Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Podchaser | Podcast Index | RSS | More
Rob from YMISpodcast
Full Summary
everybody and welcome, this is Bob. And tonight, with rob from your most interesting Story, we’re going to talk about the Thunderbird. Thunderbirds are go! I did not find that out in my research, that they were good Oh, they weren’t go? Not that i saw. That may be a little bit of an esoteric uh tangent there, I’m not sure. But if people know who the thunderbirds are, it’s a british uh television show with uh what was it marionation they’re marionettes that were there’s a british british tv show called the thunderbirds that saved they saved the world did they really yeah marionettes that can save the world yeah it’s from like late 60s are they related to captain scarlet do you remember captain scarlet yeah okay it’s uh by the same folks and i’m blanking on their names now but
They did the Thunderbirds. They did Captain Scarlet. They did some other stuff. Team America World Police is a total spoof of all of those kind of things. Never heard of that. Oh, okay. That’s from the South Park people. Oh, okay. But we’re here tonight. We’re not talking about the Thunderbirds from Britain. We’re talking about the mythical cryptid Thunderbird. Can we say that? Although some people… we’ll say it is neither mythical nor encrypted. It is real. Steeped in legend, a mystery to this day. Yeah. Well, yeah. For some folks, not so much a mystery. No, especially one person we’ll hear about later on. Yeah. Well, we’ll see if your story connects with the one that I know of. So we’ll see. That’s a good idea. Now, I don’t know that you realize…
It’s funny how there’s always, this is why people think we live in a simulation because of all these weird connectivity, the connections between things. I don’t know that you realize that I am in the, in proximity to a Thunderbird. Right now? Well, yeah. I mean, within like a 35 mile radius. Sure. Huh. Is he your pet? No. There is a, in Alton, Illinois, on the bluff of the Mississippi, is a painting called the Piusaw Bird. And the Piusaw Bird, in essence, is a thunderbird. Oh. And even though the current, so if you drive down the river road along the Mississippi River outside of Alton, you will encounter, you can’t miss it, it’s huge. you will encounter the Piusaw bird, which is a painting on the side of a river bluff, rock. And the story is that the Piusaw bird lived on the bluffs of the Mississippi. And the indigenous people, the Native Americans who lived there on the bluff, painted, they didn’t paint the one that you see, they painted a different one that got destroyed by white people at some point on a different bluff.
down the way a little bit, but they painted the Piusaw bird on the bluff in honor of the bird that lived up on the bluff. And since that time, people have embraced it because of the, they call it the legend of the Piusaw bird, but I’d believe that the native folks believed there was a giant bird that lived on the bluff. Interesting. Now, what does… Piasaw, what is that, an area? Well, it’s become like there’s Piasaw Oil Company. I think it’s like a county. Okay. But that’s what the Native Americans call it. They call it the Piasaw Bird. Okay. And it just got adopted. You know, I have no idea what Piasaw means. I should look it up here. Maybe it means thunder. Thunder.
Wouldn’t that be great? We had some pythosaur and lightning here last weekend. Really? Oh, wow. Unusual for where I live. The pythosaur bird is very close to Pierre Marquette Park, which flows into the story. Pythosaur bird is a creature from native. I’m reading from Wikipedia here. From Native American mythology depicted in one of two murals painted by Native Americans on cliff sides above the Mississippi River. And it tells you where the original location was near Alton and so forth. And so the Cahokians, which I don’t know if people realize that one of the largest Native American settlements was in Cahokia, which is right outside of St. Louis. It numbered in the hundreds of thousands of people lived here. Uh, at, uh, certain times, right? And then, you know, the, what was it? The smallpox or whatever wiped them all out. But anyway, um, so the cahokians were the ones that had the pineapple. But let’s see if it means anything. And the father, uh, jock Marquette came and saw the painting and so forth. And that’s, uh, pair Marquette, his father Marquette, he was a clergy, um,
He has State Park right there. And he saw the, it was in awe of it because it was this large thing with horns and like a deer with the horrible look with red ards, eyes, a beard like a tiger’s. It was kind of this monster they painted on the side of the cliff. But they call it the Piusaw bird because it did fly off of the bluff. It doesn’t say what Piusaw means here. I’m spinning through this real quick here. Phonetically, small supernatural being is what it stood for, for Piasaw. Small supernatural being bird? I can see why they changed the name. Yeah. So, yeah. That’s what it means. And it’s not spelled the way P-I-A-S-A is what we spell it today. But back then it was P-A-Y-I-I-H-S-A. Never would have guessed that. Yeah, Piasaw.
But this whole region has a history with the thunder, but it’s a thunderbird in essence. That’s pretty interesting. And similarly, do you remember when I was researching the Dogman episode and I was hearing howling outside my house? I just realized that, you know, we haven’t had a thunderstorm where I live in over a year. Really? And I was researching the thunderbird and what am I hearing last weekend in the middle of the night? Thunder. Thunder and lightning. Oh, I didn’t hear the lightning. I heard the thunder. No, well, I mean, it can kind of crack. Yeah, if you’re close enough to it. We weren’t that close to it. It sounded like a big whip, you know? Uh-huh. A crackly whip. A crackly whip. I love another crackly whip, please. So, but, yeah, I was just like, you know, I didn’t want to give anything away last week when we mentioned it, but I’m like, oh, I’m very familiar with the…
with this from the pinesaw bird, which is just wild. And if you’re ever in the area, you have to go take a look at it. Although I want to be honest with you, where you stop to take a look at is not always the, it’s kind of sketchy sometimes. So be careful. Don’t do it at night. Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep that in mind. But no, it’s cool. And I’ve personally, I’ve loved the idea of the thunderbird. as long as I can remember, the whole idea of Thunderbird really, it kind of rings with me for some reason. I don’t know why. Maybe there’s always so much freedom with birds, right? There is definitely, yeah. I mean, they are not stuck to the ground like we are. So they certainly have a lot more opportunity to locomote. Yeah. So what did you learn?
