Citation Needed - The Cardiff Giant

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous hoaxes in American history. It was a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m) purported "petrified man" uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell in Cardiff, New York. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P. T. Barnum are still being displayed. The original is currently on display at The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

You thought it was about climate change? I thought it was about COVID. No, no, they made it before COVID. So good though. Jonah Hill. So good, dude. Step right up. Step right up.

See the Chicago giant. Nope, nope, nope. Step right up. Step right up. Hey, you like? No, don't step right up. Let's switch to setup. And why?

Why is he thinn a cage again? Again, thank you, Cecil. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, since you asked Cecil this week's episode got me thinking, you know, we're missing out on some major mullah by not cashing in on our own giant. I mean, did you know that he is in the 90, 90 percentile of height for human beings. Wow, that's pretty good. Wow.

Yeah, yeah. I like we charge a dollar to look him over. I mean, we could be rich. I mean, we could be rich. I mean, we do like money. I guess if they can't touch him, how do you deal with it? Right, sorry. Seriously? Oh, no, sorry, but it looks like you're taking this one for the team. That's just this for us. Can I at least have some pants? Please, definitely not. Of course not. That's like the whole reason we're doing this. That's like the whole reason we're doing this.

So not a giant everywhere. I see. So it's not how percentiles work. You don't divide, there's a hundred of them. You don't divide them into points that's dumb. Hello and welcome. The citation needed podcast where we choose a subject. Read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Cecil, and I'll be trying to mold this story

into something special, but I'll need my sculptors. So let me introduce the Michelangelo Leonardo da Vinci, Dono Tello, and HR Geiger of our crew, Noah, Keith, Tom, and Eli. Oh, I knew you'd keep a Raphael for yourself, you fucking sly, I'll be back. You're obviously Leonardo. He has this. Okay, but I got Leonardo. He has a code to pretty sweet and brown renowned author,

literature, literature. The only realistic part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the eating New York pizza in a sewer with the rats. That part checks the... Yeah, it makes the sewer in the rats in some world wide. I'm just saying, Donatello didn't base an entire sequel around an alien blow job. So no, I think we know who the real genius is on that list that you made there. All right. Called the Fishing's Two.

It's on PBS. Some of the most amazing, unknown people throughout history have been the patrons of the arts, and you can follow in their footsteps. And if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Noah, what person-place thing concept phenomenon or event we're talking about today?

The Cardiff Giant. Okay, so I'm guessing it probably isn't a baseball team from Cardiff, Indiana. What is the Cardiff Giant? Okay, so it's one of the silliest and most transparently false hoaxes ever pulled on the American people in the pre-Trump era. Okay, it was a lazily crafted fake, the Cardiff giant I'm talking about here, was a lazy, crafted fake. It was creator claimed it was the remains of a biblical mephalum and managed to make hundreds

of thousands of dollars before people wise up to it. And it competes with Pilt Down Man, which will doubtless get its own episode. One of these days, for the title of my favorite fake humanoid remain story of all time. Yeah, well, my favorite is Osam Bin Laden, but then this one for sure, I'm sorry.

I'm usually with you with the conspiracy stuff, but you think we faked shooting a guy guys wife in the legs so we could murder him Do you think that was our made up? I'm trying to hurt crime think about it. I don't know man. Was she sleeping because I checked and it doesn't count I'm clearly Interesting so So yeah, so you might think that something like Faking human remains wouldn't have a golden era, but it turns out it does.

And if you thought about it long enough, you would know when and why. So Darwin's on the origin of species was published in 1859 and pretty much the next day people started turning up at colleges and shit, and they found the missing link. And while most of those were rejected out of hand, some of them very much weren't academics on the evolution side were eager to back their claims up with tangible evidence, as were the ones still insisting that humans were fashioned by God from mud and leftover ribs. It's a homo erectus set. That's right. Cecil, you're being insensitive to our Christian listeners. It's erectus and Eve, not erectus and steves.

