What is "Skinwalker Ranch"?

Is there really a secret hotspot of paranormal and UFO activity just southeast of Ballard, Utah? Join Ben and Matt as they explore the fact (and fiction) surrounding the bizarre Sherman Ranch.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, Ghosts and Government cover ups. History is
whetted with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. And
so welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
and I am Ben and we are joined as always
by our super producer nol the A T. Alien Brown.

(00:24):
Oh yeah, the A T. Alien little outcasting here this uh,
this afternoon. So ladies and gentlemen, today we are going
all the way out to Utah. As many of you know,
we're located here in Atlanta, Georgia. And the reason we're
going out to Utah is because there are some things
that happen when you're out in a large open area

(00:45):
like many of the places in Utah, that you you
might see something in the sky, you might see something
that you don't really see on the ground that you
can't explain. But that's the reason we're going out there,
because there is one particular place that that some of
these things tend to happen. Ben, and we've been getting
lots and lots of people on Twitter, on Facebook all

(01:05):
over the place saying, you guys have to cover this
location right. Yeah, We've checked out a lot of the
YouTube comments. I've seen this stuff on Facebook and Twitter
asking us to cover something that is legally known as
the Sherman Ranch. As Matt said, it is located in
a place called Unitalk County, about four hundred and eighty

(01:27):
acres of ranch land, a little bit southeast of a
place called Ballard, Utah. But you perhaps know it better
by it's more famous internet moniker skin Walker Ranch. Oh yeah,
and out here there are all kinds of alleged things
that happened, from cattle mutilations to UFO sightings of various kinds,

(01:50):
lights in the sky, sometimes stuff that happens closer to
the ground. Sure you'll also hear you'll also hear other
anecdotes about so called sensing of presents, telepathic intrusions, Poulter
geys stuff again, all anecdotal. But before we dive into that.
Oh and that's what we're doing, by the way, lazy gentleman,

(02:12):
spoiler alert, we're looking at some of the fact and
fiction here. Now, Matt, you like you hate this stuff? No, no,
I do not hate this stuff. I just want it
to be real and I want someone to capture something
and when it's just a human being, most of the
research I've done on this. You've done the bulk of it,
But a lot of the research I've done in this
it's just a person talking to another person like this

(02:34):
and telling a story about what they've experienced. Okay, Well,
I didn't mean to pigeonhole you by saying you hate it. No, no, no,
I certainly don't hate it. I I really like the
ideas it. It hurts me intellectually when someone is trying
to convince me so hard that this thing happened but
they have absolutely zero empirical evidence or yeah, zero zero

(02:58):
universally accepted. It's probably a good way to qualify that.
So that's what we're gonna do today, ladies and gentlemen.
We're going to catch you up on a little bit
of one oh one about Skinwalker Ranch or the real name,
the Sherman Ranch, and then we're ultimately going to end
on asking you the same questions and maybe, if we're lucky,
somebody in or around Ballard, Utah will give us the

(03:22):
skinny these stuff. They don't want you to know about
this location. So let's look at the history, Matt, the uh,
the history of this, at least as far as the
paper trail Goes is relatively recent in comparison to other,
um you know, so called hot spots for this kind
of activity. The first documentary reports about the Sherman Ranch
are found in a publication called the Utah Desert News.

(03:45):
It's out of Salt Lake City. This was written by
a guy named Zack van ike In or E. Y c.
K uh not no relation to David around nineteen nine six.
And that wasn't the only time it was mentioned. That's right.
So we were out here, you know, exploring the Olympics
that year, and uh, out there on the other side,
there's some crazy stuff going down at the Sherman Ranch. Now,

(04:08):
this was later mentioned in Las Vegas Mercury. This was
also mentioned several times by George and App. I believe
George and App as a person who wrote in the Mercury. Yeah,
he was a coast of show that I personally really enjoy.
I don't know about you called Coast to Coast, a
m which we have mentioned briefly before on this on

(04:29):
this show. Uh so, yeah, the U this guy doesn't
just write a couple of things, uh, he really digs
in and makes this uh something identifiable with him, which,
as will learn, is going to be important later. However,
if you are to believe the unofficial histories of I
think there's a retired school teacher and then there's a

