Recording and editing this episode so late, it’s practically a live recording! I am the very definition of a strugglebus right now, but at least we’ve got a lot of laughs coming! (And let me know what you think of the music-light version. Do you miss more sound design?)
Annotated Transcript
Kia ora, friends! I’m Katie Nolan, and this is Unsolicited Podcast Opinions, the show where you get more than my two cents; you get the whole damn dollar.
And I’m going to admit, I’m struggling right now. Struggling to keep my small business afloat, struggling to function thanks to the national Adderall shortage, struggling to write this episode.
Because it turns out the only thing I find scarier than wanting my podcasting-sempais to notice me… is actually being noticed by my podcasting-sempais.
I will have a heart attack and die if the hosts of The Cryptid Factor notice me. So please, don’t tell them I’m here.
The Cryptid Factor is a podcast dedicated to all things weird and “unexplained.”
It’s hosted by Kiwi comedians Rhys Darby and Leon “Buttons” Kirkbeck and their friend, writer and podcaster Dan Schrieber.
Honestly, their logline describes the show better than I ever could: “Since 2008 they have passionately (and often awkwardly) been discussing cryptids and monsters like Yeti, Chupacabra, Bigfoot, and Nessie — as well as weird news of the world, UFOs, time travelers, robots and space stuff. Though they take these pseudo-sciences as seriously as they can, they struggle to take themselves seriously at all.”
There is nothing in this world I love more than listening to people having fun, and they are having so much fun. In one episode, they had ChatGPT write a movie script where The Cryptid Factor was an epic sci-fi adventure. It was great.
And, of course, they talk about cryptids, and I freaking love cryptids.
For those who aren’t familiar, a cryptid is “an animal that has been claimed to exist but never proven to exist.”1 The Loch Ness Monster is a pretty iconic example, though I personally have a soft spot for Chessie, a knock-off version of the Loch Ness Monster invented by some environmental group — or maybe an environmental/governmental agency — when I was a kid to get people interested in Chesapeake Bay conservation. It doesn’t really count as a cryptid because nobody actually thinks Chessie’s real, but whatever. I also love Sasquatch, who is SUPER popular in my area of Wisconsin/Minnesota. There’s this one bluff across the river where someone’s placed a wooden silhouette of the ‘Squatch and it just delights me every time we drive past.
So yeah, I love cryptids. My housemates love cryptids. A lot of queer, neurodivergent, and disabled people on the internet love cryptids. Perhaps because those of us who feel like we don’t fit in, whose lives and experiences are constantly invalidated, can relate.
So it really shouldn’t have surprised me that Rhys Darby, who is openly neurodivergent2, loves cryptids so much he started a radio show about them.
And I do mean an actual radio show. Before it was a podcast, The Cryptid Factor was broadcast live on a New Zealand radio station, 8AM on Saturday mornings, all the way back in 2008. In 2013, the show was “reborn” as a podcast. But its radio roots are extremely obvious. Listen to this opening theme:
[mysterious music] The Cryptid Factor with Rhys Darby and Dan Schrieber!3
And their different segments have (what feels to me, at least), like, silly old-timey radio stings:
Weekly World Weird News (freaky, freaky, watch out!)
Attention, all personnel! It's time for this week's cryptid — AHHH, help me!
Also, no matter what mic he uses, Buttons kind of sounds like he’s being broadcast from the 1930s.
Buttons: Um, okay, this one comes from space.com. Its title is alien mothership lurking in our solar system could be watching us with tiny probes, Pentagon and Harvard scientists —
[all hosts laughing]
Buttons: Have you guys heard about this?
Do you hear it, or did Veda just implant the idea of Buttons as a 1930s radio broadcaster in my head and now I can’t unhear it? Please, let me know. I need to know.
My relationship with The Cryptid Factor is different from all of the other podcasts I listen to.
I think it’s because of the way I discovered it.
As I mentioned, we’re all big cryptid fans in my household. And it was actually my housemate, Veda, who introduced me to the podcast.
You see, in addition to being a comedian and podcast host, Rhys Darby is the star of our all-time-favorite TV show, Our Flag Means Death. Now when Veda loves something, they go into hardcore research mode to learn everything about how it was made and the people involved, which is how they discovered Rhys’ podcast about cryptids.
I love cryptids. I love Rhys Darby. I love podcasts. Naturally, I had to listen.