I got to give this one famous example to sort of set the stage. This comes from Calaveras County, California, where in 1866, miners claimed to have discovered a human skull deep in a mine below a layer of lava. Now, eventually, the skull made it into the hands of the state geologist to California and man voted to have the most 1866 name in all of 1866. Josiah Whitney. Josiah Steve 1866. Does he just preface everything with a yeehaw? You gotta wear the yeehaw. I feel like he has. Is he ever not waving a hat?

I would have a hat all day if I was Joe Siaway. So, yeah. So while waving a hat almost certainly, he would recently published work suggesting that humans hadn't changed significantly for like for over a million years. So when this skull showed up, purporting to prove that, he wasn't as skeptical as he probably should have been. He declared it real and went to his grave insisting that it was genuine,

but pretty much everybody who ever seriously investigated it came to the exact opposite conclusion. I mean, several people ultimately admitted to being in on the hoax, turns out to be as near as we can tell, a thousand-year-old native American skull that was placed in the mind specifically to fuck with that haughty geologist from Harvard.

Right. Because if anyone needs to be taken down a peg, am I right? Yeah. There's just a guy walking around sprinkling skulls like the guy from the last three years of sprinkling diamonds everywhere. Johnny Apple feed. Just you wait, sir. We're getting to it.

Now, there are people to this day that it still insists the skull is genuine and I mean it is you know it is a genuine skull but it's often cited by creationists as proof that evolution is just ignore the evidence that doesn't fit their theories. Now radio carbon dating in 1992 proved that this was a modern skull but if you buy into radio carbon dating, you don't need more proof that creationism is wrong. Yeah. I also have to point the Calavera skull is obviously named after the county in which it was found, but Calavera is also, it's the Spanish word for skulls.

Now, I'm not sure that's a coincidence, but shame on anybody who didn't give bonus No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and you know, two on skull cool. Yeah. This is awesome. Science. But one day we're going to translate the cave paintings and find out that they're all just like naming things. How we make

cows. It's all they say. It just says first. I don't get it. So debates between creationism and evolution were the main drivers of the whole surge in bake humans, but not always in the way that you would suspect. And that brings us to the Cardiff giant, which was ultimately the product of an atheist realizing just how stupid the religious people around him were.

The atheist was a New York tobacco in his name George Hull, and the idea apparently first occurred to him in 1867 when he was arguing against the Bible at a Methodist revival. Specifically, he challenged the preacher to explain Genesis 64 where in the Bible claims there used to be giants. This got his my favorite. Yeah, right. So here's the passage from the King James Version. Quote, there were giants in the earth in those days. And also after that, when the sons of God came in onto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men, which were of old men of renown." And, quote, and if we're just doing freeform service here, pastor, after the giants, can you do the story about the girl

who loved donkey-sized dicks? I love that. Do getting Py wrong. Do getting Py wrong. That's a bird. That's a bird. Yes. So, after some indeterminate amount of time listening to a grown ass man defend the proposition

that giants, once bucked human ladies, whole had a thought that everyone on this podcast has had on what I'm guessing is a pretty regular basis. Man, if I didn't have any morals, I could make a fortune off these idiots. Right? But in the whole's case, it turns out he didn't have any morals. So he made a fortune off those idiots.

And to do that, he said about making himself some fake giant remains. Okay, the answer is yes, Noah. You don't have to be all vague like you're asking to do anal. We'll do a Christian podcast with you. You don't have to stop doing this one Noah. We can eat and have to do it. There's no crossover of the audience.

We can do both. I have never said I won't sell out. It's just I won't sell out cheap. That's what I keep saying. I won't sell out cheap. I'll what I keep saying. I won't sell out cheap. I'll sell out. Okay, sorry. Cheap, very important from a moral perspective.

Never be vague about anal, be super sensitive. That was the take away. Of course, one way to go about the giant remains would be to make a bunch of fake bones or like find real bones that you can modify and combine and whatever way you needed. But that's drug holers A, a whole big thing, and B, way more troubled than it was going to take to full 19th century Christians.

