Did Giants Once Walk the Earth? The Evidence, Legends & Hidden History

Did giants once walk the Earth, or are these stories the result of myths, exaggerations, and misunderstood discoveries?

In this episode, we explore the evidence, legends, and hidden history surrounding ancient giants. We look at everything from the Nephilim and the giants of Greek and Norse mythology to Malta’s massive stone temples, Nevada’s Lovelock Cave, and the burial mounds of North America.

We dig into historical reports of enormous skeletons, red-haired giants, massive jaws, and double rows of teeth. We also examine Abraham Lincoln’s surprising reference to extinct giants, claims that the Smithsonian concealed unusual remains, and the strange military story of the Giant of Kandahar.

Of course, there may be more ordinary explanations. Unreliable measurements, animal fossils, deteriorating remains, and sensational newspaper stories could account for much of the mystery. But could some ancient giants have been unusually tall humans, forgotten human relatives, or even the inspiration behind Bigfoot legends?

Cultures around the world have been telling stories about giants for thousands of years. Were our ancestors creating larger-than-life myths, or describing something they actually encountered?

Topics include ancient giants, the Nephilim, Lovelock Cave, red-haired giants, the Giant of Kandahar, giant skeletons, the Smithsonian cover-up theory, Native American oral history, Malta’s megalithic temples, Denisovans and Bigfoot.

Videos:

Why Files - Forbidden Archaeology: Lost Giants of America (43min)

Ancient Alien's - Uncovering the Truth: Giants, Alien Relics & The Human Experiment (2hrs)

Hidden Signal Network - The Book of Giants: the Lost Legend of the Nephilim (9min)

Joe Rogan - Giants of Afghanistan w/ Timothy Alberino (14min)

Transcript

Topic Intro: Giants!

Josh 0:03

Aliens.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Aliens. Yes. But maybe no.

Travis 0:20

Fee fi foam. I smell the recordings of podcastmen. Huh? Right? I don't like it. Okay. Uh, welcome back to the show. This is Aliens Yes But Maybe No, Josh and Travis. I am Travis. I'm Josh. And this is an otherworldly podcast as ambiguous as our title. You didn't like my intro? No. It introduces what the theme is. We're gonna do that in a little bit. Like, if you're listening to this episode, you know what we're gonna talk about today. So that's just kind of a fun way to remind everybody.

Josh 0:54

We are talking about giants today, but we're talking about real giants. None of that fairy tale shit. Yeah, real ones. Real ones. Potentially. I don't know. I don't want to make that claim. We'll talk about this later in the show. Like, maybe. Why not?

Travis 1:09

Giants?

Josh 1:09

Yeah. And also stick around for the end of the episode where we do our quiz where we find out what our next episode's topic's gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Right. We always do a quiz.

Josh 1:19

Always. Always, always.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah.

Josh 1:21

We do still need reviews and fan mail. So just do that. Please, guys.

Travis 1:27

You don't want to hear me talk about the proto-man. I mean, you maybe you do. I don't even know what that is still. Josh talking about what is it, fucking one piece or gak? Whatever. I don't know what that is.

Josh 1:39

You don't know what gak is? Oh no. It's like uh early 90s slime, but not as slimy.

Travis 1:45

Okay, sure.

Josh 1:46

Yeah.

Travis 1:47

Well, cool. Well wait, are we gonna cover what we talked about last week just quickly? We can. Do you want to? No. Let's move on to giants. I never remember what we talked about previously. We did the Bridgewater Triangle. Oh, classic Bridgewater Triangle. Perfect shape, right? Still stand by it.

Josh 2:06

Yeah, perfect. Perfect shape. Yep. Weird stuff going on, but perfectly weird. Yeah. But yeah, so giants, I was so pumped for this. Yeah. I'm excited to share all this info. You guys heard of it? Big big people?

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Mm-hmm.

Josh 2:20

I did miss an opportunity last week when I was afraid of all big things. And then later the quiz was about giants.

Travis 2:27

But we don't know what the next episode is about. Thank you, Jordan, for keeping that from us. So yeah. I mean, you miss an opportunity that you didn't know existed. It's just totally fine.

Josh 2:39

I know.

Tall Skeleton Reports In America

Josh 2:40

Well, we'll get in to giants. Very excited to do this. Yeah. So in the late 1800s and early 1900s, newspapers across America ran dramatic stories about discoveries in burial mounds, caves, construction sites with unusually tall skeletons, strange skulls, and even double rows of teeth. Most of these reports are disputed today. Some were misunderstandings, exaggerations, and hoaxes, or misidentified animal remains, but the stories didn't come from nowhere. Traditions of giant beings appear in cultures around the world, from the Nephilim of biblical tradition to the Cetica of the Paiute oral history in giants of Malta. So today, we're not here to declare, like I said, that giants definitely walked on the earth, but we're gonna look at the old reports, the legends, the archaeology, and the reasons so many people believe parts of the story may have been overlooked or covered up.

Travis 3:35

So what I don't like about that is the double rows of teeth. I think that is very upsetting. I don't know why anybody would need double rows of teeth. They gotta chew more, unless you were a shark, which have double rows of teeth, but that just means they're replacing teeth as they're chewing. So a shark's body is constantly making teeth. Yeah. This double row of teeth, it just seems scary. Like if you were to look at a mouth with two rows of teeth, yeah, extra teeth. It's it's like something out of a horror anime.

Josh 4:13

Yeah, it would be terrifying, absolutely terrifying.

Travis 4:17

What does another row of teeth serve when it comes to chewing? Like more surface area?

Josh 4:24

Yeah, that's what I would think. Like a horse if they don't chew like we do, if they're more like grinding.

Travis 4:29

I don't like that.

Josh 4:30

No, you shouldn't.

Travis 4:32

I don't like like that lends a little more credence to how we started the show. I'll grind your bones to make my podcasts or whatever. I'm still deciding if I'm gonna keep that in or not. Now you have to keep it and double it. Nope, nope. I'm going to bring it up throughout the rest of the show, which it's going to make editing a nightmare for you. So that is staying in 100%.

unknown 4:56

Damn it.

Travis 4:56

Okay,

Ancient Giants In World Myths

Travis 4:57

so before we get into modern accounts, we've got to go back to where our giant stories really take off.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

The ancient world. Toot toot toot.

Travis 5:11

Glitter. Now I have glitter everywhere. In ancient Mesopotamia, the world of the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians, some of the oldest written myths describe gods ruling heaven, earth, and the underworld. Okay, on board for that. Damn. Heroes appear who are part human and part divine. Flood narratives reset the world. Guardians such as Humbaba, the immense protector of the Cedar Forest and the Epic of Gilgamesh, stand as early examples of larger-than-life figures. So what we're doing is establishing like bigger people being involved in human civilization, like people think the gods were giant, and all these mythological characters were bigger than humans.

