Episode 41: The Sexy, Synch-tastic Sasquatch with Stephanie Quick
“The Lovers” collage by Barbara Fisher A Sexy Sasquatchy version of The Lovers Tarot Card.
Back in the day, when reporters wrote on typewriters, and typesetters worked on linotype machines, newspaper editors used to call late summer “the silly season.”
This was because Washington DC would shut down for vacation, summer sports were winding down, school was still out for summer and the European governments in a lull, there just wasn’t much write about.
So, editors turned to fluff feature pieces to fill the pages of their newspapers:
celebrity sexcapades and society gossip shared space with feature articles on dogs who could bark out, “I love you,” and kids breaking the world record for giant rubber band balls.
John Keel made mention of “the silly season” several times in his books, noting that late summer would invariably bring a rash of news reports of flying saucers, lake monster sightings and of course,, encounters with Bigfoot.
He said that it wasn’t necessarily that these sightings happened more often in the summer, it was that the editors were short of heavy news and so sent hapless reporters out to talk to farmers who claimed to have aliens landing in their fields just to have something to fill the bleak, empty column inches.
So, in honor of John Keel’s silly season, the women of Six Degrees of John Keel teamed up with author and Synchmistress Stephanie Quick to bring you episode 41: “The Sexy Sync-Tastic Sasquatch.”
The episode grew out of a series of synchronicities Stephanie had wherein she was sent papers, photographs, tweets, illustrations and stories about Bigfoot and sexuality. She had written about it on Facebook, and I (Barbara) saw the post, read her white paper, read the scholarly paper that had been sent to her, and said, “Stephanie—you gotta come on the podcast and talk with us about this!”
And so, our silly season sexy Sasquatch episode was born.
Now, we’re talking about sex, so I’m not sure this episode is what y’all would call “workplace safe” and “child friendly.” We talk about anatomy, so words like “penis,” “breasts,” and “erection” are bandied about. I believe the phrase, “raging boner” was used once. There is discussion of flatulence. And you might learn a new word for intercourse, which is actually an old word, I first heard in one of Shakespeare’s plays.
And we do giggle a lot. (It is the silly season, after all, right?)
Some of it is right funny, but a lot of it is serious and even scholarly, because we start with a paper about the Yeti as a guru in the shamanic practices of Nepal. I mean, it does go downhill, but not all the way to the gutter, I promise. There’s personal stories, a synch that has to do with our podcast, the taboo of talking about Bigfoot sexuality, and so much more.
And there’s more we could have talked about, and didn’t get around to as well. Sasquatch is a potent, fertile, earthy image of the wild both within us and outside us. So, there may be a part two—you never know. I think we could talk another couple of hours on variations of this subject and -still- not be done with it.
It was a lot of fun, and we hope you enjoy our homage to the silly season.
Links to books and other resources mentioned in this podcast:
Ghost Dog is a Mystery Box: An Esoteric Memoir by Stephanie Quick
THE "CALLING," THE YETI, AND THE BAN JHAKRI ("FOREST SHAMAN") IN NEPALESE SHAMANISM* by Larry G. Peters
Peregrinations: The Ethnography of Shaligram Shila by Dr. Holly Walters
Illustration of R. Crumb doppleganger with Bigfoot by R. Crumb (links to frontal nude female figure)
Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in North America by Loren Coleman
Monsters Among Us Podcast Season 9, Episode 6, Sasquatch Abduction
