay. And.

Malcolm: Like if you were trying to manifest a certain evolutionary pathway for humanity, yeah, you'd want to be messing with crops and animals. People in society today, we look at crops and animals as being ancillary or backwards or irrelevant, but if you are a future human trying to influence the genetic direction of the species, crops and livestock actually become pretty interesting, likely more interesting than urban populations.

Malcolm: Thanks.

Simone: Oh, so are we getting to crop circles now? It's just like botched attempts to like bioengineer crop and like [00:38:00] accidentally the application method like looks like a weird circly thing. Well, so a lot

Malcolm: of crop circles, if you go really deep on crop circles, it's actually pretty interesting. Okay. So people came out.

Malcolm: And crop circles, I actually think, are a very high likelihood to be a real phenomenon. What? No, there's like all these stories

Simone: of people making them.

Malcolm: Yes, but those people also seem to be tied to CIA and stuff like that. So we do know that a lot of people faked crop circles. Oh, to

Simone: like make other, like, so to cover up the ones that are not explained to yourself.

Simone: Yeah,

Malcolm: there's very good evidence that the people faking crop circles We're some, we're just jokesters.

Simone: CIA plans. Okay. So, so some jokers, some CIA plans, you're saying, and then some real.

Malcolm: You have such a, confluence of evidence that I would say was a 95 percent certainty that at least one intelligence agency was paying people to make cross circles.

Malcolm: Okay. And didn't say that I fake made cross circles. Now the question is why would they do this? Yeah. This is [00:39:00] actually a very interesting question. And the answer is, well, because cross circles are real. You wouldn't do this if cross circles weren't real. You wouldn't have an interest in, in convincing

Simone: I don't know, I, it could be that like, you need a new cycle that you know is going to be likely to get eaten up by some subject who needs to not have

Malcolm: surface.

Malcolm: It you look at some instances of cross circles, there are some instances of cross circles. that are very hard to explain through other means. This is to me, ultimate skeptic. Ultimate skepti mmm. I'm, I'm pretty f*****g skeptical. So, but let's look at crop circles from a non, like, what could crop circles be, right?

Malcolm: Mm, okay. Crop circles seem to me to be either an atmospheric phenomenon, Or a genuine attempt at communication. If it's a genuine attempt at communication, well, this, I do not think it's like a spaceship landing. Okay. I think it's much more likely. [00:40:00] Somebody on a planet very, very, very, very far from us trying to write something as small as they can.

Malcolm: Well, no, think about it. So you're on a planet very far from earth and you're trying to communicate with us and you need to write on something, right? Yeah. Crops would likely look like a very good medium. Well,

Simone: yeah, cause you know, the humans are using it, so that's there and they're nice and uniform, so that helps.

Simone: But why wouldn't you just do it on a parking lot?

Malcolm: Well, I doubt it would, I doubt it would

Simone: so suppose it would be noticed much more early, what a singed parking lot with like little doodles on it. Totally. People would notice that

Malcolm: maybe, but you're also much more likely to actually incinerate someone.

Simone: Oh, that's sweet.

Malcolm: Oh, so they're being careful. We know that no crop prickles have killed someone yet. As far as we know, as far as we know. Well, I mean, that's an important thing. You know, what they're doing seems like it would, if a human was in the area at the time, kill them. Yeah. If cross circles are real.

Malcolm: [00:41:00] Right. So that's interesting. So yeah, one,

Simone: one theme that I really liked throughout this, this this conversation is the role that a person's metaphysical framework or religious framework plays and how they interpret cryptids. Like I, you know, you're like, well, you know, it's obviously future humans.

Simone: Cause that's. That's, you know, those are our gods and, and that is our metaphysical belief. Like I, I could totally see other people being like, so obviously it's angels. Or, you know, obviously it's aliens.

Malcolm: Obstacles could also be future humans. It would be a nice way to influence people. That would have less extraneous variables attached

Simone: to it.

Simone: Yeah. Or it could be like a timestamp that they used. Yeah. I mean,

Malcolm: you know. No, no, I, I, I agree with, with all of this. Yeah. So that's our sort of tier list for cryptids and aliens and phenomena. But okay,

Simone: in the comments, can people please share their like real life ghost stories with us? Because I really like those.

Simone: They have to be true. Don't give me fake [00:42:00] creepypasta stories. I want your real encounters with plausible big feet, ghosts, goblins, whatever nonsense. .

Malcolm: Love you, Simone. Love you too,

Simone: Malcolm.

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