I was a little disappointed with Cody's episode (and after listening, 17 episodes of his podcast) that there wasn't any discussion of the giants Coriantumr and Shiz that the people in the Book of Mormon met. After Coriantumr defeated Shiz in combat, the story goes, he waited until he was able to pass along the knowledge of their former civilization. He originated among the giants of the American north - Canada and the northern tier - after they had come here from the EAST. It would have been nice to hear a bit more about Wayne May's research into the location of the events in the Book of Mormon, notably the American midwest and Great Lakes area that were the center of what archaeologists now call Adena and Hopewell phases, which lasted from about 500 B.C.E. to about 700 A.D. These cultures predated anything we now think of as Native American by at least 500 years. The northern giants were part of the first migrants to the New World that according to the BoM happened before the fall of the Tower of Babel - the so-called Jaredites - at least 2,000 years before that.
The more Cody and his partner Moth sneered about the stupidity of the history of Mormonism throughout their podcast, the more disappointed I became. Granted, I'm not a Mormon and I feel its human creators were deeply flawed individuals. But between the drug-induced shamanic experiences Cody outlined so well and the very real corroborating evidence of Middle Eastern people in the New World, it isn't so hard to believe Joseph Smith stumbled across a real history and was able to gain an impression of that history in his entheogenic experimentation. What they and others did with it afterward is pretty inexcusable, but that isn't to say there isn't something to the story. The paleo-Hebrew inscriptions scattered across North America attest to this, and nobody touched it.
Newman and Vieira were amazing, and I was just struck by how details they provided line up with the North American giant experience so well. Atlantean origins is a fascinating topic, but the North American copper culture that was the source for copper used in artifacts found in Europe is tangible even now, and a large city as round as Carthage existed in southern Louisiana long before there were Cherokees or Creeks or any of the tribes that had filled the landscape by the time of European contact in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Having somebody like Wayne May on might make a truly fascinating episode after these recent forays into the matter of giants and early Middle Eastern populations coming to the New World. It's a shame Gene Matlock ("India Once Ruled America!") passed away, as I think his linguistic research could really help flesh out this story.
Interesting, especially the specific information about the giant remains.
However, small quibble. Would it be so hard to refer it as "Britain and Ireland", rather than "the British isles."
Might seem churlish to some, but it matters to some of us!
