The FBI is on the hunt for Bigfoot. Scientists are pulling apart your pint. Fame is a lot more dangerous than it looks from the outside. This week, we’re jumping into the odd corners where government files, molecular mysteries and rockstar statistics all cross paths. Some stories get solved, some just get weirder and some might make you think twice about chasing the spotlight.
The FBI Goes Bigfoot Hunting
Even the FBI cannot resist a monster mystery. Not long ago, the Bureau released its own Bigfoot files, showing that agents actually analysed a mysterious patch of skin and hair, hoping to crack the legend. Unfortunately, the result was not a creature of the night, but a very confused deer. Bigfoot remains a myth, but the case files are a goldmine for anyone who loves a government conspiracy or the hope that something odd is out there. The Freedom of Information Vault is packed with stories that make you want to believe, even if all you get is a hairy deer.
Beer With a Side of Science
Raise a glass to the science of beer. Researchers at the University of Queensland got forensic with their pints, using mass spectrometry to break down the proteins in 23 different beers. The verdict is in. Craft brews have a unique molecular signature that sets them apart from the big brands. The next time you’re sipping an IPA and feeling a bit smug, you can thank the complex protein profile for that extra bit of flavour. Science says your tastebuds are not imagining things. Craft really does mean something.
Fame Is Actually Dangerous
Now for something heavier. Being a rockstar can actually kill you. Studies show that famous musicians are much more likely to die young than the rest of us, and it is not just the wild parties to blame. The real problem is fame itself. The pressure, the scrutiny and the constant comparisons to legends like Kurt Cobain all add up. The spotlight is a lot harsher than it looks from the cheap seats. If you are dreaming of rock glory, maybe keep the music and skip the fame.
So there you have it. Mysteries that are not quite what they seem, beer that is more complex than you thought and the kind of fame you might want to avoid.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:13 The FBI's Bigfoot Files
01:46 Exploring the Freedom of Information Vault
03:37 The FBI's Investigation into Bigfoot
07:08 Mass Spectrometry and Beer Proteins
10:12 Craft Beer vs. Mass-Produced Beer
13:01 The Dream of Being a Rockstar
13:58 The Risks of Fame in the Music Industry
18:09 Concluding Thoughts and Listener Engagement
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[00:00:00] WILL: It is time for a little bit of science. Mm. I'm will grant an associate professor in science communication at the Australian National University,
[00:00:13] ROD: and I'm Rod Lambert. I'm a 30 year science communication veteran with a mind of a teenage boy. And today, well
[00:00:20] WILL: we've been at the Beach
[00:00:22] ROD: Large Hadron Collider.
[00:00:23] Yeah. Drinking in swimming cocktails. In fact, I'm still there. I dunno where you are
[00:00:27] WILL: of, uh, isotopes and science and stuff like that. So rather than giving you our regular pile of science.
[00:00:34] ROD: We've saved you something delicious. We've been queing away little snippets throughout the millennium and you're gonna get a bunch of those right now.
[00:00:42] It's gonna be fab. Enjoy.
[00:00:48] Gonna read a fox molder for you. So just in the last week. Oh, hang on. For the young listeners, Fox Molder was a character in a very old television show from the 1820s called The XFiles. The XFiles, that's how you pronounce it, the
[00:00:59] WILL: XFiles, the most important TV show. The documentary since. Johnny Carson. Yeah, the documentary of how our government's been lying to us about all sorts of stuff.
[00:01:08] As the American government, they're not our government, our governments, thank you have been lying, plurals matter. Anyway, over the last week, the FBI has finally, finally released. Their secret Bigfoot file?
[00:01:21] ROD: No.
[00:01:22] WILL: The research that the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation did on Bigfoot. I have a question.
[00:01:28] Okay. What's the question? Why the hell are they doing it? Why the hell are they doing it? Well, does Bigfoot commit crimes? Well. Bigfoot might have kidnapped someone stealing wallets from people in the club. Bigfoot might have crossed state lines with a, with a packet of cigarettes, with a packet of cigarettes or something For a child?