Josh 5:52

Yeah.

Travis 5:52

The ancient Greeks were obsessed with giants. The titans from the earliest generation, born of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth. Their siblings included the Cyclops. The Cyclops is an offspring of Poseidon. There are one-eyed smiths who forge weapons for the gods. Gaia gives rise to the gigantes who wage another war against Olympus. Fun fact the gigantes, or plural gigos, is the origin of the modern word giant. Oh, thank you, Greeks. In the Norse world, the Jotunar appear as ancient, often colossal beings of frost, fire, mountains, and forces beyond human control, and those guys are always fighting against the Norse gods.

Josh 6:33

Interesting.

Travis 6:34

The giants of the Hebrew Bible show up as massive beings living among the rest of us. First, you've got the Nephilim in Genesis right before the flood. The word is debated. Some translations call them giants, while others connect the name to fallen ones. Either way, they're described as ancient figures, heroes of old, and men of renown. Big men of renown. Right? Oh, yeah. The biblical numbers, Israelite scouts return from Canaan saying they saw the descendants of Anak, people so enormous that the scouts felt like grasshoppers beside them. Yeah, that'd be scary. That's beyond big. That is, if you think about a grasshopper next to a human being, that is like blocking out the sun big.

Josh 7:20

If I was next to someone that was 12 feet tall, I would be terrified. Bigger than 12. Oh, yeah. I would be, I would just be terrified. Like something's wrong.

Travis 7:31

I mean, I think that there's a little bit of artistic flourish here. I don't think that felt like grasshoppers, that was just like an impression. Right. If you were to take that literally, they would be so big that they would block out the sky.

Josh 7:45

Yeah. If you're going like one to one, where like a grasshopper jumps like 400 times its size. Like if humans could jump like a grasshopper could, we would jump like a football field.

Travis 7:57

Well, maybe us jumping as a grasshopper size is 400 times more than what a giant can jump. Maybe a giant can jump at all the biology of that, what it takes to support such weight.

Josh 8:10

I think a good community, I think a supportive family.

Travis 8:15

Yeah, to support sure. Yeah. Okay. So you've got also Og of Bashan. Deuteronomy calls him the last of the Riphaim. Another group often connected with giant traditions, his bed, or possibly his sarcophagus, which means he was literally sleeping in his deathbed, is said to be about 13 and a half feet long. And then there's Goliath. We've all heard of Goliath. He stands somewhere between six to nine feet tall. Yeah, we know. We know that. Everybody knows a Goliath. Mm-hmm. Okay, so this is a weird spelling, guys. G-G A-N-T-I-J-A. Gigantia temples of Malta. So you're gonna have to excuse my very Caucasian tongue. I'm gonna do the best I can. So outside of holy books, you find giant stories attached to actual places, massive structures, so old, so heavy, and so hard to explain that people started asking, who could have possibly built this? I asked that a lot. Don't we all? Yeah. I mean, like, scaffolding exists back in this time, and simple machines, planes, which is part of a simple machine pulleys, were existed here. So there were ways to make these great structures, and they were a like vanity project for whoever was in charge, right? I think.

Josh 9:40

I mean, yeah, there are some that make sense, and then there's some that do not, for sure. In Malta, these don't make sense to me.

Travis 9:48

So

Malta Megaliths And Sansuna Lore

Travis 9:49

take Gigantia on the island of Gozo, Malta. The name literally means place of giants. According to the Gozotan folklore, Gigantia was built by a giantess named Sansuna. She was said to live on nothing but broad beans and honey. She had a child by an ordinary man and carried her baby on her shoulder while hauling giant stones across Gozo. In other local stories, Sansuna's whole job was moving megaliths around the island. There's even a huge limestone slab known as Sansuna's Rock. So she was just like carrying a baby and moving rocks around. Yeah. That's a strong independent woman. That's a strong independent woman, but that's also like a way for people to explain why there are big rocks where they are. It's almost like creating the lore around something that is what you experience day to day. So you're like, how do these giant rocks get here? Oh, that was Sansuna. She picked up rocks from this area and put them in this area.

Josh 10:51

I mean, these are huge though. Yeah.

Travis 10:53

Uh listeners, look it up. Uh define what Sansuna's rock looks like. So it's not a single pile of rocks, it's two huge, carefully planned temple buildings built around 3600 BCE before current era. That makes it older than the pyramids of Egypt and older than Stonehenge. Wow. And it was built by a Neolithic island community long before iron tools, cranes, or modern construction equipment. So I like humans have we've always wanted to build things. Yeah. It's interesting to juxtapose this with the pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge, because those are also big, like huge rocks and stuff. But people have always been moving rocks and building things, you know, as as a shelter or as a tribute to their legacy. We've been doing this for a very long time. It's just gotten bigger and weirder as time goes on.

Josh 11:45

Yeah. More, I shouldn't say more precise because some of the stuff back then is super precise, weirdly precise.

Travis 11:52

I mean, I wouldn't say weirdly, like math exists and is a universal language for us. I mean, it's been around for a very long time. Math has been.

Josh 12:01

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it has. Math was around before written language.

Travis 12:05

Yeah. Uh so the outer walls still stand roughly 20 feet high in places. Some of the limestone blocks are more than 16 feet long and can weigh up to 50 tons. I mean, that's a lot. 50 tons is a hundred thousand pounds. If a ton is two thousand pounds. Yeah, that's insane. That's a lot of weight. That's like two of me. No, don't be so hard on yourself. No, I'm not being hard on myself. I'm dense. I am muscle. Travis weighs 50 tons. I weigh 50 tons. I am packed. As everybody knows, muscle weighs more than fat. I am dense. I am built of very sinewy muscle. Uh, these builders didn't just stack boulders. They cut, moved, positioned, and fitted enormous stones into a complex of curved chambers, passageways, altars, and doorways. We don't have a surviving blueprint, a work crew list, or a written explanation from the people who built it. Which, like, of course, we wouldn't. I mean, a lot of the workers didn't have language as part of their skill set. They were just there as muscle. So it's not like they signed like an attendance sheet as they were showing up for work that day. If you managed to make it through that day and you weren't crushed by a giant boulder, you probably saw somebody at the end that gave you a stipend, right? Like uh, this is what your wage is for helping us out.

Josh 13:30

If if it was work that they were paid for, or they were slaves, and all all it was was just like you have a place to live. Well, it could be slaves, or it could be that like a community thing, you know, just like that's just what you did. We're all building a temple, you know.

Travis 13:45

I mean, I like I like the sweetness of that, Josh. Yeah, a lot of these things were built by slaves.