Okay, fair enough. So yeah, instead, he decided to go with a petrified man. Like, is that? So you know how there's petrified trees? It's like that, sure yes with a humor Now if you're thinking to yourself, but Noah that would just be a statue. Yes, it would just A statue and he said it was a real petrified dude and then he charged idiots to look at it It feels like people were just pretending to know what petrified means because they'd

be embarrassed. Like he said petrified and they're like, yeah, petrified, right? Yeah, that, that, that, that, it's like quantum or he's in work on certain events around. People say, oh, yeah, it's Heisenberg, it's Heisenberg, it's a pretty, yeah, it's the, the old, the LHP, I get it too. It wasn't, no, it wasn't always like that. First it was afraid, then it was patch of fire.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom city lie Tom get city lie podcast gizmo podcast gizmo all right so polish credit it was a Eli is pouring shit on his tips in progress I hope everyone's a repeat listener otherwise that's not a crazy person starting with you love. You'll remove all shit tints from the catalog.

He just says a random shit tints represent no one's kids. If you're brand new, please email me your questions about this. Three minutes of silence right after that. To host credit, it was a pretty solid statue. Right. In all, he was a pretty solid statue, right? And all he would spend over $3,000 on this thing. And that's like in then money, right?

That's a hundred grand in today's money. So first he secured a five ton block of gypsum, which he told the five ton block of gypsum, to be like, I don't know what the hell you'd buy that from. He told me he was gonna use it to make a huge statue of Abe Lincoln. Okay, but why do you have to tell him anything? Like, is there like a use test for the sale of gypsum?

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Now what a jack of fucking gypsum. Fuck you, because that's why I wanted some of this gypsum. Sorry, sir, are you selling so much gypsum that you get to be choosy about? Yeah, I'm not sure. You're not gonna use this to make a giant petrified man a fairy to do it.

You're right. The best. No, no. Listen, there's a gypsum show that you call. You have to listen to me right now. So, the next thing he needs, I'm not gonna mess more than people with gypsum. I don't even know who said that.

You said that first. You're being weird. Now, the next thing he need is a corrupt sculptor. And if there's any place that screams corrupt sculptor, it's the city whose most noteworthy statue is a $23 million line of being built by a guy who tries to hog whole fucking colors. So he has this gypsum ship to Chicago.

And when they got the gypsum, they at they, at first, they thought it was a pizza. It sits in the stomach just like that. Yeah. Now, took his long to get. So sure. It's about a long time. It's geologic. So ultimately, Hall brings in what epic is this?

I thought I'd worry about it. Just gotta go pieces have a vintage and shit. Yeah. So now ultimately, he brings in three accomplices, a marble dealer who has the space they're gonna need to work and two sculptors who are cool and not asking a lot of questions. They all agree to take the job in exchange for a cut of the future profits. And over the next year, with George Hall himself acting as the model, the Cardiff giant takes shape.

The finished product is 10 feet tall, weighs almost 3,000 pounds. And when they're done, they douse the whole thing with sulfuric acid to give it this eroded look and to make it look more life like Hull drove pins all through it to give it little pores. Where people are going to be looking at this and being like, what's the, I don't know, the skincare resident of the Neffelheim. I feel like it was better than this. This is fake.

What the hell? Well, so pores are no, this motherfucker does not look remotely light. No, no, it looks like a fucking statue. That means that it's not positioned like you would position a statue. It's lying down with one hand over at stomach with a shlong hanging out. It's got this weird, incongruous half smile. One that has very much of a fuck you, you gullible pieces of shit look at it to eat out George Holland's sister.

I'm sure it makes no sense. We have a picture of it in front of us right now. It makes no sense. Any of you know. Well, so the goal here is obviously to position it in such a way that people would look at it and say, why would anyone carve a statue like that? Listen, you have to go find the statue because it looks exactly like Henry Kissinger slipped in the shower. That's exactly what it is. That's very accurate. Yeah. Henry gets in there, slipping the shower, but then he like apparently started doing a flamenco dance with a fitness bar move.