[00:01:43] Yes. Why the hell? Well, I will answer that for you. So just to add a little bit of context here on the FB website is a fairly interesting place called the FOIA Vault. Freedom of Information, basically what's the a uh, America. Yeah, [00:02:00] like in Australia, we have freedom of information. They have freedom of information In America, I don't know, when people do a freedom of information and they say, can you give me the files that you have on whatever the moon landing that JFK did when he wasn't moved?
[00:02:12] A whole bunch of these I, I actually tra through this and I'm gonna tell you, tell you some more about this. Yeah. A whole bunch of these. Pick a vaguely controversial person in America. Go back into the, the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, you know, there's, there's all sorts of people. Lots and lots of entertainers of lots of black panthers.
[00:02:28] Yeah. Yeah. And political figures, you know, moving into some of the extremists and terrorists and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. Which you'd expect. You'd expect the FBI I to. And so, you know, I was clicking through a bunch of them. There's like, you know, some of these weird satanic cults and stuff like that they have just released, I dunno why in this last week, some conspiracy theorists say this is a distraction.
[00:02:49] But the fbi, I was, I was literally
[00:02:50] ROD: gonna say, '
[00:02:50] WILL: cause something else that wants to say, finally released all of their work. On Bigfoot, fuck off. Like
[00:02:56] ROD: honestly. No, no, seriously, they, you,
[00:03:00] WILL: yeah. Yeah.
[00:03:01] ROD: You're not, you're not like, you know, shitting on my balls here. It's true. No,
[00:03:03] WILL: no. You can go and read. They've redacted a key couple of key names and things like that, so all of these have had BF it could be anything, little redact redactions throughout them, but you can go and check this and it's worth, it's worth actually trawling through, you know, there's some actually juicy stuff in here,
[00:03:18] ROD: protecting bigfoot files.
[00:03:19] WILL: Okay. I, I dunno how much for, but I gotta tell you. Holy shit. Not the most exciting bit of research ever.
[00:03:28] ROD: That sounds great. And what they do is they go, look how boring it really is. Look how boring it really is. Your lives are as small as you thought they were. Yeah,
[00:03:35] WILL: literally. Literally. There is nothing out there.
[00:03:37] So basically in 1976, the Bigfoot Information Center in Oregon. Yeah. Found a sample. Of what they thought was Bigfoot. It was a small sample, uh, like a patch of skin with some long hairs, like of course, 15 long hairs. And, and they're like, this could only be Bigfoot. They'd gone to the press about this. Yeah.
[00:03:58] And said, look, this is, you know, [00:04:00] it's pretty interesting. We've got the evidence of the Bigfoot here that's right in some hair and skin sample. And they said, look, the only way we're gonna get authoritative inquiries is to go to the F fbi. Now within the Bigfoot file is actually quite a few pages of the FBI going, alright, so the primary purpose of our labs is to identify criminal matter or matter associated with a criminal investigation.
[00:04:24] That's what I thought and work it out, but, oh, there's a discussion. From time to time, we may use our labs for other purposes if deemed fit by the director. Yeah, that's of the scientific hook and blow for Keith's 50th. It's not quite hookers and blow for Keith's 50th. I think it, it's like matters of significant public interest or I guess it's basically, or Bigfoot.
[00:04:44] When you've got downtime and you want to use the lab equipment and someone comes in with some crack crop stuff, you can do it. All these sequences are sitting there idle. We should do something. So the FBI agreed to have a look at this sample of Bigfoot 15 hairs on a tiny little patch of skin. That's a sailor song, 15 hairs on a tiny patch of skin, Yoho Ho, and a bottle of gin after.
[00:05:08] Mm-hmm. The full 22 pages of report, they go. Yeah, it's Bigfoot. No. Oh, they said it's just deer. Like it's just, it's just deer. Don't have a long here, it's just deer. So it's a freak. Deer. I don't know. It's like, dear beard, or, dear dear, dear Beard, dear. Something like that, and I'm like, holy shit. This is the most disappointing thing.