Well, you want to hop into the quiz? Because I’m afraid if we start talking about it too much, the quiz is going to be too easy for you. You want me to go? Okay. Well, this is going to be a pre-test. Thunderbird quiz, go. Okay, you’re up on the screen for Thunderbird quiz. Oh, I like this little icon. Where did you find that at? AI, of course. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, well, this kind of has a Thunderbird slash Phoenix vibe to it a little bit. It does. it does. And a bit of a halo, almost an angelic look to it. Yeah. It could be the sun rising. Well, it could be that, too. It could be a helmet like a space helmet now we’re getting into egyptian uh glyphs and so forth. Thunderbird was, you know, was over in Egypt, you know, giving them direction. Grow more grain. Build that pyramid. Yeah, build a pyramid. All right. Are you ready?
Are you ready for the quiz? Yeah, if you don’t know an answer, just wing it. Just wing it. Now, I’ve never operated a slide deck on StreamYard before, so I have these questions coming in one at a time. I’m going to go ahead and press the different keys to see if I can make it work properly here. Let’s see what happens. Oh, it went, but I see the answer, though. Darn it. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Let me try this. Hold on a second. I’ll close my eyes. Close your eyes while I work on this. Wait, I can’t. My character’s not closing its eyes. Oh, no, I see it again. Don’t look again. This is like an open book test here or something. This is terrible. This is not the way it’s supposed to happen. Do you want me to take away the quiz for a moment? Take away the quiz. We’ll go. I’ll vamp a little bit while you do the quiz. I’m going to remove the…
the correct answer indicators and hope that I remember the answers. And then we’re going to try to reshare the deck. No problem. You want me to knock it out totally? You can reshare it. So you can reshare it. Okay, I’ll reshare then and we’ll know that you got the right one. I don’t understand why here, the largest thing that I’ve seen Piasaw associated with is an oil company, which I think is kind of counterintuitive. for the Pyosol bird. It seems to be a natural thing. And then they have them on all the trucks, like the tanker trucks have these big renderings of the Pyosol bird. And I’m always thinking, you know, this is probably not the best use of the Pyosol bird, honestly. Well, I think, you know, back in the day, probably when it was assigned to the oil truck, we weren’t thinking as oil being so…
Potentially hazardous to the environment. It was kind of a new thing, probably. Oh, I think it always has been. Maybe everybody just forgot about it. But, I mean, have you ever changed your own oil yourself? Oh, yes. I definitely have, yes. And you know how nasty that is. It is pretty nasty, yeah. And if you get it on you, it’s like, oh, my God, how am I going to deal with this? Yeah, but I think as you’re going down the grocery store back in 1954, not that you personally were, and you saw the oil cans, you weren’t thinking about the environment being ruined by the dirty black oil. If you were in your car for a while, they were just like, oh, look at that nice beard on the car. I pretty much think that, yeah, I think everybody was just lying to themselves. Yeah.
Or just ignoring things. Or just like, I’m trying to make a buck and this bird looks damn good on this tanker truck. I got to feed my family. Just slap that bird on the truck. All right. I reloaded it. Let’s see if… All right. I’m going to add it back on here. I’m going to close my eyes. Close your eyes. You do the thing. No, that did not work. Can you remove them on your side or no? No, I don’t think I cannot. I don’t think I can. Here, let me kick it from the studio so we have to reshare it. Do that. That’s a good idea. I know I can kick Rob. It says Rob will be removed from the studio. I don’t want to do that. Maybe I can remove it from my side. There you go. Let’s try again. I was trying to think. Oh, there we go. Do you want to take a look? It’s still there. What the hell is going on? I’ll tell you what. Ask me the question. Then you can just reveal the question and the answer together. That
Let’s do that then. Hold on a second here. Yeah. We can figure this out. We are pseudo-professionals. I have closed where the actual presentation was. Now I’ve got to think about where I put it. Thinking that might help, but it didn’t help. Do you have any kind of jazzy sort of on-hold music? Underbird-esque? No. All right. All right. But, I mean, I can just talk about more Piusaw things. I’m almost there. Just think if your baseball team was, you know, Piusaw oil. You had that big bird on your back. What a great – that would be good. That’s not so negative. That’s – yes, right. Yeah. I would agree with that. You wouldn’t associate that with – But I have to – I know that the – I know what the original Piusaw bird was, and I’m trying to think –
you know, who in the hell thought, let’s just tear this thing down? I mean, it was, you know, it was supposedly really quite beautiful. Probably some art critic. Well, I want to tell you that the new, I’m assuming with, you know, the skills of the Native Americans, it had to look better than the current Piusaw bird, which looks like it’s a little loopy. To be honest with you, it looks like it’s been huffing some of that oil gas products on the on the cliff face looks a little bit loopy to me, and i’m like, I can only imagine that it’s much more majestic in its other format before they decimated it, so. You haven’t seen a picture? No picture? I don’t know that there is a picture, because i think it got decimated early on because before the camera was invented?
