Category: Con Artistry

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Skeptics Society founder Michael Shermer reviewed Diana Nyad’s 2015 memoir, Find A Way, for the Wall St. Journal. Plenty of folks had questioned Nyad’s honesty by that time. But Shermer, who makes his living as a skeptic, didn’t betray a drop of doubt. He accepted Find A Way as gospel, going so far as to crown Diana Nyad  “the greatest long-distance swimmer in the history of the sport.”¹ 

According to the Skeptics Society’s website, part of the organization’s purpose is to investigate “the paranormal, fringe science, pseudoscience, and extraordinary claims of all kinds” (my italics). So, how could a skeptic’s skeptic miss Nyad’s deception?

For two reasons:

Continue reading “NYAD’S LIES, PART 3: An Expert Planter of Beliefs — Diana Nyad, Con Artist”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

[NOTE: For a more extensive rummage through the lies in Diana Nyad’s memoir, please see “Unreliable Natator: Omissions, Exaggerations, and Lies in Diana Nyad’s Find a Way.”]

Diana Nyad loves to tell stories. She loves to tell stories about big things (“I was the first woman to swim around Manhattan”) and little things (“Margie and I . . . started eating all our dinners in Miami at Benihana”) and all sorts of things in between.

You’ll find a theme here and throughout all of Nyad’s deceptions: she will say or do whatever she thinks will enhance her public image. She will distort the truth, ignore the rules, and slander other swimmers. She will diminish or disregard the achievements of other marathoners while claiming those achievements as her own. It’s all okay in her book as long as it furthers the cause: the deification of Diana Nyad.

Continue reading “NYAD’S LIES, PART 1: From Bimini to the Big Apple — the Lies in Find a Way”

Last week, Diana Nyad appeared on Capital Public Radio’s “Insight with Beth Ruyak.” The interview’s most fascinating bit of news: Nyad said that she’s “probably going to be writing a book this next year about all these myriad syndromes…that come about.”

What does she mean by “all these myriad syndromes”? All I can say is that Diana has pathologies (myriad syndromes?) on her mind.

Continue reading “FIND A PATHOLOGY: Diana Nyad’s Next Book?”

On a recent episode of the “Wild Ideas Worth Living” podcast, host Shelby Stanger asked Diana Nyad about her expulsion from Emory University, an incident that Nyad has recounted numerous times. Surprisingly, she claimed that she had little memory of her teens, twenties, or thirties. She concluded, “…I don’t remember Emory at all.” Below are some excerpts from Nyad’s remarks. (For the full passage, please see “Diana Nyad on her memory.”)

Continue reading “Diana Decides to Forget Half of Her Life”

This post has been superseded by “The Best of the ’70s” page on the main site.

Countless articles and websites hawk variations of “Back in the 1970s, DIANA NYAD was the greatest long-distance swimmer in the world”  (LiveTalks LA ). You can find other iterations broadcast widely online and in print: TED, Woman Fails in Attempt…,  Nyad’s website, etc.

We can follow this fiction back to two sources: Diana Nyad and her publicists. To paraphrase the great swim coach Doc Counsilman in “Go For the Gold, Doc,” Nyad was a mediocre swimmer who conned the public into thinking she was a great one.

Continue reading “Questioning Diana’s Decade of Dominance”

Update, 18 June 2021: In 1989, Nyad swam as a member of a relay team that crossed Long Island Sound as part of Swim Across America. 

Update, 6 Dec 2025: Nyad swam in other Swim Across America events in 1988, 1990, and likely in 1991. See

• • “Diana Nyad in one of the first Swim Across America Event 1988 by Swim Across America Raleigh” (video from 1988 via Mary Demilia)
  • “Swim in Sound Aims to Raise $100,000 for Hospital” (1990)
  • “Swimming their way to health” (1991)

Found a 1989 article showing Nyad leaving the water after completing her leg of the Swim Across the Sound (Long Island): . . .

Diana Nyad has stated many times that, before she started training for Cuba-Florida attempt #2, she hadn’t swum a stroke for three decades.

From Find a Way, p. 117…

The dream was still alive for me now, at age sixty, but I hadn’t swum a stroke in thirty years.

Continue reading “No Escape! Exposing Diana Nyad’s “I Didn’t Swim For 30 Years” Fabrication”