It should come as no surprise that a century and a half ago, when newspapers were filled with tall tales, one story appeared that was perhaps taller than most.

It concerned a most surprising visitor to this planet, whose appearance both startled and amused, and at the same time, slotted in perfectly with the legends and lore of the day.

And in our extended content for premium members, another tale from the same era, written half a world away by an author you know very well.

All of that and more is coming up right now on Skeptoid.

Hi, I'm Alex Goldman.

You may know me as the host of Reply All,

but I'm done with that.

I'm doing something else now.

I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed. On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems, and I try to solve them. Some massive and life-altering, and some so minuscule, it'll boggle your mind. No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you. That's Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia.

Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

The Colorado Martian.

Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by

knowing what's real and what's not. Now, first of all, I'm well aware that not a single person listening to this honestly suspects that there might be any truth to a story as silly as the millions of years old petrified corpse of a Martian being found, still encased in its sarcophagus, in a mine in Colorado way back in 1864. There would be no point in my telling

such a story here and no point in debunking it for debunkings' sake either. The wild phenomenon

we're looking at today is not the story itself, but the very fact that the story exists,

and since it's on skeptoid,

you should know that there's something special about the story. There's a reason we're going

to talk about it today. In particular, a relevance to some of today's stories that you might

not have expected. And that gives us additional insight into other strange things we hear.

And as with so many stories on Skeptoid, that insight comes to us from a familiar source.

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