(04:50):
retired military official of some sort. Uh. If you're to
believe their stories, then reports of cattle mutilation in this area,
this rough area go back for decades at least, and allegedly,
or at least we'll see how much of this is true.
Allegedly these stories tie into something much much older, that's right,

(05:15):
the legend of skin walkers. This is really cool stuff here.
This is kind of this is the stuff that you
were really interested in, right, this because this falls into
the folklore area where you've got Native American groups who
believe that there is this thing called a skin walker,
which is essentially a shape changer. There are a lot

(05:35):
of different types of these. We've talked about like anthropy
a lot in past episodes about werewolves. Um, this is
kind of kind of similar to that with a couple
important differences. One of the biggest ones is that the
skin walker can choose to change shape rather than having
the moon kind of affect their change. Right, So the

(05:57):
full moon doesn't anything to do with its skin walker,
just goes, Okay, it's time change. Uh. Skin walker can
also change into any animal, given whatever circumstances they find
themselves in, such as, Uh, let's say they've got the
pelt of a wolf, just to use the like anthropy example,
they can then change into the wolf. But then you

(06:18):
can use any other interchangeable animal. They're a bear even sure. Yeah,
and this this is a common across various different uh
Native American groups. In Navajo folklore, for instance, which is
where this pops up most often, or at least in
the In the modern West, this is most strongly associated
with Navajo. A skin walker is a kind of which

(06:41):
known as a ye now joshi. The idea here is
similar to some European folklore regarding lican thropes, because lican
thropes in the older medieval stuff and then uh, well,
you can listen to the entire episode we've done onlike antherropy,
but quick and dirty version for you here. As sometimes

(07:03):
in different periods of the past, people who were thought
of as werewolves were also thought of as witches. It's
kind of like the old analogy about puzzles and mazes,
because not all puzzles are mazes, but all mazes are puzzles.
So not all witches are skin walkers, which is a

(07:23):
kind of which, But all skin walkers are witches. So
most of these witches are men, and they gain their
powers through some kind of dark act. Women can also
be these witches, but only childless women. At least only
childless women can be this sort of which. And some
of these dark acts would be the murder of a

(07:44):
blood relative. That's pretty heinous, breaking some kind of serious
cultural taboo, or parts participating in some kind of perversion
of these Namajo traditional rituals. Right, this would be the
cultural equivalent of celebrating a aact Mass are going to uh,
which is Sabbath. The The one of the differences here

(08:06):
between the skin walker and the modern interpretation of the
like and throape is that this is not a situation
where someone could accidentally become a skin walker because they
were bitten by a skin walker. This is a conscious decision,
or this is the direct consequence of doing something unholy.

(08:27):
The ones who murder a blood relative, a child, a parent,
a sibling, they are the ones who would get the most,
who would become the most powerful. And some versions of this,
as we said, are found in many Native American cultures,
not just the Navajo, the Aztec have the now all Uh,
it's a human being able to transform into an animal

(08:49):
physically or spiritually. And then there's the Chilean Chilean or
Argentinean chun chon. Now that's the folklore background of what
a skin walker is. As we continue our our delve
into what the skin walker ranches, we're going to find
that it isn't necessarily related to this in particular, but

(09:10):
there are there are things relating to aliens also that
will come into this. Extraterrestrials and possibly this idea that
there is some kind of supernatural entity that exists somewhere
on this land, you know. Uh. Spoiler alert slight spoiler alert.
I I love that you said that, you went out

(09:30):
and said extraterrestrials are aliens, because, as we'll find, that's
something that the researchers, Uh, that was one of their
big pet peeves. But I think it's I think it's
fair to say that the vast majority of people who
are following the developing story did believe it was extraterrestrial
well related exactly. It was one of their big pet pieces.