Yeah, Père Marquette was here in the 1730s or whatever. And I must say, if you go to Père Marquette State Park, it’s very beautiful as well. Making a list, jotting all this stuff down. Points of interest. Yeah, you can’t miss it. I mean, you run right into it. But I will tell you, because I actually did a whole show on this, maybe don’t eat at the lodge. Not that good. Got a do and a don’t list. Yeah, so if you go, don’t eat at the lodge. There’s plenty of other nicer bar restaurants in the area. You’ll be compelled to eat at the lodge because it is very rustic and you think you want to be there. Food, not so good. Don’t eat at the lodge and don’t ponder the parasol bird at night. Yeah, yeah. Because I went to lunch with a friend of mine
there and I was like yeah this is we probably should have went down to the what’s it called it’s like it’s like this construction themed bar the loading dock loading dock it’s called a loading dock and it’s pretty good for bar food you know not that far away still taking notes all right I’m set I’m ready to go okay We’re going to start with the easy ones as usual. We’re winging it. This totally fits into the whole phrase. I’m going to change the order because I know you know it’s C, right? This is going to really trip you up. What natural phenomenon is most closely associated with the Thunderbird? Volcanic eruptions. Oh, go ahead. Oh, you’re going to give me choices. Volcanic eruptions.
thunderstorms, earthquakes, or chapped lips? Was this like the match game or something? Could be. I think that it’s, well, actually, I think it’s earthquakes. You do? Yeah, I do, yeah. All right, well, go to the next slide. I can go to the next slide. You should go to the next slide. I’ll go to the next slide. Thunderstorms. Thunderstorms, oh. I thought the name might give it away. Yeah, okay. And the fact that i told you this story about me hearing thunder. Right, hearing thunderstorms. Well, I thought you were trying to misdirect me here. Ah, psychological warfare. And this is easy, so i feel even worse. Yeah, that’s all right. You’ll get the hang of this. My self-esteem is ruined we’ve got we’ve got 10 of them you’re gonna make up for this, I’m sure. Okay.
In many Native American cultures, the Thunderbird is seen as protector, trickster, harbinger of bad luck, or reason to party. I think it’s a trickster. That’s my feeling. Protector? Protector. The trickster is actually the raven. Let’s go back to the goblins. I think I got 100% on that one. Well, think of what you’re learning. Let’s spin this positively. Yeah, okay. Think of the knowledge being transferred. Okay, I’m going to go. I’m going to keep thinking trickster, so. You go ahead. Yeah, tell people that. Well, I will. All right, this is going to be a tough one. This is, get ready. What type of creature is the Thunderbird often depicted as? a giant snake, a giant bird, a winged lizard, or an animated slice of spam. So you can really only think of three things for each one of these? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Maybe. I think that it’s a flying lizard-ish thing. You do? I do. I’m going to be wrong again.
Giant bird. Again, in the name. Yeah. Thunderbird. Gotcha. Well, I know, but if you saw the pie saw bird, it doesn’t look like a bird so much. You know what it looks like? A winged lizard? Well, a little bit. If you watch the old, with Hermie, the dentist. Oh, yeah. We just watched that. Okay. You remember the little toy that was the king? He was like a lion, but he flew? That’s what the pie saw bird kind of looks like. Interesting. Kind of like a griffin, right? A griffin, yes. Exactly, yeah. Hermie! We’re the land of misfit toys! Who wants a Charlie in the box? I’ve seen that so many times that I’m old enough now where it seems like we just watched it last month. I was kind of zoning out while the rest of the family watched. It’s one of my favorites. Is it? It’s definitely a classic, yes. Yukon Cornelius. Yahoo!
Yeah, I was watching, what’s Rudolph’s dad’s name? He was leaning forward. The weight of his clay antlers were kind of making them bend in half as he was leaning forward. They probably tried to fix that. Which one was his dad? He was the coach, right? Yeah, he was the coach, yeah. He was kind of a jerk. Was it Blitzen? Really? Was he Blitzen? Donner Blitzen? It might be Blitzen, I think. Might have been Blitzen. Is that in the quiz? No. It is not in the quiz. All right, here we go. His dad was a jerk. Yeah, well, he didn’t start off being that way, but yeah, he started a really, not a real good parenting skills from reindeer. Well, for the time period, he was spot on. Well, Santa was kind of an asshole too, right? Yeah, he was. Initially. And then we saw that, oh, he can help me. Turn that thing off. I’m trying.
Trying to sleep. Well, he was probably also hungry because he wasn’t eating. He was still on his mid. The thin Santa is a bit cranky. Right, yeah. He’s hangry. Hangry Santa. That’s my favorite Christmas song. Hangry Santa? Hangry Santa. Oh, I have never even heard that. Is this something you’re writing? I haven’t heard it either. Okay. Maybe one day. I thought maybe it was one of your songs. No, no, maybe. Yeah. Maybe. When I heard Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer as a lad, I’m like, I could do that. I’m going to do that. Become famous and write a Christmas song. Of course, that didn’t work out. I used to sing… A long time ago, I worked at United Parcel Service. I loaded trucks. And I used to sing at Christmas time. I used to sing Carl the Fat Drunk Reindeer. Yeah. That was… I had…
I would just make up verses and I would yell them in the tune for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Yeah. Or were you by yourself? No, no. Well, if you’ve ever worked with UPS loading trucks, you’re always by yourself. But there are people that are nearby. I think they just ignored me, but you know. Carl the fat drunk reindeer. They were moving into medium. Are you ready for the medium difficulty? Now, these are worth more, so you can make up. Well, I think you’re overthinking it. Okay. I think you’re overthinking it. What colors do modern sightings imply the Thunderbird to be? Red and yellow. Gray or white. Black or dark brown. Aubergine. Eggplant? Is that what you’re trying to say? Some call it eggplant. Okay. That’s interesting. I would think that they would be more of the brownish color, is my here we go black or brown. Oh, yeah. Now, not to, you know, poke a hole in the whole thunderbird thing, but we have a lot of eagles around here. So, just so you know. Yeah, that was uh they did, in my
as usual, extensive research. They said that they’re generally, well, actually, I’m not going to ask, I’m not going to go in. Yeah, don’t go into it if you’re going to give anything. But I can go down this side trail for a while. When I started looking at the typical, quote unquote, descriptions of those who see the Thunderbird in modern day or think they may see, if you recall, again, the Dogman, they had some characteristics of being either black or brown with red or yellow glowing eyes, which made me start thinking, you know, What if this is maybe the same creature, or they hang out together and they dress similarly? Because we’ve got similar coloring, similar eye glow shades. Or maybe. Maybe. Yeah. but one of them, the dog man, does he fly no no well i’m i’m thinking a shape shiftery type oh you’re thinking Skinwalker. Yeah, like it’s uh maybe potentially, yeah. I have a whole i have a whole skinwalker story i think i think i met a skinwalker really uh we’ve got to do an episode then you’ll have to remind me. No, and i have witnesses, so. Really? Oh, yeah, yeah.