Josh 13:53

Yeah, no, I I agree.

Travis 13:55

Which sucks.

Josh 13:57

Sucks. Yeah, I I think there's probably both. I think there's a lot of people that, you know, they were part of a community, they needed to build a wall around their village, you know, so they came together. I mean, it was just a communal thing, especially in early, early history.

Travis 14:13

I think that's very true, but I think these things that are vanity projects are not built communally. I think this is me personally. Uh I think these are built by indentured people that don't have a choice. They don't care about warring neighbors or anything like that. This is a vanity project. Uh whereas like people within the community are worried about warring neighbors and will want to build a wall. So I think that like community is more about function and the slaves are more about vanity. And these things like temples and pyramids, which we definitively know were built by slaves, which were vanity projects of the pharaoh, as the pharaoh was uh a very young person, usually male, building these tributes to their legacy. Or like the great the great wall was meant to like keep roving bands of raiders out.

Josh 15:13

Right. And that was like a duty to the country. You said duty. I did love it. Okay, so that was the ancient world. We're gonna move, I think, a little bit more forward with the natives. We're

Lovelock Cave And Red Hair

Josh 15:25

gonna talk about the red-headed giants of Lovelock Cave. So this sits right above the Humboldt sink in western Nevada. It's a major great basin archaeological site and a frequent focus of American giant legends. So the northern Paiute, oral tradition tells us of a hostile group called the Citica, often translated as Thule Eaters. Thule is a type of marsh reed used to make rafts and shelters. But Sarah Winnemaka Hopkins, a northern Paiute writer and activist, who I think was the daughter or granddaughter of Chief Winnemucca, she recorded one version in her 1883 book, Life Among the Paiutes. She described a small tribe of barbarians who attacked her people. According to her account, several tribes eventually drove them into a cave, blocked the entrance with a bush, and set it on fire.

Travis 16:14

That's very Greek of them to do that. Very brutal. I know, but that's just like Polyphemus of the Odysseus storyline. It's not exactly what they did, but that was part of their plan they wanted to trap the Cyclops inside and burn them alive. Humans are gonna be humans. Brutal. History repeats.

Josh 16:36

Yeah. Who are the real savages here?

SPEAKER_03 16:39

Yeah.

Josh 16:39

Who's the real monster? So in 1911, miners David Pugh and James Hart entered Lovelock Cave to collect bat guano for fertilizer. That's poop. Yeah. Their digging messed up the top layers, but also revealed a rich archaeological site buried deep below. Archaeologists came in and excavated tens of thousands of artifacts and at least 45 human burials. And among the most notable finds were 11 finely made duck decoys woven from Thule and decorated with feathers, and bodies with reddish brown hair, just as the Paiute had described. So there's something there. Definitely something.

Travis 17:16

I mean, one of the docs that we watched, a woman had red hair that was part of like her headband and had been wearing that for a long time. I don't know if they ever did DNA testing on it. It was just like a really interesting thing that she had held on to. The red thing was from the giants. Yeah, it's it's wild. I love these kinds of stories. I love this part of human history where we're just like, who knows what we saw back then? Like, were we riding mastodons? Maybe we definitely hunted them like early humans. I mean, things were really big for a very long time. Why couldn't a version of people been really big? And that's how we get basketball players.

Josh 18:07

Or like, look at the Redwoods.

Travis 18:09

Yeah, those are what's living there. Yeah. But we get like Robert Ludlow, who is one of the tallest humans on record. I mean, it's it's wild that basketball has like monopolized a lot of the giants, but there are people out there that are very big and don't play basketball. So maybe that's worth looking into as far as giants go. Yeah. What are they doing? What are they doing? What's going on over there? We have been fascinated with big people for a very long time. Early humans were considered very small.

Josh 18:43

Yeah.

Travis 18:43

We've only gotten bigger with time. So to have this lore of giants being introduced, like, is that maybe why we're getting bigger? Is because we're all carrying the DNA from these big guys that just wanted to fuck these small women?

Josh 19:01

I do feel as though there were big people at some point because I don't think all these different people would lie. Like, there's no point.

Travis 19:10

No, I'm saying that's what I'm saying. Like, yeah, like they were there. This came from a time when things were really big. Like elephants were called mammoths, and we use mammoth to describe something that is big, right? Yeah. Saber-toothed cats are very big versions of pumas and mountain lions with very big teeth. Yeah, we had bigger versions of everything. The dire wolf. Everything, yes. Yeah. So why not? Yeah. Why not giants? A version of people that were big. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, why not? I mean it totally tracks for me. I'm in. I'm in it. Totally in. Okay.

Mound Builders And Lincoln Quote

Travis 19:48

So by the 19th century, giant stories had found a new setting. The burial mounds and earthworks of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. As settlers cleared land, built roads, and opened mounds, newspapers reported unusual skeletons, elaborate burials, copper objects, stone pipes. Oh boy, and structures beneath the soil. Some articles claimed skeletons seven, eight, or even nine feet tall. Others described heavy jaws, thick skulls, or upsettingly, double rows of teeth. This is wild. I do not like this at all. I I understand like heavy jaws, thick skulls, dense bones, because you have to be able to have that internal structure to support that amount of weight, but the double rows of teeth is so upsetting. Evolved to have what they need to chew. I guess chew Thule and human bones? Maybe. Oh man. Okay, so in September 1848, Lincoln visited Niagara Falls while traveling home from a political event. He was so blown away by the scale of the falls that he sat down to write notes for a lecture on science and history. Okay. Totally normal thing for a president to do, right? Mm-hmm. In his handwritten draft, which is still in the Library of Congress today, Lincoln wrote, When Columbus first sought this continent, when Christ suffered on the cross, when Moses let Israel through the Red Sea, nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his maker, then as now, Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the mounds of America have gazed on Niagara as ours do now. Whoa. So the belief is that Lincoln wasn't dropping top secret government info here. He was just repeating what was considered common knowledge at the time. People were actively digging into Adina and Hopewell mounds and finding unusually large bones. To average Americans back then, an extinct race of giants building those mounds was just accepted history.

Josh 21:56

And was Lincoln the one that can't lie?

Travis 21:58

Or is that Washington? No, Washington was the one that could tell a lie. So he could have he could have been lying. I mean, a lot of these presidents couldn't tell lies. Let's just say that. Let's Okay. Yeah.

Josh 22:09

If I was writing history, I would say I couldn't tell lies too.

Travis 22:13

Yeah. The eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the mounds of America of Gaza Niagara, as ours do now. That almost seems like an artistic four-ish. Like he's talking about giants not in like physical stature, but maybe what they have built like they are giants. Like we would call the founding fathers giants of democracy. I don't think they thought in those terms back then. They're very literal. I do think they took in those terms back then. I think that's a more modern, like abstract thinking. We're that is a still modern, I think a modern idea. We talk about our founding fathers as being pillars and giants of democracy.