(09:51):
But it gets into some of the things that a
couple other characters were about to find out gets into
the future worlds that they get involved with. So let's
continue on here, sure, okay. So, as we said, the
ranch was brought to the public eye largely due to
the efforts of this journalist named George Knapp, who was
then host of a radio show called Coast to Coast AM,

(10:13):
which is us a great listen if you get a chance,
it's really great you you might recognize the name George
Nori currently or Art Bell for the host of that show.
George Napp is pretty great. He I think he hosts
on the weekends or a couple of Sundays every once
in a while. And uh, as he reported on the

(10:33):
bizarre alleged occurrences from this ranch, the publicity caught the
attention of an entrepreneur named Robert Bigelow, who you might
also recognize as the founder of a company called Bigelow Aerospace.
A interesting Bigelow Aerospace. They they specialize in trying to
create these uh, not really ruins, but capsules where humans

(10:56):
can do things in space. Right along with Richard Branson
and to a lesser degree, Ellen Musk that he's one
of the people pushing. He's one of the big parts,
or at least Big Little Airspace was one of the
big parts of the privatized space exploration industry. Pretty interesting there.
So Big a Little bought this ranch in and he

(11:19):
hired another gentleman named Calm mkellagher who was a molecular biologist,
and he brought him on to head up the team
of PhD s who are going to investigate this place.
He uh, he called the group the National Institute for
Discovery Science or NEEDS. Here's what they did. The group
monitored the ranch for twenty four hours a day and

(11:41):
they were scouting for unusual phenomenon or anomalies. According to Kellagher,
and this is as told by Brian Dunning from SKEPTID.
They never came back with any incontrovertible physical evidence. Well,
they collected a lot of They collected a lot of
video and some audio, but as we know, that stuff

(12:03):
can be a little bit like a Rorschach test. They did, however,
see occasional cattle mutilations and floating lights. And let's let's
take a second to address this because a lot of
you guys out there probably wondering why I just said
no physical evidence and then mentioned cattle mutilations. And the
problem here is really one of interpretation. To people who

(12:26):
believe that mutilations must be some sort of proof of
the paranormal or a cryptid or you know, a human
being change in shape and eating cattle. Uh, that is
sort of looking for an answer. One expects a confirmation bias.
But to people who consider themselves skeptics, whether they actually

(12:48):
are or not, which is an important distinction. Uh, these
these attacks are within the bounds of normal predation, meaning
that a a regular predator common in the area it
might attack, or another scavenger might have eaten the corpse.
I'd like even if they died of natural causes. The

(13:09):
places where cattle mutilation or evidence of cattle mutilation is
shown is usually in the face and or the hind quarters, right.
And this is something that I think on Discovery Channel
we were there, we discussed this several times about how
that's those are the entrances to the soft tissues in cattle.
You're not going to go through the tough outer skin. Uh.

(13:30):
If you're let's say, I don't know, insects that are
eating away at a carcass, or even vultures eating way
to carcass or a fox, anything of that nature, even
micro microbes. They're attacking those two ends right right, And
I'd like to do and we'll see if I get to,
but I'd like to do an episode on cattle mutilations
in the future because it's a pretty interesting topic, especially

(13:52):
when you get to the people who study different types
of ways that cattle are attacked, which is which is
fascinating but very grizzly. So that's what they were looking at.
They were primarily looking for unexplained phenomenon or anomalies. They
were not looking for someone changing shape and attacking human beings. Yeah,

(14:19):
that's why I kind of mentioned at the beginning that
the skin Walker Ranch doesn't really seem to have that
much to do with the folklore side of what a
skin walker is um really beyond the name. M Yeah,
and critics will allege this was largely a marketing employ
to call it the skin Walker Ranch rather than the
Sherman Ranching ensure. There's a there's inarguably uh a vivid

(14:44):
image captured there right the book you know nap George
Knapp and Colem kellaher went on to publish a book
called Hunt for the skin walker, but this focused mainly
on UFO sightings, not on any supposed super natural being.
And really, again, a UFO is not does not necessitate

(15:06):
an alien, It simply means unidentified. You can read some
great quotes with kelleher saying that what they're trying to
do is turn as many unidentified sightings into identified objects,
which I thought was fair. But also, you know, you
can read criticism of the way Needs the National Institute
for Discovery Science conducted their research. Maybe that's a story