And then, and then, Blam, petrifying the laser, because that's how it's, it's a laser, right? You get petrified like in a second. And you just get your gypsum, it's like ice gums. Now, of course, once he's got this petrified giant, the next big step is finding it, right? So he scopes around for a bit,

but ultimately he settles on the home of a distant relative named William Stubb Newell. Newell owned a farm in Cardiff, New York, and he had no qualms whatsoever with lying for money. So they brought him in on the deal and said about surreptitiously bearing the giant on his property. It's like that would have been awkward if they got caught by anybody else, right? They're just like, oh, us. We're, um, we're growing Ron Pearlman's this year.

Don't tell anyone 100%. That's amazing. Okay, we'll just, uh, we'll bear him in this ant hill. Nope. That one's already full of diamonds. Fuck wrong. Yeah. I keep looking. It's a weird time to be alive. Now, surreptitiously burying a 10 foot, 3,000 pounds, lava stone is not a simple proposition. First, you have to ship it from Chicago to New York in such a way that everybody won't say, well, that's a weird looking fucking statue along the way. So,

a whole thing sealed in a gigantic iron box. And apparently, people were entirely cool with, please move a big ass one and a half ton iron box for me, but don't look inside back then, because the giant made its way without incident. Now, so in 1868, how did this accomplice buried the statue alongside Nuel's barn wedged in under some roots, right? So it's been there longer than the tree. Okay, Bill, let's bury the giant here and then we can dig a hole for that chrome bean on the other side of the garage. So now after that, I'll go back to us to back go shop in New York and did, you know, cigar stuff or whatever for a while. Nobody saw the giant transit, but, you know, I mean, if they dug the thing up the next day, it's pretty likely somebody

would say, Hey, didn't you just have a that thing sized box delivered here yesterday? Sure. And of course, the longer it stayed in the ground, the more weathered it was going to look. So it was almost a year before hallpole to trigger on the scam. But in October of 1869, he sent Noah a letter telling him to dig it up. Feels like cigar stuff should be trademarked by Bill Clinton. I'm just a man, brother. Amen. Well, we'll find out.

We'll check with Andrew to make sure it's all right for us to use. Now, of course, to keep it as plausible as possible They wanted it to actually be discovered so Noah hired a couple of unsuspecting workers to dig a well over by his barn The giant wasn't very very deep so almost immediately the workers come across this big stone foot and well There's obviously no direct record of what was said at the time the exclamation attributed to one of the workers is quote I declare some old Indian has been buried here. And that is among the least stupid reactions to this statue. The whole thing comes across to this.

Cool. Well, it looks like we need to call in a team of people with wooden stakes, twine and tiny brushes to dust off this statue's 21 inch penis. So we'll take a break. We're a little apropos. Nothing. Gentlemen, how goes to work on our giant? Who quite good, sir?

I'd say he's about done. And, uh, you're done with that ironic smile I asked for at a face like mine? Indeed, sir. Have a look for yourself. Well done, well done. It's just, uh... Uh, yes, sir? Well, you know, proportionally, the, uh... The bits, uh... The bits, they look a little...

Oh, small, don't they? The, the bit, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the tail, the, the hoagin, it just seems a, it could be a little bit more, a, girthy. I mean, it, it looks fine to me, sir. Yeah, it seems fine to me, sir. I'm looking at it. I'm looking at it. I'm looking at yours and it, it looks right.

Okay, I just want to be clear though, you're worried people are going to judge the size of your bits based on our. You know what I said, make it bigger. There's no need for questions. Fine, fine. Okay. And I had a girthier, you know, right, right?

Got it. Okay. Before the break, the world was torn between believing in a comforting fantasy or harsh reality. And NO, it was telling us about a statue that looks like it's doing the peepee dance. What happened next, NO? That's what it the PP dance. What happened next? No. That's what it is. Yes. Thank you, Cecil. That was bothering me.