Josh 22:52

Yeah, we do still, but they they didn't.

Travis 22:54

Oh, I think absolutely they did. I absolutely think they did. This was like a brand new nation. So this is 1860s America. This is like like we had been a country for less than a hundred years at this point. I definitely think they looked at our history uh as people being giants personality-wise, not giants physically. I don't know that that's the case with this. I mean, there's who knows?

Josh 23:23

Yeah, species of extinct giants whose bones fill the mounds of America. I don't like it. I think he was meaning literal giant for sure.

Travis 23:32

That's fine. So mound builders and newspaper headlines is where we're gonna go next. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, regional papers across Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, and Pennsylvania ran report after report on skeletal finds. The Ohio River Valley has thousands of mounds built between 1000 BCE and 500 CE. So that's a huge timeline, 1500 years. Yeah, that's almost as old as you. Close. The 500-ton baby. It's close to as old as I am. Timeless, you might say I am been around. That's what I tell people. But somehow I've still maintained this youthful look. Yeah, I I agree. The Ohio River Valley has thousands of mounds between thousand BC and 500 CE. When farmers or road crews broke into timber burial chambers, articles from places like the New York Times and local Ohio gazettes listed the same details over and over, which were skeletons measured between seven and nine feet long, massive jaw bones that could fit around the outside of a living man's face. That is again equally upsetting. That tells me they were biting faces. I do not like that. Abnormally thick skulls, sloping foreheads, and again, double rows of teeth. We really want to drive that home. Yeah, they had double rolls. They also had heavy copper breastplates, helmets, and giant stone pipes. Cool. So these guys were like big hobbits, I guess. Very well armed, very well protected, big hobbits. This pipes thing comes up a lot. These guys like to fucking smoke down.

Josh 25:14

Yeah. Everyone did. It's up until recently they don't. So if you're tracking with us so far, you've got hundreds of old newspaper reports, local doctors witnessing digs, uh, even Abraham Lincoln talking about the giant bones, which brings up the massive mammoth in the room,

Smithsonian Cover-Up Claims

Josh 25:31

elephants. Whoa, shit. I mean, elephants are big too. They are. Where did all the physical evidence go? Oh boy. That's where the Smithsonian Institute comes in. Here's the allegations. Q Law and Order music. Dun dun. Bubba. The theory goes that during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Smithsonian actively collected, bought, or seized giant remains from private lands and digs across the country, and then systematically destroyed them, locked them away, or dumped them in the ocean.

Travis 26:00

Yeah.

Josh 26:01

Why? Supposedly to protect official history. Early American archaeology wanted a clean, simple timeline. This is so fucked up. They wanted to prove Native Americans were the sole builders of the mounds, and that no human species or early European explorers had been here first.

Travis 26:17

They didn't want anything to deviate from their narrative. They were trying to paint a picture here, which is like not what you think when it comes to the Smithsonian. You think that they are arbiters and defenders of history. Right. Not writing history. It's wild to think that they were designing their own idea of what American history was, and they had decided that the natives, the indigenous people that were here, were less than. They were like essentially barbarians or savages, like akin to like proto-man, like an early version of men. Yeah, when it comes to civilization, Neanderthal is kind of what they looked at the indigenous people here as. They're like, this is an early version of who we are, so they deserved to be wiped out. And then what we're really saying is like, who were the savages here? Was it these people who had been here for thousands of years and have been living off the land? Or was it the people that came and gave blankets that had fucking smallpox in it? Yeah, on purpose. On purpose.

Josh 27:28

Yeah. And I I don't think it was, I mean, I don't know. I don't think it was they believed that they were not human, just like you said, early stages of human. And I think they legitimately were trying to help them advance, but there was pushback, and then we're like, uh-uh, we're not doing that. Yeah. And then we just kill them.

Travis 27:48

Or put them on smaller and smaller pieces of land. Oh, yeah. And then continue to take from them, and then you don't exist anymore, and it fucking sucks.

Josh 28:00

Yeah. So eight to ten foot humans didn't fit this Darwinian evolution or standard American history. So according to the theory, they just erased the evidence. Yeah. The Smithsonian did. People often point to Major John Wesley Powell, who took over the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology in 1879. Powell had strict rules on archaeology, insisting the mound builders were direct ancestors of modern tribes, which modern archaeology has proven that that is true. But alternative researchers claim his strict directives caused workers to suppress or reclassify any abnormal bone finds that didn't fit that narrative. So they were getting rid of stuff. Yep. They're just like, throw it away, throw it away, throw it away, throw it away. Yeah. So if you search for giant cover-ups online today, you'll definitely run into a story or two or 10 claiming that the U.S. Supreme Court forced the Smithsonian to release secret documents, proving that they destroyed thousands of giant skeletons. That story is 100% fake. It came from a satire website back in 2014 called World News Daily Report. So there's no lawsuit. What? No forced document release, no admitted destruction of bones. It was just an internet rumor that just kept getting recycled. A satire? Yeah. That is wild.

Why Bones “Disappear” Naturally

Josh 29:20

Yep. The real reason bones do go missing, though, mainstream archaeologists have a much simpler explanation for why these 19th century bones aren't just sitting in modern museum cases. Number one is poor preservation. Skeletons that were buried in damp clay for 2,000 years crumble easily. When a farmer from the 1800s dug them up and exposed them to air, these fragile bones would turn to dust within hours without modern chemical treatment. That's wild. Kind of like when you bring up treasure from the ocean. Oh, shit.

Travis 29:52

Yeah. It'll crumble because you have to keep it in water. And it's exposed to oxygen, which is a huge I don't want to say destroyer of things, but if you It's poison. But it's also life-giving.

Josh 30:05

Well, we could just be poisoning ourselves slowly.

Travis 30:08

The way to look at maybe I don't think I don't think so. But the way to look at like oxygen or oxidization of something is cut an apple in half and leave it on your countertop for a couple hours. It starts to turn brown. That's oxidization. That is oxygen actively working on that apple. So it has a very scientific history of fucking with things that have been buried for a long time and haven't been exposed to oxygen, right? So like bringing bones up from the dirt or clay that could deteriorate something very fast. Like a couple hours seems very aggressive. Maybe that's true. Like things being come up from the depths, I could see that definitely happening because it's a pressure difference plus being exposed to oxygen. I'm not a deep sea scientist. Dentist? Uh yeah. Uh I mean, I'm not a balloonist either. I'm not a balloon scientist, I'm not a scientist of any sort of weight at all. I'm just a fan of science. But it like things coming up and being exposed to oxygen and to a less pressurized environment definitely is going to have an effect on that thing.

