Ten Feet Tall and Full of Lies
About this episode
This episode explores the Cardiff Giant hoax and the con man behind it, revealing America's tendency to believe in what it wants.
Long before viral hoaxes and deep fakes, there was the Cardiff Giant — a ten-foot stone "man" unearthed from a New York farm that had people lining up (and paying admission) to gawk at what they believed was a biblical relic or a fossilized ancient. It was neither. It was gypsum, a con man's imagination, and America's gift for believing exactly what it wants to. We dig into the hoax, the man behind it, and the P.T. Barnum plot twist you didn't see coming. https://www.farmersmuseum.org/cardiff-giant/ https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5824/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-cardiff-giant-one-of-historys-most-famous-hoaxes-72691312/ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cardiff-giant https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cardiff-Giant https://www.history.com/articles/cardiff-giant-hoax https://www.nysm.nysed.gov/exhibitions/ongoing/cardiff-giant https://archive.org/details/cardiffgiant00newy https://books.google.com/books?id=Qb4DAAAAYAAJ (contemporary 19th-century accounts) https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/ (period newspaper coverage) History – The Cardiff Giant Fools the Nation Readex – The Tallest of the Tall Tales The Cardiff Giant reference overview…
More episodes of Champagne and Murder, Please
- Something's Lurking in Ohio... Something's Breathing in Illinois
- Fire in the Sky: The Disasters That Changed Everything
- Welcome to Hell's Half Acre: The Bloody Benders
- Buried Truths: Christine Jessop and Pearl Bryan
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Champagne and Murder, Please podcast page.