[00:05:27] The FBI's Bigfoot file. It's like. Someone sent in a weird bit of crap and the FBI said, fuck it. Let's venison, let's use our lab equipment and take a look. But I just wanna say, yeah, it is worth taking a dig through the FOIA vault. 'cause there are a bunch of other interesting in juicy things. There's a few conspiracy theories, there's a few cults.
[00:05:48] There's all sorts of people. There's stuff on Princess Diana. There's stuff on Johnny Cash. There's stuff on Johnny Cash. Yeah. Johnny Cash. Really? Yeah. Steve Jobs was in there. Well, that's nice. But the one that got me, it was Louie [00:06:00] Louie in Bracket Song.
[00:06:02] ROD: Yeah. Away we go now. Hey, there you go.
[00:06:05] WILL: So it was brought to the FBI's attention 1963.
[00:06:09] It's a very, oh, what would that genre, you know, the early rocks sort of
[00:06:12] ROD: Yeah, yeah. Um, when, when the Clean Cuts of Fire
[00:06:15] WILL: was banging his cousin and all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They're all wearing ties and stuff like that. Like that. Yeah. But their hair's a bit messy. Oh, was was it? Yeah. Who's my Miss? Well, well Secret.
[00:06:23] This was the Kingsman. There you go. Louis Louie by the Kingsman. It was quite popular at the time, but the lyrics are really quite mumbled and apparently somewhere in the middle they say the word Fuck what I know. And so the FBI was tasked to investigate, what did they actually say? Is the
[00:06:39] ROD: word fucking it?
[00:06:40] Yes.
[00:06:40] WILL: No, they, they couldn't case closed, they couldn't come to a conclusion. They were like, that's from one recording. They mumbled too much. I can't understand this. So these old guys in the FBI are like, no, there's too much mumbling. I can't understand. Well,
[00:06:50] ROD: I, I can sing that song on how it goes. Oh yeah, away I go Now,
[00:06:56] WILL: fuck, there you go.
[00:06:58] Fuck, fuck no, fuck no. Just once. Just once. Not for my version. So anyway, uh, FBI, not much to add on Bigfoot, very sadly.
[00:07:08] ROD: I did the wrong PhD, so Ben Schultz, he's an associate professor at the University of Queensland. Oh, what a great university. You probably know him, right? He's got a PhD student called Edward Kerr, who I don't know if he's graduated yet, maybe not quite yet.
[00:07:20] Anyway, their research involves using a technique called mass Spectrometry. Proteomics,
[00:07:26] WILL: okay.
[00:07:27] ROD: But it's my favorite kind of proteomics.
[00:07:29] WILL: Slow it
[00:07:29] ROD: down in, uh, gimme, gimme, gimme it in, uh, plain. Okay. Mass spect, no. Our research, this, this is, this is what Kurt says. So the grad student. Our research looked at what proteins are present and how much there is in each protein.
[00:07:43] I'll tell you in what in a moment. So what proteins are there in this substance and how much of each protein there is? So what kind and how much, essentially a mass spectrometer measures the mass molecule. Yep. It allows them then to match the [00:08:00] experimentally measured masses to a theoretical list of proteins and identify what's present.
[00:08:04] Okay. And how many, so what's there? Let's check. Theoretically. Okay, this is what we've got, so,
[00:08:08] WILL: so, so, but it's all about the mass. So it's all about mass A protein, like a protein A should weigh about this sort of amount. And if we've got a protein that weighs this amount, then we reckon we've got protein A.
[00:08:17] ROD: Yeah. And there's this many of them. So there's more of protein A than B, et cetera, et cetera. You're jealous of the researcher. Uh, no, not quite. I mean, it sounds cool. So lemme tell you why they did it. To identify, quantify, and characterize the proteins in 23 different styles and brands of beer. Ooh, I know.
[00:08:33] Suddenly you're like, hang on. So the proteins play an important part in forming a beer's, sensory properties apparently. So. Taste, smell, mouth feel, deliciousness, crisp, multi and bitter flavors. Floral and fruity aromas, they're perhaps the first descriptions that come to mind when describing beer Says Schultz, the the as pro, but other sensory factors are just as important.