So you got to come back on your most interesting story and tell that one. Is it a long one? Well, it’s not. It took like two seconds to tell it, but it’s not that interesting a story, but yeah. All right. Do you want to go for it now then while we’re kind of on the topic? I don’t know. We may talk about Skinwalkers. Okay. In the future. Do we want to hold it for that? Let’s hold it. I’m perfectly happy to tell it twice. I have to admit there’s a part of me that worries a little bit because you’re not supposed to say that name twice. too often per the… Yeah, but I have a speech impediment, so no one knows what I’m saying. Superstitious. For all I know, they think I’m saying swim locker. According to some… Oh, sorry. Go for it. According to some Native American legends, what do thunderbirds use to fight underwater spirits? Fireballs?
Lightning Bolts, Ice Shards, or Mercenary Whales. Norwalls? Is Norwalls one of them? Norwalls is the last one. I believe my Fireballs. You are right. No, Lightning Bolts. You’re not right. I’m not right. I got excited for a second. Lightning bolts. Well, I’ve only got one right so far. I need to apparently brush up on my Thunderbird knowledge. You’ve been focusing on the periaco bird, or what’s his name again? Papayasaw. Periaco. Periodontal bird. That’s too close to you. You’ve been… Woodsy the owl seems to be your focus. The griffin bird. Yeah. Griffindor. It’s time for you to… I don’t know, I’ve said this before, but let’s go, Bob. Let’s get it together here. Let’s concentrate. You’ve got to rally. You’ve got to rally. What? Well, I thought fireballs was the answer, honestly. Yeah, I did for a brief second, too, and I had just looked at the word. Well, I guess with thunderbird, it’s kind of like the bird thing. Maybe. Balls and birds, yeah. Yeah. Bird balls. What type of extinct bird, speaking of birds, is suggested as a possible explanation for thunderbird extinction?
Sightings. The Dodo Bird. The Teratorn. The Carrier Pigeon. Or Lady Bird Johnson. Well, LBJ was a tough lover. You have experience? I read a book. You read a book, okay. Yeah. I kind of… What was the second one, Terra? Terra Torn. I think Terra Torn is my answer. Terra Torn is correct. Because it’s like a pterodactyl, but not quite. Oh, I hadn’t got that. Yeah. Got that very good. Yeah, Dodo now, obviously, Lady Bird, close second, but not quite. Especially when she would dress in that marvelous cape of hers. That’s right, yeah. Well, she laid down the law. Come on, Lady Bird. Okay. In modern day sightings, what is the estimated wingspan of the Thunderbird? Two to five feet? Over 10 feet? 50 to 100 feet? Or trick question, Thunderbirds do not have wings. I think it’s the 10 feet. Okay.
Ding, ding, ding. Over 10 feet. Over 10 feet, yeah. You are rallying as we go into the difficult questions. Because I’m upside down. The hard ones are easy. The easy ones are not. I’m just jinxed myself right now. I get a little overconfident, I think. Yeah, a little bit, yeah. Exactly. Well, Lady Bird Johnson makes you feel that way. All right. I’m going to do this one here. Hold on a second. I got to make sure I know. The answer to this question, I think I know it, but I don’t want to, because it’s one that I had no idea. So I don’t want to give you the wrong impression here, the wrong answer. Sure, sure. So how about that of the picasaw birds? Piasaw? Piasaw, yeah. At the end of this, you’ll be able to pronounce the name. I’m hopeful. Piasaw.
Piasaw, yeah. Like how do you want to do that? Yeah. Think like, what rhymes with Piasaw? I don’t know. It’s a weird word, actually. You ever hear of the Chickasaw Mud Puppies? Chickasaw? Chickasaw, I don’t know of the Mud Puppies, but Chickasaw I’ve heard of. Chickasaw Mud Puppies were a band that had like one or two semi-favorite. Oh, really? Yeah. What style would you say? Kind of like Jug Band Alt Rock, maybe. That’s the header style. Jug Band Alt Rock. That was sort of seat of the pants. Yeah, I’ve never witnessed a Jug Band Alt Rock scenario myself. But hey, apparently Chickasaw Mud Puppies got it going on. Chickasaw Mud Puppies. Do they just have one moonshine jug, or is there more? I don’t even know if they had any jugs. It was more of this really sort of… I’m thinking back now to what would be the early 90s, I think. It was just a really minimalist sort of acoustic-y, twang-y sort of an approach to things. And I maybe even… I can’t remember…
the song that was relatively popular or whatever station I was listening to back then. But I’m thinking of it as sort of that sparse country, but yet rock-inspired, like more alt-y, but nothing you’d ever really hear on mainstream type of thing. Like Primus? Primus is a little bit too aggressive. This is nothing plugged in, I would say. Oh, okay. The Mud Puppies. Do they have a washboard? No. Stringed. I can’t even hear the song in my head now. I’m going to probably, I should probably stop trying to. So that’s sounding good. Now you’re starting with the Chickasaw Mud Puppy song. There you go. I think that could work. They could work with that. Yeah. Okay. Driving down the Mississippi River roads, all pies, all bird. Don’t stop there by the river.