Josh 31:24

Yeah, I've seen documentaries and shows where they take up artifacts or stuff and they have a system that they have to gradually introduce it into the world. Yeah. I mean, these guys didn't have that kind of science or knowledge back then. So that's number one. Number two is bad measurements. So before modern forensic tools, amateur diggers measured bones while they were still sitting loose in the dirt. So if a skeleton shifted or the spine separated from the skull over centuries of soil moving, a normal five foot ten guy could easily look seven or eight feet long to a farmer with a tape measure. For sure. And I did land surveying for a long time, and we would go with our GPS and try to find property pins. And why we would have to try to find them is some of these older ones pre-1940 would be moved sometimes six feet just because our ground is moving and shifting. Get right out of town. Yeah. So then we'd have to reset where their property line is, which is a really hard conversation telling someone that you just lost six feet of your property. Uh, number three is animal fossils. So back then, farmers frequently dug up mastodon, mammoth, or giant ice age bison bones. Without training, a modern mastodon leg bone was easily mistaken for the leg of a giant warrior. Okay. And then they had private collectors. A lot of real artifacts found in the 1800s ended up in private living rooms, traveling sideshows, or wooden town halls that eventually burned down.

Travis 32:56

Okay.

Josh 32:56

So that's the Smithsonian. The beginnings of the Smithsonian founded on racists and bigots.

Travis 33:03

Yeah, which we on this podcast are going to come out against. We think racism and bigotry is bad. Yeah. I just want to make a stand. Not many people are making this stand on podcasts. We want to come out ahead of that. As the first. Yes, racism, bad. Bigotry, bad. Yeah. Inclusion, good. Mm-hmm. Exclusion? No no's. No no's. Yeah, don't do it. Yeah, very bad, don't do it. Let's

Kandahar Giant Military Story

Travis 33:33

move from American history to Afghanistan. Yeah, and we're gonna talk a little bit about the giants of Kandahar. This is crazy. Spoiler alert for anybody listening. This is a wild story. So in 2016, a man known only as Mr. K. Which is crazy. Crazy with a K. Yeah, yeah, like crazy glue, right? Yeah. Spelled with a K.

Josh 33:58

Yeah.

Travis 33:59

So Mr. K claimed he had served with part of the Elite Army Special Forces and had a strange encounter in Afghanistan. In 2002, a U.S. Army infantry unit vanished while on patrol in a remote area of the Kandahar mountain range. The unit had abruptly stopped all radio communication without signaling a tick, which means like troops in contact, which is highly unusual for a military unit under attack. A team of Army Green Berets was dispatched to locate the missing soldiers. You on board so far? I am, yeah. I'm captivated. Like a group of people have gone missing.

Josh 34:35

Yeah. A military unit went missing without contact, saying that there was any kind of skirmish or anything.

Travis 34:41

And then Green Berets, who are notoriously very gentle? Competent. Like I would say gentle, probably not, but competent at the very least. They know what they're doing. They're the best of the best. The best of the best, yes. So while searching the mountains, the team followed a well-worn path resembling a goat trail. Along the way, they discovered a trail of broken American military equipment, including radio antennas, backpacks, and pieces of uniforms belonging to the missing unit, along with scattered human bones. Sounds bad. This sounds like you stumbled across a crime scene.

Josh 35:20

Yeah, I don't know if Green Berets get scared, but this is that would scare almost anybody.

Travis 35:26

I think they do get scared. I think that's part of being a human. It's just what they do with it. That yes, that's how courage is defined. Like it's not shrinking down in fear, but it's reacting to the fear. Rising up in it. Yes, exactly. So the trail led the green brace to a high plateau or shelf on the mountainside where several large cave entrances were located. As the team took up defensive positions outside the caves, a 12 to 15 foot tall man suddenly emerged from one of the entrances. He was described as having long red hair past his shoulders, a red beard, and wearing animal skins. Nope. Yeah, exactly. I'd be like, I don't think so. I don't want to do this. I'm done. I'm calling in sick today. Yeah.

Josh 36:10

Actually, I forgot something back at camp.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Uh, do you hear that? That's uh my wife. I left the oven on and she hates that.

Travis 36:19

So, according to the account, the attack, the creature hurled a massive spear or lance from the cave, which impaled a soldier named Dan, killing him.

Josh 36:31

Why is that funny?

unknown 36:33

I don't know.

Josh 36:35

Thank you for your service, Dan. Thank you for your service, Dan.

Travis 36:38

It's probably not his real name, if this is super secret. Maybe. Maybe you're right. It's just a funny name. So the battle, the remaining team members immediately opened fire. The giant was reportedly killed within 30 seconds of the engagement. Yeah. No kidding. If you're going to be hit with a thousand bullets, you're probably going to die. There's not going to be much left of you at all. I'm surprised that there was a spear able to be launched and killing Dan. That tells me that this giant was very precise in what he was doing. Yeah, he was competent as well. He came out and was just like through the spear and then was very quickly filled with bullet holes. Yeah. Alright, so let's talk about the physical features of this giant. So upon inspection, the giant was found to have six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. It was reportedly so heavy that it required a special helicopter hoist to remove the body. Big boy. When have we heard of a six-fingered man before? Princess Bride. Oh. Princess Bride, six-fingered man, killed Enigo Montoya's dad. You're right. So the body was allegedly transported to an airfield and loaded onto a C-130 aircraft. The pilot of that plane reportedly corroborated seeing a 12 to 15 foot giant with six digits on its hands and feet. What evolutionary I mean, like five is good. Six, does that give you more dexterity?

Josh 38:13

Yeah, you think if his hands are that big, he wouldn't need extra digits to pick stuff up. He could pick a big thing up.

Travis 38:19

I guess if you're gonna be that big, maybe an extra digit is beneficial.

Josh 38:24

Yeah, another toe.

Travis 38:25

So that yeah, another toe, that totally makes sense to me. Like if you're gonna be really big, you would have a lot of toes to support that weight. They say that when people lose toes to frostbite, you basically are figuring out how to rebalance your weight. Yeah. Or you have a cane or a walker for the rest of your life if you lose any of your toes. Yeah. So to lose one of those is detrimental. To have more of those would be a great argument for supporting a bigger weight. You're right. So the special forces team was then debriefed and allegedly ordered to rewrite their after-action reports to remove any mention of a giant or unusual creature, instead, describing the event as a standard engagement with the enemy. The soldiers were also required to sign non-disclosure agreements. That's always a little sus. Yeah. The incident remained largely unknown until Mr. K went public with his testimony in 2016, driven by a desire to honor his fallen teammate Dan. I don't know why Dan is so funny. It just is. Uh, since then, more and more service members have come forward telling similar stories.