I thought flamenco was going to be dancing. It could be. Oh, that's funny. Very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco.

It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamenco. It's a very flamen. It's a very flamenco. Yeah, man because he's doing the arm twisty thing too, but yeah, right right so once the statue was on earth The news started spreading fast First of course all the people in the immediate area got caught up According to contemporary newspaper articles basically the whole town shut down while everybody hurried over to old stubs

Farmed to see the marvel people just like left their jobs and lined up and shit their jobs and lined up and shit. And what was happening in 18, whatever the fuck you were just like, I wanna go see the rocketing. And they'd like nothing, nothing was happening. No TV, no movies, no nothing. Yeah. So fuck yeah, they did. But since Cardiff was already well known for his fossils,

a lot of people started spreading the story that it was a petrified man without any prompting from Nuel or Hall at all. George is getting ready to spread around some bullshit local pastors like no sir, we'll take it from here. We'll ask the pro's brother. Now I should emphasize here that from the very beginning the scientific community rejected this thing.

Virtually every expert that ever saw it was like, yeah, that's fucking fake. Also humans don't petrify. That's not even this thing. Virtually every expert that ever saw it was like, yeah, that's fucking fake. Also, humans don't petrify. That's not even a thing. One of the first experts was a Syracuse-based science lecturer who examined it for a few minutes and said, yeah, guys, that's a fucking statue. Oh no, he didn't suspect the farmer was working in conjunction

with an interstate conspiracy to trick people into thinking it was a petrified biblical giant. He he theorized that it like was carved by French Jesuits centuries earlier, but he didn't entertain the idea for a second that it could be the remains of an actual being. Just a giant lying there partially clothed. Carve me like one of your French girls. And from all accounts, by the way, Nuel nailed his part of this. I mean, you'd imagine a scenario where they dig the thing up in the very next day.

He rolls out a tent, throws it over there and puts a see the Cardiff giant for 50 cents sign hanging off the side of it, spoils the whole thing. But Nuel played the part of the humble farmer and accepted the experts assertion. Hell he even vowed at one point, very publicly to re-Barry the thing and forget about the whole Lord deal. And then he had to let his neighbors publicly convince him otherwise. And then he put a big tent around it was a sea of carnivorous giant for 50 cents hanging off the side of it. Oh, well, gosh, fellas, if you insist I take your money, I guess I will let you watch history and this. I'm gonna be right.

I'll come nobody brought that up. And it's like, yeah, okay, Nephilim wouldn't be like a white guy for New York. Yeah. Of course he wouldn't be. Now, the newspapers were more than happy to rustle up a bit of business for New old too. The front page headlines of the Syracuse daily standard declared it a new wonder and papers all over the state

were calling it the discovery of the century. Within a week more than 2,500 people had already paid to see it. Just as quickly, people started to get suspicious of the whole thing. Right, like sure, Ed had been a year, but people still remembered stub, Noel having an unexplained 10-foot iron box delivered

to his farm, not that long ago. Only a couple of experts had examined it, and while none of them were yet calling it a hoax, none of them were buying into the whole petrified man bit, either, and big fucking statue of unknown origin isn't going to bring in the throngs quite like proof the Bible was right about giants. So the conspirators decided to cash in sooner than later and sold a three quarter stake to a syndicate a new your businessman for $30,000 that we're talking about like a million dollars in today's money and a tenfold return on investment. Plus, of course, they retain a quarter of its future profits.

