HMNS Beyond Bones Podcast · Houston Museum of Natural Science

Dinosaur Conspiracies & Misconceptions with James Washington

·34 min·2 clips

James says crocodiles are dinosaur cousins, not descendants, and survival favored animals that could wait out the crisis.

Johnny Hemberger starts with a familiar crowd-pleaser: are dinosaurs fake, are fossils real, and should anybody be worried about radioactivity? James Washington answers like someone who has heard it all before. The joke lands right away, but the conversation quickly settles into the actual rules. Fossil digging is not some secret club activity. Where you are matters, because state and country laws, plus land ownership, decide who can dig and what happens next. In some places, the government owns the fossils. In the United States, land rights and state law do most of the work. That makes the answer less dramatic than a conspiracy theory, but much more useful. The show also digs into why these rumors keep coming back. A question can flare up again after a TV rerun, a social post, or an old clip getting fresh attention. James treats that cycle as part of the job. He works around museums and volunteers, so he sees the same myths return from different directions. The conversation handles that with dry humor instead of frustration. When Ancient Aliens comes up, the alien bomb theory gets brushed aside without ceremony. The point is not to build a giant case around it. The point is to say plainly that it is silly. The episode then circles back to fossils themselves, and James says he has worked with them his whole life and is fine. A stray note about Gorgosaurus brain cancer appears, then gets left where it belongs, as a side detail rather than a conspiracy centerpiece. That little detour is a good example of how the show moves: a weird fact, a correction, a laugh, then back to the main road. By the end, the listener has a clearer sense of why these myths spread and why museum people keep answering them.

As heard by us

A lively correction of fossil myths, anchored by museum-side detail.

Johnny Hemberger and James Washington turn dinosaur conspiracies into a clear, good-humored look at why fossil science is so often misunderstood.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a funny, fact-first reset on dinosaur conspiracy talk.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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