But when I started listening, I discovered that The Cryptid Factor isn’t something I can listen to alone. As funny as the show is, it’s funnier when I listen with Veda. I don’t have the same kind of parasocial relationship that I do with most of the podcast hosts I follow. I think it’s because Veda is a much bigger Rhys Darby fan than I am? So listening to The Cryptid Factor by myself is like hanging out with someone else’s friends without them.
And for awhile, this was a real problem. We listen to things together in the car a lot, and the show is uniquely terrible for listening to in the car, at least for us. Something about the soundwaves being created by the road seem to muddy the sound of the podcast — I’m not exactly sure how the science works — but it ends up that it’s hard to understand what’s being said even with the volume turned up.
Luckily, The Cryptid Factor has a Patreon where they post video versions of the episodes — so basically, the Zoom call. And honestly? I like these versions a lot more.
For one thing, watching something together feels a lot more natural than sitting around listening to something together. This is why, when we tried listening to the podcast, it was always in the car and not in the house. Culturally, we just don’t congregate around the radio the same way we did in the era of FDR’s Fireside chats. It doesn’t matter that it’s just a Zoom recording without any polish; it’s just nice to have something on the screen.
The video component also really helps with Rhys’ style of comedy. The man is a master at character voices, but physicality is actually a big part of how he creates those voices. This bit from episode eighty-three is so much funnier when you can see him pantomiming.
Rhys (normal voice): But there's a lot of blockers in my head — between my head and my voice box, you know, there's like a really old dusty stairwell, and there's a — yeah, there's a dude who's been in there for years who's, like, constantly dusting it, and I've told him, and my brain guys — look, don't worry about the dust, don't worry about it. But he's in the way with his big broom and a lot of my ideas troopers are trying to come down and there’s this is old guy —
Rhys (silly character voice): Ah, nah, I’ve gotta get the stairs, dusting — oh, I'm sorry about this, guys!
Rhys (gruff character voice): No, no, we've gotta come through! We've gotta come through, got some great stuff coming through the — vocals! Vocal team!
Rhys (silly character voice): Aah, no, one at a time! ‘Ey, watch out, there’s a bit of muck there, I haven’t dusted the —
Rhys (gruff character voice): Oh god, that old guy. When are you gonna die?
Rhys (silly character voice): Never! I'm not dying!
I’m still subscribed to the show’s RSS feed, but honestly, I don’t see myself listening on my podcast player instead of just pulling it up on the TV.
So that’s how my relationship with The Cryptid Factor is unique. But it’s also, on a deeper level, kind of complicated.
Because there are some deeply problematic elements to the cryptid-loving subculture.
Cryptozoology — the study of cryptids — is a pseudoscience, one that pretends to be a mashup of biology and folklore studies without really being either. Honestly, the more I’ve read about it, the more I see it as a tool of settler colonialism and the ongoing genocide of indigenous peoples4.
A really poignant example of this is the windigo. There are multiple cryptid-related websites and YouTube videos that describe it as a kind of man-beast that eats human flesh. In reality, the windigo is from the folklore of the Algonquin peoples.5 It represents the spirit of winter and the dangers of selfishness and, in more recent centuries, has come to represent the damage of colonialism and capitalism.6
When we claim the windigo as a cryptid, we are stripping it of its historical context and further erasing indigenous cultures.
Now this isn’t necessarily an issue with The Cryptid Factor podcast — none of the episodes I’ve heard have touched on cryptids appropriated from native folklore — but it’s something that I’ve been struggling with as someone who loves cryptids, and I don’t know whether it’s something the podcast hosts think about at all.
How much critical thinking can we demand from a podcast where the cryptids are really just an excuse for three friends to chat and do impromptu sketch comedy?
And maybe the answer would be “not much” if they only stuck to sketch comedy. But in episode eighty-three, they get into some really uncomfortable anti-science territory in their interview with Avi Loeb.
Astronomer Avi Loeb isn’t exactly a fringe thinker — he’s a Professor of Science at Harvard University’s Department of Astronomy and founding director of the Black Hole Initiative.7 But he is extremely controversial among astrobiologists for his assertions about extraterrestrial life.8
In an interview with The Scientific American, Loeb claims that most scientists today are motivated by ego and no longer guided by evidence.9
And he repeats those points in his interview on The Cryptid Factor — and the hosts agree! — that scientists need to be more humble and not assume that they know everything.
Avi Loeb: I'm talking about new evidence about interstellar objects that appear to be — so it's very different. I mean, I'm talking about clues that come from the sky. I mean, we have some data that is intriguing. My colleagues are saying it's not intriguing: let's move on, it's a rock, it's a comet. It's something — for me, I say, well, look at the data!