[00:08:56] He goes on. So an attractive, stable head of foam, obviously smooth, creamy mouth feel.
[00:09:01] WILL: Yeah. Getting
[00:09:03] ROD: Ian, they're essential, but often overlooked Elements of a great beer. Beer, proteome the protein. Yeah. Um, you know, the assay or the full sets of protein, it's critical controlling all these factors and it has something to do with the ingredients, the yeast, the fermentation, the overall process.
[00:09:19] So that's great.
[00:09:20] WILL: Okay,
[00:09:21] ROD: so their initial assumption was there'd be a difference between different styles of beer, like a lager, a pale ale than IPA Stout, and you're like, that makes sense. Right,
[00:09:28] WILL: sure.
[00:09:30] ROD: Better. What turns out when they targeted their analysis on a single brewery to remove and think about variations, they found differences not only in beer styles, but between variations of breweries as well, so styles of beer, but also within breweries and between breweries themselves, even on similar styles of beer.
[00:09:48] Okay? So the proteins from yeast that make craft beers distinct from beers from your mass. Produced mobs. Oh,
[00:09:55] WILL: really? So craft
[00:09:55] ROD: beers actually are more delicious than different. The end results. Craft beer. Yeah. Craft beer are [00:10:00] better. Wanker. I'm not a wanker, I'm just reporting on it. He's so mean to me. So they could clearly distinguish between the profiles of different beers and different breweries.
[00:10:07] So the bottom line is craft beers really are different. We're not just snobs, we're right. Well, I am. I know you don't care.
[00:10:14] WILL: No, I know. You like vb. I like vb. No, I like craft beer. But, but you, for X you said they're really different. Mm-hmm. Not better. No, you didn't say that. Oh, I meant better. You didn't say that.
[00:10:24] I don't think. I don't think the results, the research said that either, but you can infer it. So scientists put beer in, in, in a mass spectrometer and
[00:10:32] ROD: discover the craft beer is better
[00:10:33] WILL: and, and no, and said craft beer had some things in it.
[00:10:36] ROD: But being researched, this is the bit I like the most. Obviously you've gotta end with further research.
[00:10:41] Should, should what? So they said that we've only done 23 beers, so we've gotta do a lot more because the findings would be beneficial in future beer making processes. And then they go on to like yakbar about Oh yeah, because, you know, gluten free and, and like bullshit. Bullshit. You want to test more beer?
[00:10:57] You want to see which craft is the most delicious, maybe get sponsorship for your lab. I, I, I think it's fabulous. Do you. Like good on 'em. Like I, I love, I love because you're basically
[00:11:06] WILL: drinking beers for your PhD and occasionally you're not drinking 'em, you're putting 'em in the machine. You don't know they're not drinking as well.
[00:11:10] You're pouring the beer in the machine. Not all of it. They have to all of it. It has to be a hundred percent. It's ethics committee. Yeah, ethics committee. Yeast. Yeast are sentient. You're not allowed to have any, you're not allowed to have any. They, I don't like it anymore. I've changed my mind. It's, you know what, you know what I think this is, this is like, this is like people like, oh, I love going to the pub.
[00:11:26] I should, I should own a pub. And it's like, that's true. You, you know what?
[00:11:30] ROD: You know what I love? Why don't you just go to the pub? Why don't just, I love beer so much. I'm gonna make it my job and my hobby and my interest and what I marry. Just, just stop, enjoy something.
[00:11:42] WILL: Don't turn it into like, are you saying doing science is not enjoyable?
[00:11:46] I'm saying science. Science is wonderful. Let's, I I didn't quite see what the question they were answering there was, I don't know what it was either. They just were check, so, so we've used our science machine to say that there is different stuff in BA versus beer b. I
[00:11:59] ROD: think the [00:12:00] main thing they were trying to do, like the, the suspicion was that it'll be basically laggers differ from ales, differ from stouts.
[00:12:06] And you're like, well, of course they do. Oh. But now they've gone, oh, actually no, the mass produced versus the crafts.
