#2577 - Gregory Forth

“Well, certainly traditionally, not so much nowadays among the men. But until quite recently, they would regularly, habitually, excuse me, chew what's called betel nut. No. Yeah, it's not actually a nut. It's an areca nut. It's a palm nut.”

“I mean, yeah. I consumed it regularly when I was on Sumba in the 1970s. What was that like? It was pleasant. It turned my teeth black, as it does with the local people. It's kind of like, I don't know, smoking too many cigars in a row.”

“Sorry. Are you still smoking? A small cigar, maybe five or six times a week. Okay. Yeah. After lunch only. I get it. No more than one a day. Some days none. I haven't had one since Monday.”

“No, I enjoy smoking cigars. I do as well. But that was my point. Like, if there was something that would cause them to see things that maybe wouldn't be available to other people consciousness.”

“He's a physical anthropologist. And the book is called Bigfoot Debunked. I mean, he's sort of virulently opposed to any suggestion that anything like this could exist. And the best he could do with Jacko is conclude that it was a chimpanzee that had escaped from a circus or a zoo.”

Our IdentificationSaid as “Bigfoot Debunked”. We believe this refers to Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America's Enduring Legend.

“a guy called John Napier, who wrote a very interesting book called I guess Bigfoot back in, I don't know, the early 70s. It's largely partly focused on the Patterson film.”

“this person had encountered something. I got the name. Yeah, here it is. I've got it. It's a woman named Sabine Kugler, who wrote this book called Child of the Jungle. Her parents were German missionaries and in a super remote area of western Papua.”

“You were smoking cigarettes on the island by yourself? How'd you get them there? Oh, there were cigarettes for sale. Oh, they have very good ones, yeah. Okay. And they make their own as well. They grow their own tobacco. Okay. So there's nothing. My point was there's nothing that causes hallucinations.”

“Have you ever had that coffee that they make out of the civet dung? Yes, indeed. Kopi Luwak. Luwak. That's exactly the species, yeah. I've had that. Yeah. Very remarkably smooth coffee, but... Yes, very expensive as well. It's disconcerting to think that you're drinking coffee that came out of a civet's butt.”

“What is it called? It's called The Wicked Witch, and then there's a subtitle, which is Origins of an Enduring Worldwide Belief. Because one of my main aims is to show that there are very few cultures anywhere that don't have a belief that corresponds very closely, even in the smallest particulars, to what we understand by witches in the West.”

“working in that area as well. You mentioned camera traps. That would be a good idea. In fact, I'm working, I think you could say, at present with a man in the Netherlands who is very keen on doing the sort of thing you've just described.”