Josh 39:37

Yeah, I watched an interview with Dan. No, not Dan. It's pretty convincing. I think so. But there's some weird, ancient things going on over in that area that are very spooky. Yeah. I mean, some of the oldest things in our known world are there. For sure. It's a weird place. So I wouldn't be surprised if there were giants there.

Travis 39:58

I wouldn't be surprised if there were giants everywhere. Yeah. We have giants now. You're right. We do. I mean, the movie The Odyssey, there's a scene with Lystergonians and even Cyclops that were done with forced perspective, where they would get people that were six five plus to play Lystergonians, and then people that were under five feet. So there's gonna be a three foot plus difference between these two people. Yeah. Six and a half feet is huge. Like I'm a five seven guy, like average, right? Totally average, totally normal. You're so normal. Yes, so normal. You're so normal, so normal. So anything above this is abnormal, right? Anything above five six, if you're taller than five, eight, totally abnormal. And we see that with a lot of people more than I'm comfortable to admit being out in the world. So, like giants do exist in this modern world, I would say. I I think that it's a abnormality in a good way. I mean, we reward people that are very tall, there's a lot of health problems that come with extra height and largeness, for sure, but those people are at least if they are athletic, are rewarded because they're so big.

Josh 41:24

Yeah, I agree. Okay. So

Denisovans, Bigfoot, And Patterns

Josh 41:27

if you ask mainstream scientists, they'll tell you it's all bad tape measures and mastodon bones. But if you look at the fringe side of high strangeness research, people have a few wilder ideas for what might have actually been going on. So there's the Los Denisven theory. Genetic discoveries prove ancient human relatives like the Denisovens were physically massive with huge teeth. Some researchers think isolated populations of tall Denisven hybrids lived in North America before dying out. And then there's the pre-cataclysmic civilization theory. So writers like Graham Hancock argue advanced human groups existed before major global impact event around 12,800 years ago. Giant theories connect these remains to survivors who preserved ancient building techniques. And then we have the Bigfoot crossover. Okay. Love it. Big boy. Yeah. In High Strange's research, giant stories often overlap with Sasquatch lore. Many indigenous traditions don't describe Bigfoot as an ape, but as a hairy tribe of giants with its own language. The Cherokee, for example, have stories of the Tsukalu, the slant-eyed giant who sits right on the line between physical giant and forest spirit.

Travis 42:45

Don't like that.

Josh 42:46

So whether you think this is all down to sloppy tape measures, newspapers, or hyping stories up for money, straight up ignorance, or an actual cover-up, the sheer volume of these reports from all over the world is hard to ignore. When you lined up Maltese stone temples, Paiute history in Nevada, hundreds of American press reports, military whistleblowers, and Abraham Lincoln's own notes, you're looking at a fascinating global pattern. What's crazy isn't just one single piece of evidence, it's how all these isolated cultures kept telling the same story. It really makes you wonder if your ancestors were trying to record what they actually saw rather than just making up myths and stories. And maybe we're still doing that today. I don't know.

Travis 43:29

Oh, maybe. Maybe we're still doing it today.

Josh 43:32

Maybe. But it could all boil down to mammoth bones, discolored mummy hair, and campfire stories. Or maybe there was still a missing piece of human history buried in the dirt that we've been too quick or stubborn to write off. Either way, whether it's a thousand years ago or right now, people have always been obsessed with the idea that giants once walk on the earth. I love it. Why not giants? I do too. I'm in. That's my thought. My take. I'm not gonna take an hour. You guys know. I think they're real. Yeah. Uh Travis thinks they're still here, but I think they're not.

Travis 44:07

I think they're still here. They are. I is it a huge community of giants? I don't know. Who knows? I mean, I don't know.

Josh 44:16

It depends on if you look at ancient history, you know, there was myth and lore, you know, the gods, but then you look at the biblical, it was actual people on the earth, like tribes. And I don't think those tribes were crazy large if you think of it as just real on-earth people.

Travis 44:35

I don't know. I think giants probably did exist. I think the giants probably still exist, but we don't call them giants. It's just an evolutionary blip. I think there's a reason people are born big. We're looking at Robert Ludlow and Manute Bull and a lot of these other just like really big people. There's a reason they exist. There's a reason for them to be big. Who knows why they are big and how that turned out, but they're big. They are tall, big people. Evolutionarily, if you look at that, there's a reason why that has still carried on, and why we still look at these people as like why? Why are they born so big? What is it that makes them so big? And there has to be a reason for it, whether that's I mean, well, yeah, if it's Nephilim. Yeah, uh I'm probably not gonna say Nephilim, but like it makes evolutionary sense to have big people because they were probably advantageous in battle, right? Like if you got a guy that's a big guy and can hold big things and throw big things, and then any sort of relationship he has with another woman, that's going to further that evolutionary trait.

Josh 46:02

So, what do you think about like the missing bones thing in the Smithsonian? Do you think it actually comes down to decay and science, or do you think that they're actually sweeping stuff under the rug?

Travis 46:12

I think they're sweeping stuff under the rug. I think that that is a problem with a lot of I don't want to say historians. I want to keep historians pristine. It just depends on who the historian is. If you're documenting something for a long time and you have an idea of the way history was supposed to turn out, you're going to look for all the reasons that support that evidence. I feel like that is what the Smithsonian was doing, is they were trying to preserve their idea of history. It just wasn't the correct one, and they were erasing a lot of evidence that supported or didn't support their version of history.

Josh 46:55

Yeah, I mean, you see it with Graham Hancock all the time, where he shows up and has proof that these artifacts or buildings or structures were beyond when they said man lived.

SPEAKER_03 47:07

Yeah.

Josh 47:07

He's constantly shunned by the science community because it is against what they say. And you also see it in Egypt right now, all these new technologies coming in are finding a lot more things that potentially change the history of some of the ancient sites there. And the people in charge over there are just like, Nope, nope, that's not true.

SPEAKER_03 47:30

Like they're just being stubborn because they don't want to change the story.

Josh 47:35

Because that would mean a lot of things to them.

Travis 47:39

Well, and it it goes against whatever their theory is. They want to be right, and that sometimes carries more weight than the idea of objectivity.

Josh 47:50

Yeah, there's a theory with like Egypt that maybe the Egyptians built around the pyramids or the Sphinx. You know, some of these things were already there, and they don't want that. They want to have claim to these things. That's a theory. Okay. We both believe. I do. I I do. I don't know if there's like mysticism behind it at all. Why not? That's how that's how I see it.