(15:28):
for another day. I would say, if you're interested in
some of their studies and some of the reports they
put out, Ben, you sent me a link to the
way back Machine to their website, and if you're interested,
I recommend going to archive dot org using that way
back machine and checking out needs. Right. Yeah, the way
back machine is a super useful tool, especially for websites

(15:49):
that are no longer active. Spoiler Alert needs is one
of them. Uh. This this also is a good time
for us to mention other, um, other alleged things. Uh.
George Knapp has come out before and said that the
family that was living there before Robert Bigelow purchased the
property were they moved within just like thirty months of

(16:14):
living there because of heightened paranormal activity. And we're talking
about stuff like going home, putting groceries up in the kitchen,
walking out for a second, and then walking hearing a
tremendous crash, walking back to see everything thrown away from
the out of the cabinets, right, and crockery broken and whatnot.

(16:36):
So let's go and look closer though, at the criticism
or the response for these claims. Sure, so the first
big one with that with the family dealing with you know,
lots of paranormal activity. Um we there is no record
of the family actually saying this, right, well, at least

(16:56):
according to what I could find, there was not anything
from the sherman's going on record and saying there's plenty
of other people saying they said that, but I wasn't
able to find anything that was clearly them saying something
like that went down. I would love to hear back
from anybody who as a link. You can find me

(17:18):
on the conspiracy stuff Facebook and Twitter. And I'm sure
it really didn't hurt that Mr Bigelow showed up and
was like, Hey, I really like to buy a ranch.
Here's lots of money. Right, yeah, and and they have
never also, to be fair, they've never come out and
said there was nothing like that. We're just in the money, um,

(17:40):
which is understandable, but they have not said that. So
the concept of skin walkers explored or earlier like ent
therapy episode, which again is I don't know how you feel, Matt,
but it is one that I thought we did a
pretty good job on. Uh. There there is a genuine
clinical condition, a genuine clinical like antherrapy, in which people

(18:00):
do believe they're transforming to an into an animal. And
sometimes it's because some cultural transgression, breaking a taboo, feeling guilty.
But as we mentioned that earlier show, uh, because you
believe that you are transforming into a creature does not
mean that you physically are transforming new creature. It can

(18:20):
make you a more dangerous person, but a person nonetheless.
So we we came up with some speculative answers for
why these sort of skinwalker like can therapy where Jaguar
and other kind of myths came from. Right. Oh yeah.
One of the big ones was looking at and a
person that was doing things were so horrible you couldn't

(18:43):
attribute or it was very difficult to attribute those actions
to a human being. So the thought was that perhaps
there is something else going on here. This isn't just
a man killing his family or killing eight families or
something like that. This must be some kind of wolf
spirit or animal spirit embodying this human So it may

(19:05):
just be that serial killers that this was attributed to
them back in the day, or even just someone who
went on a rampage one time. Right. Yeah, one of
the cases that we look at, one of the most
famous cases in that kind of literature is that of
a fellow named Peter Stump. Uh. And Peter Stump was
confessed to numerous crimes, many of which sound a little

(19:30):
bit exaggerated to be honest. Is so we do know
that while he was incarcerated, despite eventually being executed for
the crime of lican thropy, he never managed to change
into a wolf, despite the phases of the moon that
went you know, went around during his incarceration. So we
we know that pretty much the not just uh skeptics

(19:53):
are people who confuse themselves for skeptics, but pretty much
everybody admits that no one has seen a person transform
into an animal. Uh. Again, besides on the big screen
or screen right, right. So then in along comes this
gentleman named James Randy that we've discussed several times on
this show. Uh, he gave Robert Bigelow one of his

(20:17):
self made Pegasus Awards. You may be familiar with these. Um,
it's it's kind of an insult, right Yeah. It's kind
of like a Darwin Award, which I believe Randy gives.
I don't know too much about it, but it's not
a good thing to win it. It's like a Razzie
or Darwin Award. Razzies are for terrible movies. Darwin is

(20:39):
for people who are unfortunate enough to die in what
could be seen as a stupid way. So yeah, he
he gave big a little one of these for buying
the ranch um, which he said was absolutely useless. Yeah,
he he said that it was a useless study. You
may recognize Randy, that's R and D I instead of why.