Rest up, because you’re going to get hurt. Once I’m done trying to orchestrate these quiz slides, I’ll go do a quick search for the Chickasaw Mud Puppies, and we’ll figure out who that is. Okay, who in this list is considered a prominent Thunderbird researcher? Okay. Hiram Cranor, Robert Lyman, Stan Gordon or Rob from Your Most Interesting Story. Close. Rob from Your Most Interesting… Okay. I believe it’s the first person. You are right. Hiram Cranor. I’ve heard his name before. I’ve heard of Stan Gordon as well. I don’t know who he is. I think he is… Stan Gordon is the… Chick-fil-A. No, not Chick-fil-A. Dang it. My brain is not firing like it normally is. He is with the UFOs. He’s a UFO guy. Right, right. His big thing was up in Pennsylvania. And I’ve actually been to the location where this happened. And I wish I could pull this out of my brain at this moment because we’re talking about birds now. And I’m going to think about UFOs for a minute.
Things that fly. He worked at a radio station up in Pennsylvania where a major UFO event happened. I’ve heard of his name very recently. Robert Lyman, I have no idea. I’m watching that Netflix series, which I can’t think of the name of. George someone from Las Vegas. George Knapp. Have you seen that one? Yeah, I watched that one, yeah. Don’t ruin the ending for me. Oh, he gets abducted. No, I’m sorry. One more. No, I saw him talking about the drones today, so I know he’s back. Dang, now I’m a blank. I almost had the name of the town. You know, in the age of Google, I really do hate using it. Because you don’t want to support the man? The Google man? No, I just want to remember myself. I gave up. I’ve given my memory over to technology a long time ago. Have you really? I have. God bless it. Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Stan Gordon worked for the radio station near Kecksburg and talked about this. And I’ve been there. I’ve been to the monument to Kecksburg UFO. Wow.
That’s right. You do your little jaunts about… My little jaunts when, yeah, I need to do another one. Actually, my plan is to go see the Beast of Bray Road. Right. You got to bring the chum, the frozen chum. There’s dozens of squirrels in my backyard and I’m going to start grinding them up for my trip to the Bray Road to throw them out on the road. Now be careful. My wife was just telling me earlier today that Apparently ground squirrels are becoming carnivorous and eating voles. Oh, great. Yeah, we have some of those too, I think. Well, you may have less of them if your squirrels get a little bit of a hankering. If they get hangry, you got hangry squirrels. Well, they steal all my apples, so they got that going on. I think they got a moonshine rig going out in the woods here, mashing up my apples and making them ferment.
Now, did we talk about this? Because if I did, I’ll be quiet. But I didn’t get to see this. Have I mentioned this to you in our last little outing here? It depends on what it is. The wolf in my backyard? No. This was obviously after the Dogman episode. Yes, it was after. So just real quick. One day, I don’t remember what day it was, within the last two months, two and a half months maybe, my wife was yelling, there’s a coyote in the backyard during the day, which is unusual. And I go, really? And she’s like, yeah. And so then I tried to get over there and it goes into the woods. And then she goes, that was the most muscular coyote I’ve ever seen. And I go, then it wasn’t coyote.
Because coyotes look real gangly and malnourished most of the time. Any chance he saw your muscular fox? No, it wasn’t the muscular fox. He still looks like a fox. He’s just a really buff fox. And so I showed her a picture of a coyote. I go, does it look like this? She’s like, no. And I showed her a picture of a wolf. She’s like, yeah, that’s what it looked like. Oh, wow. And people say there’s no wolves around here. No. Now, didn’t you bring the bears in there earlier? Yeah, we have bears here too. Now, rewind about three years. I saw a wolf in a field about two miles from here running across the field, and it crossed in front of the road to go into the woods in front of my car. And I was by myself driving around the country, and I come home and tell my family, and they told me I was full of shit.
And then now there’s a wolf in my backyard. I’m like, yeah, who’s full of shit now? Well, I just think this is interesting. So we do, before Dog Man, I hear howling and afterwards you have a wolf in your yard. Yeah. And then, so beware of thunderstorms after today. Well, we had a big thunderstorm just two nights ago, like major, which is unusual for this time of the year for us. And this is why we may want to, sure there’s no established pattern before we start talking skinwalker or anything like that. Well, I haven’t seen any goblins, so. I have not seen goblins either no but i guess maybe it’s only every other episode. Oh, maybe because we rooted them into tennessee kentucky kentucky sorry otherwise they would no longer be a kentucky goblin. Yeah. Okay, in 1977, this illinois incident
Yeah. Happened. What event was that in 77 that involved a Thunderbird? Oh, it has a name? Okay. Well, it was a supposed potential Thunderbird incident. No, it’s not called the Thunderbird incident. It just happened in Illinois. Do I get choices now or no? Oh, I forgot about the choices, but there I get them. Okay. A Thunderbird destroyed a barn. Okay, now I know where you’re going with this. Go ahead. A Thunderbird lifted a boy into the air. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Oh, we already know. A Thunderbird was captured on film. A Thunderbird starred in The Six Million Dollar Man. That was Bigfoot. He was in The Six Million Dollar Man. The cryptid. Yeah. Now, the funny thing is, though, actually, it could be B and C.
Because there is a video, if you go to YouTube, in Shelbyville, Illinois, where somebody films a Thunderbird. Or was it in 1977? No, this would have been more like in the late 80s, early 90s. A video camera. This is why this one’s difficult. You got to pay attention to not just the event, but the year. Yeah, true, true, true. Yeah, he lifted a boy. Yes, I’m very familiar with this story because I remember it from back then. They say that there were two of them. I think there were two boys and two birds, and they were being pecked about the head and shoulders. And one of them lifted the boy, kind of like those flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz. And then I guess the other line that I read in the summary was, although there was no real evidence. So two young boys were out, and they claimed that they were lifted into the air by a giant bird. And everybody said, oh, yeah, that sounds like a thunderbird.