Travis 48:13

Like, yeah, no, okay, fine. Why not giants? And maybe the red hair and maybe this led to Bigfoot and Sasquatch. I mean, the red hair would not necessarily be a Yeti trait, but why not? Why not why not big guys? Like, why not big guys? Why not a whole community of big guys?

Josh 48:34

I am firm on the idea that we've been kind of disconnected from the land, anything mystical or in the land. And I jokingly say magic probably would have existed at some point, but we just are so disconnected from everything that well, it just doesn't matter anymore.

Travis 48:51

What I say is beer is science, wine is magic, because wine was viewed as a product that nobody really understood. So there's a thing called the god element as far as winemaking is concerned, and that is essentially like yeast wasn't identified until maybe a hundred, two hundred years ago. So wine, it's been fruit or sugar and time. Back then it just happened, and they're just like, What the what the fuck? It just happened. Like, and the yeast was converting that sugar into alcohol. Winemakers refer to that as the god element, like that was Bacchus or Dionysus having their influence over what was being made.

Josh 49:36

Yeah. So I do think that mysticism and magic could be something. You know, I'm not against that idea that there were great mythical things at some point. I'm okay with that. And the cover up, yeah, I think it happened.

Travis 49:50

Hate it. I hate it. I mean the cover up did actually happen. It's documented.

Josh 49:54

Well, that's the Giants episode. We still have our quiz. That's when we find out about our next episode's topic.

Fan Mail Punishment: The Proto Men

Josh 50:01

But before we get to that, we are gonna do our fan mail and review, and we don't have any.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Oh boy.

Josh 50:13

Okay, Proto Men. Here we go. We were gonna record a week ago. We're like, no, let's just wait and do that. But nope, nope, we never got any.

Travis 50:21

That's sad. That's too bad. Okay, so the Proto Men. Let's talk about the Proto Men. They are a band, they are a nerdy band. Oh, this is music. Okay. Uh yeah. This, oh, dude. If you haven't been listening to the Proto Men, you are missing out. They are a concept uh band out of Nashville, and it's a group of musicians that really wanted to tell the story of Mega Man. Uh, so they have three acts where they talk about the lore behind Mega Man. Um the video game? Yes, the video game. Yes, the video, yes. So act one is like Dr. Wiley taking over and Proto-Man attacking Dr. Wiley and then falling and being totally cast aside as far as the population is concerned. Act two is like a prequel where they talk about Thomas Light and Dr. Wiley's conflict before the rise of Proto-Man. And then Act Three is the building of Mega Man and how he's looking back. Thomas Light is like, you don't need to go down this path of sadistic vengeance. I would really advise against it. And then Mega Man goes against Dr. Wiley's troops. Uh, we're all robots like you have Woodman, you know, all the all the guys, all the guys from Mega Man. Woodman, Guts Man, I know nothing about Mega Man, Metal Man, Steel Man. Uh, you don't know anything about Mega Man? No, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know any of those names. And then Proto Man, who wasn't actually destroyed in Act One, comes and is like a man X, kind of like Racer X in Speed Racer, and is a guy that kind of helps shape Mega Man into who he is. And then Thomas Zeit's like, you don't need to go down this path. I've made that mistake with this guy. Please just stay home and we'll figure out what your actual role is. And he's like, nope, I know what my mythology is, I know what my lineage is. I am going to become this person that saves humanity. This is all done in a rock opera three-act structure done by the Proto Men. These guys are so they're so much fun to listen to, and the lore of the Proto Men is so fun. Um, if you just do like a quick Google search and then go down this Wikipedia rabbit hole. It is so much fun. But their music is great. Think like Repo, the genetic opera. If you're a fan of Hamilton or a fan of Rocky Horror Picture Show, like they're very theatrical with their music, like Bad out of Hell from Meatloaf, very theatrical. This is very much in that same vein. Well, I'm excited that you're excited about that. I'm very excited. I could talk about the Proto Man for a long time.

Josh 53:20

It was like double nerd, like music nerd and game nerd, and maybe theater nerd. A little bit of that.

Travis 53:28

I mean, they're very theatrical. They they will paint their faces and dress up in these characters. Um it is like uh like incredible. If you just look up Proto Man on YouTube and watch their act two um performance, maybe I'll post a video in our show notes. You should. That would be incredible.

Josh 53:50

Well, thank you for sharing one of your passions. Yep. The reason he did share that was because we didn't get any fan mail and it's kind of like a punishment.

Travis 53:59

It is a bit of a punishment.

Josh 54:02

If you don't want to hear us talk about things that we're passionate about, please, God, please give us a review. We need it. Give it to us. Okay.

Quiz For Next Topic: Fermi Paradox

Josh 54:12

Well, now we are gonna get to our baseline quiz. Okay, Jordan sent this over to us to see what we know about next week's topic before she hands us our real notes. So let's see what we get. This next episode's topic is the Fermi paradox. Never heard of that. I have. Hopefully, it doesn't hurt my head. Do you think it would? Paradoxes usually do that.

Travis 54:41

Yeah, because it's like two contradicting ideas.

unknown 54:45

Yeah.

Josh 54:46

Okay. Well, I don't know anything about this. We'll just hop right in. So, first question: what is the main idea behind the Fermi paradox? A, every plant has intelligent life. B, there's possibly extraterrestrial life, but no evidence yet. C, scientists have received several confirmed alien messages, or D, other beings are in the oceans, not in the outer space. My gosh. Okay.

Travis 55:11

So I know a little bit about the Fermi paradox, but not enough to really know what the answer is.

Josh 55:20

I mean, I'm just gonna make a blind guess because I don't know. I'm gonna say every planet has intelligent life, which is wild, but I don't know.

Travis 55:28

That I don't think is true. I don't think it's true either, but I think that there's possible extraterrestrial life, but there's no evidence yet, is my answer.

Josh 55:37

Okay. Next one. Which physicist is credited with first formulating the question, where is everybody, during a 1950 lunchtime conversation at Los Alamos? Is it A, Carl Sagan, B, Edward Teller, C, Enrico Fermi, or D, Michael Hart? It has to be Enrico Fermi, right?

Travis 55:57

Yeah. It's named after this guy. It has to be. Yeah. I like Carl Sagan and I like what he's done, but uh 1950 is a little too early for Carl Sagan.

Josh 56:08

I mean, it's probably wrong. It's probably a red herring. It's probably just made that name up.

Travis 56:12

Yeah. But I'm gonna click it. That's what I'm doing too. It's it's gotta be Enrico Fermi. Like, it has to be, right? It has to be. I mean, yeah.

Josh 56:21

Okay, next one. What does the Drake equation estimate? Is that A, the number of possible civilizations in the galaxy? B the travel time from Earth to Mars, C, the age of the universe, or D, the number of habitable planets around the stars.

