Podcasts Technology Endless Thread The Great Lemming Lie

The Great Lemming Lie

Published: Sept. 20, 2024, 9 a.m.

Telling a story is hard. Filming nature is even harder.

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That may be why, in the 1940s, Walt Disney productions leaned on movie magic to develop its True-Life Adventures nature documentary series. It built sets, shipped in animals from distant locales, and even made up facts.

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One lie looms larger than them all. It's haunted the film genre for generations with a question: From classics narrated by Sir David Attenborough to today's fast-paced animal content on YouTube, is what we're seeing real or fake?

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Prompted by a Reddit post, Endless Thread's Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell go down the rabbit hole \u2014 lemming hole? \u2014 of deception in nature documentaries.

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Credits: This episode was produced by Dean Russell and Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The co-hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell. Our managing producer is Samata Joshi.