Now, my recollection is he actually had wounds on his shoulders. Oh, okay. There we go. Like, you know, do chickens have large talons? It was a talon thing, yeah. Chickens have many talons. Yeah. That’s my bad Napoleon Dynamite impersonation. But I couldn’t, I mean, 35 feet taller than my top of my house. Yeah. No, I remember this poor kid. Do you think he dropped the roll? Uh, I don’t think he, I don’t think he dropped him from 35 feet. Anything, OSHA says anything over 30 feet, you could die well and he’s yeah he’s he’s yeah the chances of you dying once you get above 30 feet increased dramatically, according to OSHA. Were you making a plan at some point and you had to determine no i think i had to do a test at one point about that. And that’s why i remember that.
And when I was young, my friends used to climb the power towers. I would not recommend it. No, I never did it because I’m like, you’re idiots. Stop some people. There was a bar where I went to college. Well, you know where I went to college in Champaign-Urbana. Yeah. And, uh, Thunderbirds was the only bar that was in, I think Urbana, which had, I think an 18 uh year uh oh 18 and up. Yep. 18 and up. And whereas champagne bars were 19 and up. So when i first got into college, we always went to Thunderbirds. Yeah. I actually, I’ve been there as well. Okay. Uh, probably not at the same time, but now But I’ve been to Thunderbirds as well in the past. I don’t think it exists anymore, to be honest with you. And I thought of that simply because you talked about your friends climbing the power towers. I remember very distinctly one time, I think it was after one of my first visits to Thunderbirds, that my friends and I decided to climb the side of a parking structure. That seemed like a really good idea. Yeah, well, usually not. The campus police came by and thankfully just told us to get down. Get the hell out of here.
I said, did you know if you got over 30 feet and you fell, OSHA says you could potentially die? The chances of you dying increased dramatically. That’s why you said it, too. I think that’s what the police persons. I think it was a female officer, if I remember correctly. There was also a Thunderbird Theater, I believe, in Champaign. There was actually quite a bit of Thunderbird naming in Champaign at one point. But no Piasaw Theater. No Piasaw. No Thunderbird, though. No Chickasaw. Mud Bars. Oh, that sounds like a good treat. Did we talk about cams in the Cochran’s? I didn’t go to cams. I went to Cochran’s. I did not go to cams very often. I certainly went to COD’s. Did you go Cochran’s on Daniels? Cochran’s on Daniels, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So cams was the big frat bar, and we were not in a frat, so we always approved cams.
CODs was right by cams, though. Right next door. Yeah. Yes, sirree. And then there was Willys. Was it Willys with the mug club or something like that? It was one of the smaller sort of… But they had a mug club and you had to join the mug club at Willys. They had to do some sort of stupid… I don’t think I went to Willys. Stupid binge drinking feat to get your official Willys mug. No, no. I don’t remember Willys. I know… Cochran’s, I know COD’s, I know Cam’s, and then… The White Horse? Did you go to the White Horse? White Horse. I’ve been to the White Horse. All of these are all back in the day. Gullies. Cam’s is still there, but not in the same place. COD’s is gone. Gone, gone. Gullies? No, I never went to Gullies. For a reason? No, just…
So I didn’t go to school there. Right. I visited people. You went to school with the Menendez brothers’ parents in Carbondale, right? Yeah, I went to Carbondale, yeah. Did you know the Menendez brothers’ parents? No, I did not. Okay. Because I was nervous they were watching on Netflix. What year were they down there? They may have flashed a year. And I said to my wife, I said, did they flash a year? She’s like, I don’t know. But we didn’t back up to see because I was thinking, I wonder if Bob – was in carbondale around that time. He had a class with the father. I will tell you that i missed bob odenkirk by one year. Really? Yeah. That’s a drag. It is a drag. He graduated just ahead of me getting there and and he i would have run into him because we both worked at the college radio station. Oh, really? Yeah. You’re brushed with pre-fame.
Yeah, well, no one at that time, Bob Odenkirk, he was nobody until recently. Oh, yeah, I’m just thinking, but you could have looked back and told people what you’re doing now. Yeah, Bob Odenkirk, he’s a jerk. That’s what I can say. Based on what I’ve heard in the interviews, I’m not going to believe you there. No, he seems like a pretty nice person. No, I like to say that about anybody famous. That way, you know, everybody’s like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. If you say they’re nice, they’re like, you sure? If you say they’re a jerk, they’ll go, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We agree with you totally. We want to tear them down. Once they get famous, we’re going to want to tear them down. That’s right. Exactly. We want to help them on their way up, but once they’re there, we want to just rip them right down again. I went to school with the mayor of Carbondale. Well, he wasn’t the mayor then, but he became the mayor. Because sometimes dogs are mayors. So maybe like a college boy is the mayor? No.
he was he was like a real human mayor and uh and later he he became the mayor. And actually, Miles was his roommate for a while. Holy moly. Yeah, we don’t, yeah. He doesn’t, you know, he does not claim us. You do not still converse with the ex-mayor of carbon dune uh i think miles actually does, but i don’t. Okay. Yeah. but they were roommates. So, you know, that makes a difference. Yes. I wasn’t a roommate. I was the annoying person that dropped in every once in a while. This is the last question here. This is difficult. And like the last, if you get this one right, you win the quiz. Oh, okay. Well, can we go back to that one with the guy’s name? Cause I did really well on that. Well, we’ll see. Let’s see how you do on this one first. All right. All right. Let’s go.