[00:12:11] WILL: You know? You know, so I, I read this study today and I was like, Jesus Christ, I am so bored. You know, I was, I was using AI tools, right? To tell the difference between wild court salmon and, um, and farmed salmon.
[00:12:24] You just look at 'em, aquaculture and it's like, I get that there may be people out there lying, but in general, yeah, in general, you can tell. 'cause the, the aquaculture salmon comes out there, goes onto the truck, goes into the. Supermarket from there and the wild court salmon comes from somewhere else and it's like, I would've thought that's true.
[00:12:42] I feel like, I feel like, did we need, need AI to tell us this? No. Maybe instead we could just have trustworthy system. I like it just, yeah, it's getting carried away. It's science doesn't need to solve all problems. Yeah. You don't need to publish
[00:12:56] ROD: something on everything.
[00:12:57] WILL: Love you science. Love you. Science, obviously.
[00:13:01] So you wanted to be a rockstar, didn't you? I feel like I am, but No, I get it. In your soul. In your soul. Yeah. Yeah. I've got, you know, in the multiverse. Yeah. One or two of you are rock stars. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you gotta harbor that somewhere that, uh, I agree with you. Somewhere out there. You did the time
[00:13:18] ROD: you put the tunes in.
[00:13:20] I feel like I did, but yeah. I wanted to be, and I was really convinced until, what day is it? Till Monday this week that I would be, and now I'm like only 60% sure.
[00:13:30] WILL: Well, this is actually not why I'm not a rockstar. No. 'cause, uh, you know, realistically that's about dedication and spending the time and, uh, talent.
[00:13:38] And talent. Yeah, talent. Luck comes in. Yeah. Luck. Luck. I'm not saying you're not talent being in the right place at the right time, you know all of that. I'm not saying you're not talented, but this is, this is more about the downsides. Rocking star in, oh, this is why you decided not to be a rock star. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:13:51] I read the research and now Me Too this. Now this is legit. I don't know what the story is, but me as well. That's why I'm not either. We've known for quite a lot while [00:14:00] that, uh, rock stars have a higher mortality risk compared with the general population.
[00:14:05] ROD: It's basically, in many cases, in the job description's, in the duty statement, in the job, in the
[00:14:10] WILL: job description.
[00:14:10] ROD: Are you prepared to live fast A and b die young.
[00:14:13] WILL: Exactly. Exactly. It's the rules. You are. A candle in the wind. Oh, some might say specifically North American and European famous musicians exhibit on mortality risk two to three times higher compared with the general population within two to 25 years of achieving fame.
[00:14:30] So they're far more likely to die. The compared with the general population and includes happily or not happily. Mm. Suicide rate two to seven times higher than the national average. But researchers have said, you know, we don't actually know what the cause of this is. Previous studies didn't really disentangle whether it's fame.
[00:14:51] It's the lifestyle of being a professional musician because the lifestyle, ah, even if you're not famous, involves late hours. You're working gigs all over the place. You're traveling a lot. You're exposed to a whole bunch of risk in the back of the van. Yeah, there's a fair bit of drugs around. There's a fair bit.
[00:15:07] Even, even if you're not famous, there's a fair bit of the risky things around your drugs
[00:15:11] ROD: and your s your your diseases, td.
[00:15:14] WILL: Yeah, exactly. All of that's available even to your friends at the Folk festival that you know might be strumming the guitar. They're not my friends. In front of, front of those are your friends, 12 or 13 people.
[00:15:24] ROD: Those are your friends at the Folk Festival.
[00:15:26] WILL: So these guys said, no, we need to work out if it's actually the fame that's killing these people. Uh, we used a retrospective matched case control design where they're comparing famous singers with less matched famous singers that are similar, like the same gender, same nationality, same ethnicity, same genre, and solo or band status.
[00:15:44] So they get like a Kurt Cobain and then they go, me. Okay, well, well, okay, you, you're a white guy. Maybe born about the same, same age. Same age, like within a
[00:15:54] ROD: couple of months. We're the same age. Oh my
[00:15:55] WILL: god. Ethnicity. Oh yeah. Okay. Genre. What's your genre?