Yeah. I mean, if our podcast has a moral, it's don't touch the nuclear thing. Governments are bad at their jobs and get out of your scam sooner rather than later. Books are fucking stupid. Books are dumb. That one too. Okay. I just want to circle back to this group of New York businessmen. That's syndicate. That's clearly Mormons being like, Hey, George, uh, burying fake stuff and upstate New York is a thing. We are buying out these and never been able to get into her back. Off. So over the next few weeks, Aspergic did more and more experts sort of show it up to examine

Nuel's discovery, but not all of them were as incredulous as that Syracuse lecturer. For example, New York state geologist James Hall declared it legitimate and called it, quote, the most remarkable object yet brought to light in our country. On the other side of the spectrum, you had Yale paleontologist, Othneon Charles Marsh, who needed to give it all but a glance before he declared it to be, quote, a very recent origin and a most decided humbuff. Yeah, well that's because Mars is skeptic of the year. That makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah. I actually want all skeptical criticisms written exclusively in old timey. You know, like, by gum I declare this man's all, I have no cattle. Why, he's just another under-hunted gentleman of four outs in this grim Tony and Ninkam poops try to pass off this ridiculous galumpus like we're a patch of frivolts.

And then that's why we have March. Yeah, March. Within a few weeks, there was plenty of information for a skeptic to conclude that this was bullshit. Reporters quickly learned that it was George Hall who actually delivered the mysterious giant iron box to the farm the year before. And once they had his name, it wasn't hard to figure out that Newell had transferred a sizable chunk of cash to Hall

after he sold that reporter's interest. And there was also technical issues like a mining engineer pointed out at the time, gypsum deteriorates pretty quickly when it's buried. So the thing would have disappeared if it was old at all. Also, the area where it was buried would have made no sense as a place to dig a fucking well. There were roots there.

Sometimes I want a quick drink from the corner of my barn. Pray. Don't tell me how to have a nice, refreshing drink, right? Okay, it is 2022 and there are still professional dowsers. So like maybe let's not get too high in body about where the wells should and shouldn't be. No, that's fair. That's fair.

That's real. Alas, as Hull had predicted all those years ago, no amount of obvious would be enough to dissuade the endless parade of suckers that wanted to see proof of their holy book. And one thing you could count on in 1869 America, wherever there was a parade of suckers, there would also be PT Barnum with an open checkbook, almost immediately the famed con artist. Why, why use a nice word? Is it fucking the con artist?

Try to buy the thing. There's no record of how much he offered, but clearly it wasn't enough because the statue's consortium of owners turned in down. Of course, the thing was an obvious fucking fake and PT Bardem knows how statues are made. So when he couldn't get the original, he just commissioned some sculptors to carve him one. So they did and they put it on display at a museum in Manhattan and took out an ad that reads this is so amazing quote What is it? Is it a statue? Is it a petrification? Is it a stupendous fraud?

Is it the remains of a former race? Apparently the rule of threes was discovered at some later date, but Nobody knew this wasn't the petrified giant that they'd been reading about in the papers So they flocked to the museum and Barnum made a fucking fortune But nobody knew this wasn't the petrified giant that they'd been reading about in the papers. So they flocked to the museum and Barnum made a fucking fortune. It's nice to know that just asking questions has such a famous backstory. That's right. They didn't have to bury it in New York City.

They just left it on the sidewalk in three days. It had 30 layers of stratified garbage on it. Sure. But also a dog. Yes, pluses and minuses. Now, this was an issue for the owners, of course, who had the original because they were already slated to bring their petrified giant to Manhattan to display it in a museum. And they couldn't compete with Barnum's advertising budget.

So they tried to sue them. But ultimately the judge ruled that you can't fake something that's already fake to begin with. Right? But plus is it a fraud? Is it real? Is it a duck wording? If nothing else, pretty easy to defend legally, right?

Noted. Is it real? Is it a duck? Is it pre-Ivermectin under this floating anvil that I know you're a real bitch? Ivermectin under this floating anvil that I know? Yeah. I got red X enjoy. And of course, making a big public scene about how fake barnums giant was would only serve to underscore how easily it would be to fake this whole damn thing. So they had

no choice but to just set up shop nearby and try to have the better fake. Petriify giant. PT Barnum wasn't the only person who thought of copying whole fake when they heard how big it was getting in New York, the corrupt marble dealer and the corrupt sculptors from Chicago decided they could knock out a few more of those and sell them all over the country. And once there were a dozen different statues of varying quality, all claiming to be petrified biblical giants, it started to see the Hoki even to the people who wouldn't automatically recoil at the stupidity of that sentence. And that is a bold statement given the target demographic.

