Audio: Thomas Jefferson: Monster Hunter

Hosts Blake Smith and Karen Stollznow welcome scholar Justin Mullis to discuss his conference paper on Thomas Jefferson as an early cryptozoologist. Justin presented the paper at the academic conference Gods and Monsters at Texas State University in San Marcos in April 2019. If the premise sounds like a joke, it isn’t: Jefferson’s pursuit of giant unknown animals was not a hobby but a politically motivated scientific campaign — one that shaped how the young United States presented itself to the world.