[00:15:59] ROD: I [00:16:00] grunge slash stoner rock. Nice slash psychedelic.
[00:16:02] Would
[00:16:02] WILL: you be in a band or are you solo a band? Oh, okay. So, so you party with the bros. Well, okay. So they matched Kurt Cobain with you? With you, with me, yeah. Yeah. And then multiplied that for all of the others. You know, you get to Janice Jolet. Do,
[00:16:14] ROD: do you know why they matched Kurt Cobain with me? Uh, because we met carry on.
[00:16:23] So they match the people on super famous. Yeah. And, and so the,
[00:16:27] WILL: so the con the, the condition, the different condition is whether they're famous or not.
[00:16:31] ROD: Other than that, they do the same stuff. They do the same stuff. They gig, they play, they're into it. They've got the genre, they've got around the age, they've got the whiteness or the blackness.
[00:16:38] I
[00:16:38] WILL: love that they included genre
[00:16:39] ROD: like
[00:16:40] WILL: it's.
[00:16:40] ROD: It makes sense. It does make sense because
[00:16:43] WILL: some genres, well look, okay, there was, there was eras in American hip hop that might have been a little bit dangerous with some sort of fun. Let's keep it
[00:16:50] ROD: super simple. All you gotta do is say original early days, hardcore punk, you kind of were a loser if you didn't nearly or actually die.
[00:16:58] You gotta be fucked up.
[00:16:59] WILL: Yeah, folk, maybe not so much death on stage. So here we go. This is why I'm not a rock star. Mm-hmm. The results showed when they compared the non-famous, but same genre. Same type, same person. Yep. The famous singers, 33% more likely to die that much. Yeah. Yeah, it's the fame. It's the fame that gets you.
[00:17:18] And so, so how do they define fame? Uh, w with, um, uh, measures, cool measures and metrics. That's what I would've done. Oh, it's pretty obvious. We know what fame is. Seriously. I I just, I don't wanna offend you, but Kurt Cobain Will, is, was remains, will be more famous than you.
[00:17:34] ROD: I wish we did know what fame was.
[00:17:36] I wish we did.
[00:17:37] WILL: Oh my God. If you
[00:17:38] ROD: are listening, and I know you are. Help.
[00:17:40] WILL: Weird.
[00:17:41] ROD: We wanna die young too. Too late for me. So
[00:17:43] WILL: the conclusion, this study provides new evidence suggesting that fame may be associated with increased mortality risk among musicians beyond occupational factors. That's like, gimme more, more so what's your advice here?
[00:17:53] Yeah, yeah. Don't,
[00:17:53] ROD: don't fame. Don't, don't fame. Fame less be really successful, but [00:18:00] don't fame in an entertainment industry. So there you go. That's why. I'm not a rockstar.
[00:18:09] WILL: Well, that was your little bit of science for the week, your holiday edition, your
[00:18:12] ROD: special by the pool wearing
[00:18:14] WILL: a bikini edition. But because you're on holiday, you know that you still have the power to give us the rating that you
[00:18:21] ROD: need to give us. Yeah. Seven stars on every app. Even things that don't do podcasts.
[00:18:24] WILL: Yeah.
[00:18:25] ROD: Go out
[00:18:26] WILL: there and write it on like
[00:18:27] ROD: a recipe app and Uber and Yelp. Is it Yelp still? I think.
[00:18:30] WILL: I think so.
[00:18:31] ROD: I dunno. I'm at a restaurant and, and listener, if you've got some. Topics that you want us to explore, tell Will. How would we tell Will his number is 0 4 0 5? Not like that. Oh. Uh, cheers at a little bit of science.com au.
[00:18:46] Do
[00:18:46] WILL: that. We want your stories. Yeah, we wanna hear from you. Lovely listener. Enjoy the peanuts, colada.
[00:18:52] ROD: Oh, and the.
[00:18:54] WILL: Pene, K Pia Pia of the Clay Pin. Cate.