(21:00):
You may recognize him from a thing we mentioned much earlier.
I mean, he's he's a man of great standing. So
you probably if you're listening to this show, you've heard
of him before. But he also famously had a a
running contest or I guess challenge where He said if

(21:20):
someone could present claims are provable things of any any
kind of paranormal, psychic or supernatural events of anything from
a ghost to clara voyance or telepathy, he would give
them one million dollars. That study is currently no longer running,
which you know is is kind of a bummer, but
I get it. It's probably expensive to maintain it. Uh.

(21:43):
For the record, according to him, no one ever beat it. Uh.
Some of his critics said that it was um unfair.
But also you know, I also I have I have
not signed up where nor do I know anyone who has,
so I don't know what the actual processes. But apparently
it's very transparent and you can check some of that

(22:05):
out on his various websites. Yeah, you can find videos
as well, all over the internets of people attempting and
failing to to do that. Um. To be fair, I
I in previous episodes, I really held James Randy up
in this light that he was this beacon of truth
and like things that I really enjoyed. But I don't know.

(22:30):
The more of these videos I watched, I'm I'm a
little nervous saying this, but I feel like maybe he's
kind of a jerk. Well, the I guess the best way,
the most fair way to say something like that is
that uh, human beings right, emotional creatures and being creatures
that are wont to classify the world into an us

(22:52):
versus them. Uh. People can readily become antagonistic toward anything
that they see is different, and I understand. I completely
agree with on on a personal level. And guys, is
just my opinion. I completely agree with someone who wants
to remove the danger of a con artist to charlottan

(23:17):
or a swindler from from the world, because it's true
that that people have been taken advantage of numerous times
by someone claiming to speak with the dead, and the
dead just happened to want you to give them money. Right,
that that does happen. However, as anybody who has taken

(23:38):
a psychology course ever, or maybe read a book, or
maybe really listen to someone once or twice, has anybody
who has ever done one of those three things knows
the way to persuade people if you really care, if
you really give enough of a well where family shows,
I'll say crap. If it matters to you that someone

(24:00):
sees a truth, right, or someone sees an error of
the ways, then there has to be an amount of
empathy involved. There's a reason that yelling at people, bullying them,
calling them names never gets them to say, oh, you
have been rude enough to me or abused me enough
that I think you are right and Star Trek the
next generation is better or whatever. I know, like, it

(24:21):
doesn't really matter what the actual content of the of
the argument process is, because it's about the process, not
about the content that being said. I think it's done
the world a great service. I think it is an
unfortunate error, however, on the part of a lot of
other people who like me, are are fans of some
of this guy's work. It's just an unfortunate and just

(24:44):
tragic error to use the excuse that people believe in
something you don't believe in, especially if it's wrong and
you could help them to use as an excuse to
bully someone or or to mock them. You know, like
I I don't go to someone who believes something that
I think is um foolish, especially to not hurting anybody,

(25:09):
to yell at them or to deride them so that
my some some part of my neural mechanism gets a
little bit of a high off of persecuting the other.
That's a sad thing. And you know, I'd love to
hear what you think about this, listeners, because ultimately the
emphasis should be on finding the truth, not making people

(25:32):
feel like garbage. Yeah, that's a rant. Sorry, that's a rant.
And I and I don't want people to, you know,
vilify James Randy. I've never met him personally. And again,
I think that saving innocent people from someone who would
take advantage of them is a noble thing to do.

(25:54):
But that's so far away. That's that's very little to
do with the biggest awards. Would we we had to
include because it's it's a pretty it's a pretty funny pun.
And I'd love to see other people who are other
organizations who are rewarded this. I wonder what his criteria is.
But like we said earlier, one of the other things
that they studied here at the ranch were these glowing

(26:17):
lights that kept being reported, and there are numerous attempts
to explain this phenomenal what the heck is going on there?
Most of these were hinging on some of the more
mundane explanations, like an aircraft that would be going by
with lights that are flashing or some kind of gas um.
You know, we've heard a lot of these things before, Yeah,

(26:40):
meteorological phenomenon. Yeah, it's it's weird because you'll you will
hear these reports of glowing orbs, right, that's something that
frequently happens. And these have been explained before. Is I
mean to paraphrase Beauty and the Beasts, it's a tail
as old as time. Reports of will the Whisp go

