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What if the most famous monster in the world started as a 1,500-year-old tall tale told by a monk who used his own buddy as bait? Buckle up, because Nessie's origin story is wilder than you think.
Everybody's seen the blurry black-and-white photo, but almost nobody knows the insane backstory behind the Loch Ness Monster. In this episode, Jaron and Tim trace Nessie all the way back to 565 AD, when Saint Columba supposedly commanded a water beast to leave a swimming monk alone during a funeral (yes, they used a living guy as bait). From there the trail goes cold for roughly 1,300 years until the 1800s, when sea-serpent sightings and the discovery of the plesiosaur fossil kicked off a whole new wave of monster mania. The guys dig into the famous 1934 "surgeon's photo" that turned out to be a toy submarine with a clay dinosaur head, the big-game hunter who faked hippo footprints with a dried hippo foot, and the modern science that tried to settle it all. Operation Deep Scan fired sonar from 24 boats, and a 2018 DNA study found zero reptile DNA but an absolutely bonkers amount of European eel DNA. Could Nessie just be a three-foot eel, a wandering elephant, a tree branch, and a whole lot of wishful thinking? It's a fascinating, hilarious dive into how myths are born.
Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!
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