That is right. I get it. Road rules wore out. It's welcome to. Yeah, exactly. Eventually. Now, within a few years, the fascination died. The crowds dried up and the original got pond off to ever more obscure museums and

Even in a brief stint as a coffee table in a rich guys rumpus room. That's amazing in 1947 it found its way to the farmers museum in Cooperstown, New York where it is still displayed today Noah what What else is in the Yeah. Noah, what else is in the farthest? Literally straw and nothing else. I have to go there and my kid and I like playing baseball and I'm like, I just want to go to the fucking hall of fame.

It's right down the road. And we have to listen, we have to go to straw stuff. We have to look at stuff. Oh, this is a stick with straw on it. And this is straw in a cube formation. This is straw in also a cube formation. I love you. I love to see baseball.

So stupid. It's pretty, it's pretty fun. It's stupid. Yeah. So George Hall cashed out, moved on eventually one of the original sculptors confessed his part in the hoax to a newspaper. And at that point, Hall just started openly bragging about it. Right.

The whole point was obviously to rub credulous people's noses in their credulity. And he couldn't do that without admitting the damn thing was fake. But eventually on the money dried up, so he decided to try it again with much less impressive results. So good. His next fake was a seven foot tall giant with a tail that he buried an honor in Colorado. I love this guy. I love him so much. Yeah. Now, unfortunately, the public was a bit wiser to the scam by then.

And, you know, he publicly bragged about faking the last one. So nobody was buying that one. He ended up losing a pretty substantial amount of money. Um, but regardless, he would go to his grave, proud of all the idiots he tricked with the original. I feel like the tale was he was like, big, dick bigger. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna give you a back dip.

There you go. I feel like if that guy was here today, he'd start a new podcast along with his other podcast. That's it. Multiple podcast. If you had to summarize when you learn one sentence, what would it be? No. It turns out I do have a hero. Are you had to summarize when you learned one sentence, what would it be? No. It turns out I do have a hero. Are you ready for the quiz?

I always, sir. No, why aren't we bad guys? Right. Hey, you hate money. He said he's into it. You heard that earlier. He said he was into it. That was what was happening there, right?

B. Three sums with supermodels seem intimidatingly difficult. That is actually true. I mean, it's just real honest. What's happening there, right? Be three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three,

three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three,

three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, something morals or whatever. Jesus Christ. I have no idea. I know I have to win for the four matter whatever, but I don't know.

I know I think I can help you actually with my question. Yeah, why aren't we bad guys? Hey, no, really. Why aren't we? Or be, see me after the show. Guy, anyone we? Or be see me after the show, guiding one just around over, see me after the show. It's gonna be B on now. I'll make sure I get for a YouTube show. It's pretty great.

I'll tell you afterwards. Are the red pills a metaphor? Do I have to buy them now? Like in bulk, how does that work? All right. No, I got one more for you. Both. Who's doing the soundtrack for the movie about varying fake bullshit from the Bible underground. Hey, woofiders. B, Cardiff B, Cardiff B, C, they might be giants.

Oh nice. So they might be giants. That's perfect. Oh, no matter what he if you're gonna win with that, so it doesn't matter what the answer is, you win. It never did. All right, I would like Cecil for next week. Thank you.

Okay. Give me the win, you're up next. All right, okay, well for Eli, Noah, Tom and Heath. I'm Cecil, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, I will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can check out the scathing atheist, the skeptic ret.

D&D minus God awful movies and cognitive dissonance. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a peripheral donation at patreon.com slash citation pod, or leave us a five star review everywhere you can. If you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com.

Okay, it's done. Are we good now? Two more inches. Come on. Just get rid of it. Just do it, okay. It's not that kind of giant. on it's not that kind of giant