(27:00):
back decades and decades and decades and centuries. Well, the
fact of the matter is that as far as mainstream
science goes, including in many cases the team at NEEDS
that was investigating this, there are there is a wealth
of possible explanations for these things, none of which are

(27:24):
necessarily extra terrestrial. And and these guys have said before
and the interviews that they weren't necessarily out to find
finger quotes or air quotes aliens. They were they were
trying to find some sort of explanation for this. But
no one has come up with an instance of one

(27:44):
of these alleged glowing lights that could not be explained
by something else, or even more importantly, that could be
explained by something outside of the bounds of regular science,
which you know makes me wish at Jonathan we're here
because this is one of his favorite hobby horses to ride, right.
Oh yeah, he would get on this horse and oh man,

(28:06):
you wouldn't see him again for a week. Right. So
you know, I love that you point out it could
be airplanes in the distance, because that that tells us. Uh,
that tells us something interesting and that we go into
in our video series that also came out this week,
which was great. You mentioned at the top, Matt that
it was interesting to you that Bigelow was investigating this

(28:32):
stuff and also founding an aerospace company. Oh yeah, an
aerospace company out there near Las Vegas, which I don't know.
He's at least interested in going to space, right and
if if he wants to do more research in that
realm and he wants to take human beings eventually to space,

(28:54):
I don't know he I'm I'm interested in this gentleman's
uh that maybe the things that he wouldn't release to
the press, that he wouldn't give out an official press release,
some of his beliefs. I want to sit down with
this dude and and talk to him one day. I'm
not a millionaire so I don't know that's ever gonna happen,
but one can dream. Yeah, who knows, One can always dream? Right,

(29:17):
I want to take it a step further. This is
something we talked about, you and I have talked about
numerous times off the air, which is that many, many
of the UFO reports from a few decades earlier turned
out to be top secret aircraft that the US was testing,
and for that time, they were doing phenomenal things that

(29:41):
were just far beyond easily a decade beyond public technology.
We're talking about craft that could fly across the United
States in less than half the time that would take
a normal or a publicly known aircraft. So it's complete,
really possible that some of these things that are being

(30:03):
seen are actually aircraft being tested, you know. Oh yeah,
and especially in the late nineties, like that man the
tech was. We may not even know some of the
things that were being developed at that time. I mean, honestly,
we we may not know yet, right like when everybody
found out that stealth helicopters exist because crashed. Wait what yeah,

(30:26):
So so it's completely possible, just because there isn't any
evidence at this point that it's something supernatural doesn't mean
that there is not UM. There's not secrecy of foot,
you know what I mean. And at this point, if
we sum it up, if we sum up skin Walker Ranch,
then as near as we could find, it seems that

(30:48):
the investigations of Needs which disbanded, UH, the investigations of
Needs bore little in the way of inarguable evidence, at
least in the case of Sherman or skin Walker Ranch.
And like I said earlier, you're gonna hear anecdotes. If
you just type in skin Walker Ranch into any search bar,
you're gonna find all kinds of fun anecdotes that make me.

(31:11):
It takes me back to my X Files days where
I just want to go, oh, man, I love this,
this is so cool. Hopefully there's some kind of shred
of evidence that I can hang my beliefs on. But
you're really not going to find it. They didn't. They
didn't find any kind of body or unidentified animal they
could explain these the cattle mutilations that they were looking
into UM. And really they didn't make any video that

(31:36):
would satisfactorily show some kind of this inexplicable light that
they kept talking about that would just it's just it's
it's so disappointing to me. Ben, Yeah, I get it.
And there's a quote that I'd like to pull from
an A M A and ask me anything. Thread that
uh that George Nepp participated in on Reddit. This this

(31:59):
response when when he was asked why I can't exactly remember,
but I think he was asked about skim Walker Ranch
when his experiences were like because he went there numerous times, right,
And he was asked about um in some very polite
way about evidence lack thereof, and he said that he
felt at times there was some sort of intelligence that

