Nature Documentaries in the Digital Age

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

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.

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?

Prompted by a Reddit post, Endless Thread's Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell go down the rabbit hole — lemming hole? — 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.