Besides misidentification of known birds, what is another possible explanation for some Thunderbird sightings? Weather phenomena? Hoaxes? Secret government experiments? Or alcohol? Now the last one is so plausible at this point. The whole time you’ve been putting in goofy stuff. Now, totally plausible answer. Totally plausible. This is a tough one. Do you need me to read the questions again? Just read the answers again. Start from the first one. Let me try again. It’s the first one, C. Weather phenomena, hoaxes, secret government experiments, or alcohol. I just because i love to say this secret government experiments how can it be weather phenomenon? It’s a bird. That’s a good question. Um, the thunder. Yes. Weather phenomenon. Was that thunder or a bird? I’m not sure. There could have been a big bird flapping its wings outside of my windows.
Because theoretically, as legend has it for some of the Native American cultures, the flapping of its wings causes the sound of thunder. Right. Yeah. So, no, I don’t know how modern day, to be honest with you, I took the word of my AI assistant on this particular answer. I did not go back and double check them. What is the name of your AI assistant? I, unfortunately, am becoming addicted to AI assistants. I use Gemini. I use GPT. And I started a little bit of a side fling with Claude just the last few days. I don’t know. Who’s Claude associated with? Anthropic? I’m not familiar. I guess intrigued because this is really not, anyone who’s listening to this does not want to hear about Claude, I’m sure. You never know. Claude, maybe you’re someone who’s been Claude. That kid in Shelbyville got Claude. Or Talon. Talon, yeah.
A lot of the answers just drive me nuts because they’re so obsequious and willing to please. That’s a great question. Can I do something else for you? It’s like, no. And apparently they have an on-staff philosopher who is trying to create the best personality for Claude so that it seems more like a natural conversation and not like some sort of a over-eager intern who’s trying to serve your every need. I’m going to check it out and see. There’s only one other person I’ve ever heard say the word obsequious. Who? Steve Martin. He says it in a song that he sings on one of his most famous albums, which I can’t think of. Is that what the balloon signer said? It could be. Let’s get small. Let’s get small, right? Let’s get small. He sings it, but anyway.
I do remember the snippet of the song, and this isn’t a Chickasaw Mud Puppy song. Speaking of which, let me do a quick look here. There we go. Well, hey, I did horribly at that quiz. You really didn’t do a very good job at the quiz. Thank you for bringing me down a notch after the Kentucky Goblins. You were getting a little bit cocky after the success of the last quiz. Yeah, I crushed the last quiz. This one, not so much. Well, it is the holidays. My mind’s wandering, you know. Chickasaw Mud Puppies. Yep. What’s… Do they have any more recent albums? Do they have any albums? I have no albums listed. I’m glad you brought up the Shelbyville one because that’s one of my favorite stories and I do remember it from back in the day because it was on our local news station. They did a story. It’s funny you say that because the most favorite song of the Chickasaw Mud Puppies is called Do You Remember? I’m like, that’s the song I heard. And then I said…
I remembered you remember the story. It’s like the synchronicity is abound. Synchronicity. Oh, gosh. The simulation is popping. Claude. Claude. Talons, claws, Claude. Muscular foxes and wolves. Wolves, yeah. Muscular wolves. Exactly. This wolf was so scary that my wife doesn’t want to go out at night by herself. Yeah, I got to say, I mean, even a big wolf, a big well-trained dog can sometimes be a little bit intimidating, but yeah, one that’s off leash, a hundred pounds in your yard. Oh yeah. In its environment while you go, you know, teetering out on your two legs. Speaking of animals on, on two legs, I heard a story today on one of my cryptid podcasts I listened to about some woman who saw a coyote get up and run his high legs and peered her from the side of, from around the side of a tree.
that was sort of really that’s a dog man story then a tiny emaciated dog man story yeah well they all can’t be eaten well i guess that’s true or maybe there could have been an adolescent well maybe he’s you know maybe he’s you know digging into the ayahuasca or whatever i don’t know he’s yeah he’s he’s he’s put food intake low on his priority list yeah yeah who knows what’s going on So I don’t think the quiz kind of took up a majority of this. We rushed the quiz last time. Maybe that’s why it did so well. Maybe. I’m going to say we’ve got to rush the quiz every time. Maybe the visuals were a little bit too much. Maybe we’ll back off on the visuals and just do the audio. Well, I don’t know. I kind of liked it. Yeah, sure. I’ll have to refine it. That’s all. That’s the way things work, right? It’s all iterative. That’s right.