(32:22):
seemed aware of things, was one step ahead of everybody.
And if and this is a huge gargangeline Purple Mountains
of Majesty's size, if there is something bizarre foot at
skim Walker Ranch, it has yet to be proven, unless,
of course, there's something I guess the ranch or whatever

(32:43):
powers behind it don't want us to know. Yeah, that
that idea of an intelligent being that is doing all
of these things. It's behind the mutilations, it's behind the lights.
I love it. The kid in me love it, and
one day, hopefully it will be proven by the third

(33:03):
wave of researchers that go and stay at the Sherman
Ranch one day perhaps. Uh So, what what do you
think about these stories about skin Walker Ranch? Is this
just a bunch of WHOI is there something genuinely strange
and disturbing going on? And I know these Uh? I

(33:23):
know this will probably be a bit of a divisive
topic for us, uh because I I think this stuff
is fascinating and I love seeing there is some sort
of explanation. And if you have to speculate, that's fine
to let us know what you think it could possibly be. Uh.
If you all are like me, um, profoundly disappointed that

(33:47):
people don't actually turn into animals, whether whether through some
horrible transgression or some dark right, then uh let me
know about that too. We can both complain together online.
You can find me on Facebook. I do the Facebook
and I do the Twitter here uh, and you can
see a lot of stories I find that don't typically

(34:09):
make it onto the air or on the news. Matt
and I are both into uncaught serial killers. And just
for an example, one of the recent stories that we
posted we're recording this uh, involves a possible uncaught serial
killer in a small town in Ohio. So do visit
us at Facebook dot com forward slash conspiracy stuff to

(34:32):
check that out and I, oh we been That freaking
sound is back again. You can only mean one thing.
It must be hello, hey, hey, know how's it going? Man?
It's going okay? How are you guys doing all right?
Doing all right? Uh? So the question for you, and

(34:53):
you might have some questions to uh, if you could
just at will transform into an animal, any animal? What
would what would it be? Oh? Any? Any? Um? I
guess we should qualify any nonfictional fictional animals. So no
like dragons, which is clearly the best one. No final
fantasy summons. You know, my answer might surprise you, Ben,

(35:16):
because you you know about me that I hate and
slash I'm terrified of birds. But that just seems like
the most obvious go to thing because it would be know,
for transportation alone, I wouldn't have to book flights anymore.
You could just you know, turn into an eagle and
go to the keys or whatever. You know, some pretty
long flights though, I know, but you get used to it, right,

(35:37):
I guess yeah, I guess it depends on what kind
of bird you would be, Like would you be a
migratory bird? Would you be a frigate bird. I believe
they're the ones that can stay in air for days
at a time. But yeah, one of those. But they're
terrible on the ground. Yeah, they're pretty bad. Well, you
don't have to be a bird in the gray, you
turn back into it a person call it is that? Well,
what about you met? Oh gosh, I would I would

(35:58):
probably go with small, small fox. The small fox. Yeah,
just a tiny little fox. It's cool, man, I just
want to make videos. I would set up a camera,
turn into small fox, make a little fox sounds for
the video, like, turn back into a human, stop the recording,
and then upload it to YouTube. Take over YouTube. That
would be great. I gotta watch out for those old

(36:19):
rich dudes on horseback wearing the red coats. Okay, I
changed my mind. It makes me think of invisible. Yes.
So I don't know what which one I would be.
It's such a such a big choice. I guess would
be kind of cool to be a whale. But I

(36:40):
don't know. I don't know if I have the voice
for it. I asked my asked my girlfriend recently, without hesitation.
She was like a house cat turn into a cat.
I said, what would you do? And she said I
would learn secrets, which which is a great answer, but
I completely don't understand that, and it makes me not
trust cat. Would you do as a as a whale?

(37:02):
As a whale, I don't like, just swim around and
I guess talk trash or like probably man, if you're
gonna go whale, go full whale, don't go eight and
a half yards. You know, I don't know. Man, more
I think about it, the more whale seems like a
lame answer. Maybe I don't know. A bird would be cool.

