The Tall Ones Part 2

Astonishing Legends

Scott Philbrook

History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 9.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2018

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What constitutes a "giant" in your mind? Certainly, people who are 6 to 7 feet tall are commonplace nowadays, unlike the Middle Ages, or even a hundred years ago. But what about someone who's seven feet tall or more? We may call them "giants" in jest, but it's not the same as when we think of the giants in our legends. A measurement of more than seven feet is rare, but there are plenty of healthy people living today in that range that prove it's not so legendary by our contemporary imagination. Rarer still is a human that's eight feet tall, but there has been one in recent history: Robert Pershing Wadlow stood 8' 11.1" tall (2.72 m) and weighed 490 pounds (220 kg) and showed no signs of stopping his growth at his untimely death in 1940 at age 22. So it's possible that a height for a human can approach nine feet, but could any height beyond that be sustainable? Because taller than that and it seems we venture beyond not only what is biologically viable for the human body, but also what is believable. It still leaves us with the question, "What makes a giant?" And if a skeleton is unearthed that appears to have horns? Well, that is another matter altogether.

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0:00.0	This week's episode of Estonishing Legends is brought to you by Movement Watches,
0:03.2	Blue Apron, the night call, The Great Courses Plus, and our contributors at patreon.com.
0:09.3	Two weeks ago, we began a series on giants. And that first show, we laid down the groundwork
0:15.0	that would point to some of the origins throughout human history that seemed to have given birth
0:19.7	to the legends and lore surrounding the idea of men and women whose physical stature exceeded
0:26.4	the average height of today's people by up to several feet. Did all of these tall ones
0:32.2	suffer from medical conditions that lead to unmitigated growth, or were some of them simply
0:37.5	genetically taller than we are today? Members of what would now be an extinct species of mankind?
0:43.7	Tonight we will look at that and more as we dive back into the world of giants.
0:56.6	Welcome back to Estonishing Legends. I'm Scott Philbrook and this is Forest Burgess.
1:11.9	It was taught by the wise men of the Sioux tribe that the earth was originally
1:15.6	people by giants who were fully three times the size of modern men. They were so swift and
1:21.2	powerful that they could run alongside a buffalo, take the animal under one arm and tear off a
1:26.0	leg and eat it as they ran. Buffalo Bill Cody from the last of the great scouts written by Helan
1:32.4	Cody Wetmore and first published in 1899. Join us tonight for part two of our series on giants.
1:40.4	Okay, no, no, see the problem. Let's just ride it. We're never going to make it fit.
1:45.6	See the thing here is folks, when we do a long quote like that, we're trying to get everything
1:50.5	wrapped up by the end of the theme. Sometimes we have to go a little bit further up.
1:54.9	I wanted to fit in my, boy, it's good thing I didn't go full Sam Elliott.
1:59.6	All right, course commercials. Let's roll into the next part of the outlaw. All right.
2:03.2	And we're back. That we are. It's been a busy week for us even though we were actually
2:09.6	technically dark last week. We did release a bonus show of an interview we did with Chris Cogswell
	...

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