It’s all obsequious. It’s all obsequious. I’m going to put that in as all the keywords for this one. There’s so many searches for obsequious on the internet right now. We’ve cornered 100% of the obsequious market. You’ll get all the traffic. It’s just Steve Martin and this, and that’s all. That’s all I need. This keyword. So now, have you had any Thunderbird, other than being thunderous when you were researching, any Thunderbird, you know, brushes at all? I have not, but I’m just curious. No, no, I have such interest in these topics, obviously, but yet I have had virtually, well, that’s the howling outside my house. Yeah. As I start thinking through this, maybe that’s not the case, but no, I’ve, I’ve seen nothing that resembles in a 10 foot or greater wingspan bird. Although when I, when I first moved to California, I, I was really entranced by the, the, the vultures that would fly around. And I still love a good Hawk, the larger Hawks when the red tail Hawks come around. Yeah. I do love the oversized birds for whatever reason. I,
have a bit of a fascination with that kind of nature. It’s unusual, but now the vultures are so common now. It’s like, oh, my first thought is, oh, there must be something dead. As opposed to, oh, look, there’s a vulture. There must be something dead. Where are my children and the dogs? That’s right. Well, I mean, speaking of vultures, within the last year, we turn the corner, we do a circle around the block, and there’s a vulture in the side of this road, just like ripping apart a dead squirrel. They’re a lot bigger when they’re standing on the ground than when they are. Yeah. They are. They’re not small birds. And then we saw a coyote. A coyote was on that same block. Oh, there you go. You don’t want to hit a vulture with a car. It’ll leave a dent. It will. I think it will, yeah. Yeah, it will. Well, I have had, so we have water near us and we have these cranes that fly over and
And we talked about Mothman at one point or another. But anyway, Sandhill Crane, right? So they – there are different parts of the day, right, when you have the sun at a certain place. When they fly over, the shadow is enormous. Yeah. And you go, what the hell was that? Because the shadow just goes, woof. Yeah, I think there’s something primal about that. I think I mentioned that last time. It’s like when you just – Whether it’s a plane or something that just passes over, there’s something about it that just kind of makes you go, whoa, what the hell? Some of our ancestors have passed that trait down. Yeah, and the hawks too. We have a lot of hawks here that feed on these squirrels, these damn squirrels. They’ll come flying over. They don’t have nearly as big of a shadow. It could be cranes. If you think about the Thunderbird
being so large, I mean, that shadow is definitely more than 10 foot in wingspan if you’re looking at it on the ground. And I could see where you’d get kind of freaked out by that. That would be scary. Yeah. I mean, and they say that people that are sort of in these heightened states of awareness or they’re scared, they tend to overestimate size of things. But one said that the bird, I remember one of the summaries of, of, the encounters reciting said that it was as big as an suv yeah which was that’s big that’s big yeah but it’s not it is not big bird it is just a big bird now apparently uh because we have we have to mention it because it it kind of fits into some of this is uh the new jersey drones were as big as an suv and so you know maybe
you know depending on where you land on the drone situation where if it’s a real drone or if it’s not a drone or if it’s something else i have dove dived into the reddit drone pool over the last two weeks and i’ve just immersed myself into that story i almost uh contacted you and said do we need to do an emergency drone this episode because i sure know i sure know a lot about them Or at least the theories floating around about them. Well, then let’s hold it and let’s do that. Let’s do a drone story, maybe while you’re relaxing. That sounds like a plan, yeah. Yeah, before the new year, but after the holiday, the Christmas. That sounds like a plan. So let’s hold that thought, folks. Tune in. Yeah, come in for, you know, dromageddon. Is that a word?
Well, it could be. It’s obsequious. Speaking of George Knapp, I saw he’s referring to it as a dronopalooza. Oh, come on, George. That’s so 90s. That’s so Knapp. Yeah, it’s so Knapp. Yeah, we have to think of a better word, but we’ll come back with some kind of drone pun on the next episode. So this has been our conversation about the Thunderbird segueing into drone-orama? Drone-orama. It’s not bad. And I’ve been talking with Your Most Interesting Stories host, one of the hosts, Rob. You can catch it at youtube.com at YMIS podcast, which stands for Your Most Interesting Story. If you’ve got one, maybe it’s going to be over New Year’s. Who knows? Contact Rob at his website, which I don’t have, but you can maybe contact him through this link that I have here. That works. Yeah. The website is, I have not yet invested in my own custom website. So I have a long extended Google sites. Oh, okay. Well then through YouTube, you can get there. Go to YouTube or do any of the, any of the major podcatchers or,
Spotify or whatever. Oh, you’re on Blue Sky. Did you get YMIS on Blue Sky? I got YMIS Podcast, yeah. Oh, did you? God darn it. Everybody was jumping in so fast on that. Did you not get Static Radio? I had to do Static Radio Podcast. I normally just do Static Radio, but somebody already got it. So they can be the bastard on that one. They’re coming to you in about a year and they’re going to try to get that money from you. Yeah. Oh, that’s fine. They won’t get anything but uh trying to talk about what they’re trying to do. Yeah, I have to listen to the the latest one of your show. I meant to listen to it before tonight, but i didn’t get a chance to get it done. because you have a new one out? and it was coming out sunday yep and the previous oh it’s coming out Sunday? I saw it.
thing for it on social so that’s what we call a teaser in the oh i didn’t even realize. I just took it as the uh actual thing so sunday you’re right because my podcatcher has no new episodes. Sunday, get ready. You have something to look forward to. It has something to do with the holidays. It is. I was very excited that we were able to to get a holiday story uh We rushed it to the front of the line. Cut off the press. Hold the presses. Hold on a second. No, I was trying to get something thematic. And I’m like, you know, the holidays have got to have something. And didn’t get a lot of nibbles or bites. And then suddenly somebody shot me an email and said, hey. I’m like, you’re there. Let’s go. Let’s get this recorded. I used to be a small Santa. Yeah.
And they’re like, we already did the mascot guy. Come on. I know you did that in the holiday season to make extra money. I played the, what’s the, I played the bumble in Rudolph. The bumble. I love the Yukon Cornelius voice. And I always end up, you know. You do it well. Yeah. Well, it’s not the lack of practice. I can tell you that right now. Even in the off-season, I’m doing the Yukon Cornelius voice. That’s your wife sending you down to the garage. She doesn’t pay any attention. You’re very lucky enough where you have the ability to tune out the other person’s voice. Here’s my new YMIS story. Earpods save my marriage. That’s really short, but… We can work at it. Yeah, I could do it. The headline is a grabber. And then as you get older, you could use them for hearing aids now, right? I know. I saw that. I was like, what will they think of next? Lots of stuff. I’m going to guess. I’m guessing as well. Yeah. Yeah, there’s some. Maybe we’ll clear down that. We’ll talk about quantum computing at some other episode. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I’d love to talk about that.
Well, let’s sign off for tonight and we’ll be back with Dronorama in the near future. But in the meantime, your most interesting story and find out how Santa got his groove back. See you, everyone.