(37:22):
I always you know you know this about about me? Guys,
Like I've gone through period where I really want to
befriend corvid's like crows or ravens, because they're so very
intelligent and you can teach them to recognize you and
they'll teach their young to recognize you. Um, but I
think I just want to hang with them. I want
to be like they're token human. I don't wanna you

(37:43):
don't think they would pick on you, like I feel
like crows would just hate me. Why is that? Man,
you're really good with I mean, you're good with people.
I assume it goes to birds just because I'm not.
I don't know, I'm not a chrome man. I think
they would just they would rag on me all they'd
write jokes. Well there, because you know there's some kind
of bilber crow or raven and he's the one that

(38:03):
I would end up hanging out with. The bilber just
write on me all day. So so no, you would
be an eagle. Huh. You know, I have to give
us some more thought. That's just the first thing that
comes to mind. Like I said, just if I'm being
purely functional about my skin walking, yeah, I feel like
flight would be a little bit better than than swimming
to and and whales are incredibly intelligent, but you know

(38:27):
you're kind of limited in what you can do. You're
also a pretty big target, you know. Oh that's right. Yeah.
Did you know Japan is going to unilaterally begin it's
whaling program again? So maybe poor timing on my part
too soon? All right, well, you know what, let's check
back in next week unless unless you've got anything. No,

(38:49):
I just said. The one thing that I guess I
was thinking about is do you guys both read or
watch the Game of Thrones? The see Oh yeah, yeah,
there's the skin changers or whatever in that show, and
the Wars, and I guess it's not. They're not exactly transforming,
but they're sort of inhabiting, you know, the Totem creatures.
I just kind of felt like there had to be
a parallel between the terms skin changer and yeah, yeah,

(39:12):
that would be you know, that would be at least
an influence. Pretty cool. I don't know, would it be
better to have an animal that, like you, inhabit the
body of, or would be better to change into one,
because if you think about it, the drawback to that
kind of thing is you always end up naked at
the end. That's true. That does seem really inconvenient. I
think the vulnerabilities of changing into an animal, especially if

(39:34):
it's a much smaller animal, I think that's dangerous. So
being able to warp into one, but then you leave
your physical body, you know, if it's unattended, someone could
always you know, excide. Maybe I should stick with the
ocean so that we have this whole land air sea
thing going on for like a superhero true a whale

(39:57):
and eagle in a tiny fox. Yeah, I'm still I'm
not sold on whale. Maybe just a shark, oh an octopus?
Oh man, those things are cool. We are pretty cool.
I don't know, I don't know. That's a little bit
love crafty and okay, guys, so let us know, I
guess in addition, what kind of animal you would want
to transform into. We're just curious. We're just no one's

(40:18):
no one's getting graded. We're not gonna be We're not
gonna read your email or I won't read your tweet
or your Facebook and think that's a dumb animal or whatever, because,
let's face it, a whale was kind of out there.
It's not the most practical. Yeah, and he's he's kidding
the fox come on, but we we will not judge
you at all. Very interested though, because that that really

(40:40):
is a childhood thing, right, the idea of being embodying
an animal, Oh yeah, absolutely from people have animals with
which they identify on a spiritual level, to right, um,
a certain spirit animal and maybe a totem of some
sort people worship. Uh so yeah, i'd be I'd be

(41:03):
interested to hear about that. Oh what about a spider
if it's changed into a spider? Yeah, okay, one time.
This is I don't know if I ever told you this,
and I don't know if it's the right with how
say it on air. But just one more thing. One
time I had this like recurring dream where I cut
myself and instead of blood, I would like bleat spiders lord,

(41:24):
And I found out that I was actually a massive
spiders that had like stolen someone's skin and just thought
I was a human being. It was trippy, man, that
happened inside your head. Yeah, well it was a dream.
It's not real. I'm a person. Oh man, that is
that's horrifying. Yeah, well, uh, speaking to fantastic segways, it's

(41:46):
I guess it's time for us to head out. Uh,
that's it. So I find us on Facebook, find us
on Twitter, let us know about all that stuff. But
if you don't want to use any of that social media,
you don't want to go to stuff. They don't want
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and you just can't type that long to b r L.
That's cool. Just write us an email. We are conspiracy
at how stuff Works dot com. From more on this topic,

(42:13):
another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
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