When adults want to pretend that they're adults, they show off, and they just never admit that they're ignorant. Never. I refuse to abide by this approach. So even though I will not get prizes, honors, as a result, I don't care. But I am not willing to be the so-called adult in the room. Because, actually, the kid that said the emperor has no clothes — that kid was the adult.
Buttons: Yeah, good point.
Avi Loeb: Because that kid was sincere, whereas the adults are cheating. They're behaving like kids!
Rhys: Yeah.
Avi Loeb: So it's a reverse reversal of roles, you know.
Buttons: I think that's one of my greatest qualities, Avi, is that I am fully aware of how ignorant I am. My ignorance is — it's huge. It's quite amazing.
Avi Loeb: Rhys, do you agree with that?
Rhys: I think all three of us are willing to say we don't know — we don’t know things. That is so right. The intellectuals especially are the ones who find it the most difficult to say I don't know. Yeah, they will make something up.
Avi Loeb: Why do you think that is? I think it's just because of their attach — to their ego too much. I think that is the fundamental reason.
Rhys: And they’ve also been told their whole life that they're smart.
Buttons: Yeah.
This really hurt for me to hear because this description of scientists looks nothing like the ones I know.
I’ve worked on two space-related documentaries for the Smithsonian Channel (rest in peace to a real one) — Apollo’s Moon Shot and Making Tracks on Mars. I’ve been in conversations with researchers at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies. The scientists that I’ve known and interacted with have all been deeply committed to following the evidence, the strictest standards of scientific method, and absolutely happy to admit what they don’t know. They are DRIVEN by the unanswered questions.
Obviously, I haven’t worked with every scientist in the world. Loeb no doubt knows more of them than I do, and it could very well be he’s encountered more smug assholes than I have. But given that he shows none of the humility he demands from others… I don’t trust his judgment.
And the extremely negative, adversarial position he takes against his fellow scientists feels both mean-spirited and kind of dangerous.
In 2013, paleontologist Donald Prothero warned:
Rather than merely wasting time and resources, the widespread acceptance of the reality of cryptids may feed into the general culture of ignorance, pseudoscience, and anti-science. The more the paranormal is touted by the media as acceptable and scientifically credible — rather than subjected to the harsh scrutiny of the scientific method, the rigor of critical thinking, and the demand for real evidence —the more people are made vulnerable to the predations of con artists, gurus, and cult leaders.
His words feel prophetic. We’re living in the era of QAnon, where a huge swath of our population distrusts experts and has proven vulnerable to conspiratorial thinking.
To what extent is The Cryptid Factor part of that cultural trend?
I don’t know.
What I do know — hello, tonal shift — is that Rhys, Buttons, and Dan are three very funny men who have a lot of fun together.
And if The Cryptid Factor sounds up your alley, I really do recommend just listening to whatever the latest episode is. If you love it, you can check out their back catalog, but I don’t have any one amazingly good episode to recommend. They’re all funny. And their Patreon where you can see the video? Is absolutely worth it.
I’m going to nix my usual spiel about listening and subscribing, and instead ask y’all for a favor.
Pick your favorite episode so far and forward it to three people who might also like it. If you want to post about it on social media, that is totally awesome! But nothing beats that “Hey friendo, I think you specifically will like this” personal touch.
Seriously. Marketing is hard. Help a friend out?
Unsolicited Podcast Opinions is a production of Katie Nolan Studio.
It’s executive produced by the wonderful Alicia Green. Feel better soon, Alicia!
And to everyone — haere rā!
On the Dom Harvey podcast, Rhys says: “I’ve just, I’m pretty sure I’m definitely spectrum-y, but so are some of my friends and we — now, our children, yes, we would get them diagnosed, we would, so you can know how to operate with them and, um — but even then, you know, I don’t think it’s something you necessarily have to do unless the kid is clearly quite far on the spectrum and then obviously you can — you do need to deal with it. But I do think I can float. I’m a floater.”
The fact that Buttons isn’t in the opening theme is an ongoing joke in the series, made even funnier by the fact that Buttons is the one who edits the podcast.
This is a great paper on Cultural Genocide that I highly recommend reading.
Atlas Obscura has a pretty good summary of the windigo in folklore, though I don’t think it properly recognizes the issues with settlers “running away with” the folklore.
See the link above
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