Living Dinosaurs, Cryptids and Michael Crichton’s Congo with Eddie Guimont

You're in a canoe, sweating in thick jungle heat, and something enormous stirs in the water ahead. That's the mood pulling us into Mokele-mbembe, the legendary "living dinosaur" of Central Africa, and the bigger question we can't stop circling: why do we keep needing monsters, especially when the world feels like it's running out of mysteries?

I'm joined by historian Eddie Guimont, whose research into dinosaur hunting, lost cities and conspiracy culture shows how cryptozoology ties into colonial exploration, museum prestige and the politics of who gets to call something a discovery. We talk about the okapi as a proof point for European audiences, Carl Hagenbeck's confidence in local reports, and the moment The Lost World lands in a culture already primed to believe extinct animals might still be out there.

From there we jump to Michael Crichton's Congo recycling Victorian "dark continent" tropes, the 1970s and 80s boom in monster expeditions (including Young Earth creationist funding for living-dinosaur searches), and the pull of reptiles in conspiracy thinking, from lizard people to the wider ecosystem of pseudoscience, flat earth belief and anti-expert politics.

Guest

Eddie Guimont

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eddieguimont?igsi=MWd0MnFhZGl0NDM3Ng==

Eddie's article

Hunting Dinosaurs in Africa, Contingent Magazine (2019)

https://contingentmagazine.org/2019/03/18/hunting-dinosaurs-africa/

Links

The Power of the Flat Earth Idea: History from the Marginalised

 (affiliate link)
https://amzn.eu/d/0gJkqRkk

When the Stars Are Right: H. P. Lovecraft and Astronomy

(affiliate link)
https://amzn.eu/d/0iKwNF3m

Further Reading

Beasts and Men, being Carl Hagenbeck's experiences for half a century among wild animals (1912) — free to read on the Internet Archive

https://archive.org/details/beastsmenbeingca00hage

Next episode will arrive on 16th September

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