Travis 56:38

I don't like the travel time from Earth to Mars as being the Drake equation. I'm gonna say the number of habitable planets around the stars. Okay. I'm gonna say number of possible civilizations. No, that's a good one, too. Habitable planets around the stars. I actually like that one, but I'm going to say number of possible civilizations in the galaxy. Okay. No, no, I'm no I'm not. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I'm gonna say what you said, the number of habitable planets around stars. I think that's a what they call the Goldilocks effect. So maybe I'm not gonna say that. Uh, age of the universe.

Josh 57:16

Oh, geez, man, you're all over the place. So, next one, the light cage limit refers to a barrier to extraterrestrial detection based on which constraint. Wow, that's a sentence. A atmospheric absorption of optical signals, B, the inability to see planets around bright stars, C the finite speed of light and signal propagation, or D, gravity bends light traveling across space.

Travis 57:43

Okay, so all these things are true or close to true. So gravity does bend light, inability to see planets around bright stars. That also is a thing. So when you're looking at bright stars, you look at how it kind of wavers based on the gravity of that planet. So it's a way to tell if there are planets around a star or a sun, as you can see how it kind of wiggles around a little bit. So these are all, if not true, close enough to truth. But does it have to deal with light cage limit? That's exactly it. That's uh so I'm going to say the finite speed of light and signal propagation. Only because it has light in the answer.

Josh 58:28

There's no other reason. I'm gonna say atmospheric absorption of optical signals.

Travis 58:34

Yeah. Are you saying that because it's like the sentence that makes the least amount of sense?

Josh 58:39

No, it just sometimes we can't see things because the atmosphere gets in the way. Or yeah. I don't know. That's zero idea what's going on right now.

Travis 58:51

You could say that.

Josh 58:51

That's why we have a Hubble telescope. I feel like I'm gonna get real smart learning about this. All right, next one in Stephen Webb's taxonomy of 75 solutions. Which broad category includes theories like the zoo scenario and the planetarium hypothesis? A, intelligence and technology are rare. B, they are here. C, they exist, but we have yet to detect them. D, they don't exist.

Travis 59:21

I don't know how to even wrap my head around this entire question that has just been given to us. This is this doesn't make any sense to me. I'm just gonna say they are here. So that's the broad category. So we're talking about taxonomy of 75 solutions. So there's 75 solutions, taxonomy meaning like stuffing things or cataloging things. It's like naming, classifying things. Okay. So taxonomy of 75 solutions. I don't know what so I I think it's there here. I I think they exist, but we have yet to detect them.

Josh 59:59

The zoo scenario in the planetarium hypothesis would be that we are like in a zoo as humans for other beings.

Travis 1:00:07

Or we are cataloging things as if they were in a zoo. I'm gonna say they exist, but we have yet to detect them.

Josh 1:00:15

Okay. And then last one, in what year was the specific term Fermi Paradox first coined? Is it A, 1977, B, 1963, C 1950, or D 1985? Feels like a 77 thing to me. That's my answer.

Travis 1:00:32

That's my answer. I I think it's uh, I don't know, 1977 sounds good. I mean 85 sounded real good to me too. 85 sounds really late for something like this to me. I'm gonna say 1950. Jeez. Okay. But that's like when we were like you think HG Wells uh stuff became really popular, movies started adapting science fiction stuff in the the best way they could. So 1950, yeah. That's what I'm saying.

Josh 1:01:02

All right, I'm gonna submit and check the answers. Come on. Uh oh, I did okay for guessing.

Travis 1:01:09

Oh I did better this time than I think I've done in a while.

Josh 1:01:15

What is the main idea behind the Fermi paradox? I said every plant has intelligent life.

Travis 1:01:20

I said there's possible extraterrestrial life, but no evidence yet, which was right. Yeah.

Josh 1:01:27

So next one, which physicist is credited for first formulating the question, where is everybody? during his lunchtime combo at Los Alamos? We both said Enrico Fermi. That's correct. Which is obvious.

Travis 1:01:40

Like that just seems like the the most correct.

Josh 1:01:43

He named it after his dad.

Travis 1:01:45

Yeah, Mr. Fermi.

Josh 1:01:48

Yeah. All right. What does the Drake equation estimate? I said the number of habitable planets around the stars. I said the age of the universe. And it was the number of possible civilizations in the galaxy. That was your first pick.

Travis 1:02:00

That was. That just seems so wild because you have to set a baseline. Maybe they have it.

Josh 1:02:07

Okay, next one. The light cage limit refers to a barrier to extraterrestrial detection based on which constraint. I said atmospheric absorption of optical signals.

Travis 1:02:18

I said the finite speed of light and signal propagation.

Josh 1:02:20

Oh, you got that right.

Travis 1:02:22

I did. Cool. Because I have light in the answer. I'm using a little bit of context. Maybe uh maybe I'm getting smarter. That's good. The next two questions do not support that claim, though.

Josh 1:02:34

Okay. Next one in Stephen Webb's Taxonomy of 75 Solutions, blah blah blah.

Travis 1:02:39

I said they are here, and you said they exist, but we have yet to detect them. I don't think there's a huge gap in what I said and what you said. I was correct. But you were right. They are here. I said they exist, which means maybe they are here. We just don't have a way to detect them.

Josh 1:03:01

I think the Zeus Nera in the planetarium is them. Like we were placed here to be specimens.

Travis 1:03:08

Okay.

Josh 1:03:08

I don't know. We'll find out. All right. And then last one, in what year was this specific term Fermi Paradox first coined? I said 1977. I said 1950. And it was 1977. There we go. So that's gonna be the topic for next episode. The Fermi Paradox. I'm super curious on how we're even gonna do this episode, but I like it.

Travis 1:03:29

It's gonna be big, full of science and science fiction. And I not good with science. I don't know how we're gonna do it either. This is gonna require, I think, a lot of heavy lifting on Jordan's part to help us wrap our head around what the Fermi Paradox is.

Josh 1:03:49

Well, I'm excited to get into this. Cool. Well, thank you for taking this stroll of Giants with us and this little side quest of the Fermi Paradox for next episode. Giants? What do you guys think? Yep. Let us know. In the comments, all those places, everywhere. Sure. How can they they find us? Aliens yes, but maybe no at gmail.com. Yeah. And then in the show notes of this episode, it just says text us and you can click that and it'll just go to your text app, whatever you use to text, and you can just text us like you're texting a friend.

Travis 1:04:23

Isn't that what we are? Yeah. Friends? I mean you've been listening to us for a while now. Aren't we all friends at this point? Chums. Good old pals. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh 1:04:32

All right. Well, we will chat at you next episode. Okay. Oh, thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Thank you, Jordan.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:40

Bye. Bye.