Owen Wilson stars in new podcast about San Antonio man's yeti hunt
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Tom Slick sets out on a mission to find the yeti in Nepal in 1957. Photo: Catherine Nixon Cooke/"Tom Slick: Mystery Hunter"
A new podcast will tell the story of an interesting character in San Antonio history and his hunt to find the yeti.
Why it matters: Produced by iHeartPodcasts and School of Humans, the podcast features Texan Owen Wilson as Tom Slick, bringing star power and circulation to the mostly true story of the San Antonio business leader and adventurer.
Zoom in: The eight-episode series "Tom Slick: Mystery Hunter" follows his adventures leading up to and including his 1958 hunt for the yeti. While based on true events, the podcast is partly fictionalized.
- To set up the series, the story is told through tapes found by Slick's (fictional) granddaughter Liv Slick in her (fictional) mother Claire Slick's attic.
- Liv is voiced by Schuyler Fisk and Claire is voiced by Schuyler's mom, Sissy Spacek.
In the podcast, the family listens back to the tapes to learn about Slick's adventures, based on real events, which include:
- The kidnapping of his stepfather by the infamous bank robber Machine Gun Kelly
- A covert operation of the OSS, which preceded the CIA, to stop a Nazi spy ring in Latin America.
- His enduring hunt for the yeti.
Context: The real-life Slick was born in 1916 to an oil tycoon who died when Slick was a teenager, leaving a fortune to his children.
- Slick became a philanthropist and used the money to support scientific research, oil drilling, cattle breeding and more. He was also a modern art collector.
- He earned a premedical degree from Yale University and took courses at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Slick founded two major San Antonio-based institutions: what is now the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, in 1941, and the Southwest Research Institute in 1947.
Slick was also devoted to adventure — and the search for cryptids.
- In 1956, he spent two weeks in the jungles of British Guiana with a Waiwai tribe. His plane made a forced landing there during a diamond-hunting trip.
- He organized several hunts for the yeti in the Himalayas, the most well-known being the 1958 expedition.
- He also searched for the Loch Ness Monster, and later focused on finding Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest.
Fun fact: Tom Slick Park in West San Antonio features a sculpture of the Loch Ness Monster in a pond, as tribute to Slick.
- Slick was buried at Mission Burial Park on the South Side.
What's next: The new show will be released on Thursday on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are available.