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Wondrium began life as The Great Courses in 1990. A year ago, it renamed itself to reflect its move beyond academic presentations and into other areas like self-improvement. On June 2, its 5-part \u201cAchieve Your Potential\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 series debuted. Scientist and educator Crystal Dilworth<\/a> hosts all five, including Diana\u2019s installment, \u201cNever Give Up.\u201d<\/p>\nI should have ignored Nyad\u2019s advice and given up before it was too late. But Wondrium\u2019s ad gave me hope. Maybe Wondrium would do what Nyad\u2019s publisher didn\u2019t; what the producers of the Nyad biopic didn\u2019t; and what everyone else who has ever presented a Nyad program didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
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Sadly, Wondrium didn\u2019t either. A doctorate in molecular neuroscience could not prepare Crystal Dilworth to discover the real Diana Nyad. \u201cNever Give Up\u201d is one more grift on Nyad\u2019s road to sports-fraud glory, a route she hopes will pass through a star-anchored biopic<\/a> and a book<\/a> introducing her fraud to children, and will finish at the foot of a Diana Nyad statue in Key West.<\/p>\n Of course, none of this was Dr. Dilworth\u2019s fault. Wondrium plopped her into an impossible situation. She probably knows little or nothing about marathon swimming and had no control over the script or choice of guests. It never would have occurred to her that the new series might include a serial liar.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Just two minutes into the program, Nyad launches into one of her favorite untrue tales: Her step-father, Aristotle Z. Nyad<\/a>, invites her into the den on her 5th birthday. He opens Webster\u2019s Unabridged Dictionary and proudly reads one meaning of \u201cnaiad\u201d: \u201cgirl or woman champion swimmer.\u201d But that definition has never appeared in Webster\u2019s<\/a> or anywhere else except Diana\u2019s presentations.<\/p>\n Curiously, a legitimate definition pops up onscreen during the story. Maybe that\u2019s what \u201cfact-checking\u201d means to Wondrium. If so, it\u2019s the first and last time it happens.<\/p>\n For the rest of the program, Diana revisits many of her standard fabrications. (I list them here<\/a> in the interest of brevity.) However, she does offer a few surprises. Here\u2019s what I found:<\/p>\n Diana has always told her Olympic Trials tale<\/a> in one of two ways: either she\u2019s at an unnamed meet and fails to qualify for the trials, or she\u2019s at the trials themselves and fails to qualify for the Olympics. Never before has she told the trials story without mentioning the trials.<\/p>\n That changed with her Wondrium program.\u00a0So, when she looks up at the non-existent electronic scoreboard and says, \u201cI didn\u2019t make it\u201d (6:24), an astute listener might well ask: \u201cDidn\u2019t make what?\u201d<\/p>\n When skeptics confront Nyad with facts about her swim, she frequently argues that 44 people\u2014the count she settled on for her crew\u2014wouldn\u2019t lie<\/a>. In the Wondrium program, she inadvertently reveals why that number is a red herring:<\/p>\n There are 44 people on this team. Mostly, there\u2019s about 20 people on the core, then the others fill in on boats close by to take care of that team. (23:00)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Her actual \u201ccore,\u201d the number of people necessary to pull off the Cuba-Florida fraud, is probably closer to 10. Since numbers and facts lose stability around Diana, you never know\u2014she may get there. See, for instance, how<\/p>\n Forty-four years ago, Diana hired experienced sailor and America\u2019s Cup competitor Rich du Moulin<\/a> to navigate her first Cuba-Florida attempt. Du Moulin had little to do with the fiasco that followed. Winds blowing up to 18 knots generated huge waves. The design of Nyad\u2019s shark cage magnified those waves within its walls, wreaking havoc on the swimmer. The wind, waves, and currents pushed Nyad west, away from Florida. And then her press boat began sinking after its water pump failed. \u201cDiana had spent months of planning and publicity gathering,\u201d Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>, \u201cnot to mention about $150,000 [~$658,000 today] of her sponsors\u2019 cash\u2014only to achieve the ultimate in slapdash organization.\u201d<\/p>\n But Nyad would rather find fault than accept it, so she still blames her first pilot. On the way to praising John Bartlett, her 2013 navigator, she belittles du Moulin:<\/p>\n So you wind up with a navigator [like Bartlett] who doesn\u2019t come from the America\u2019s Cup sailing of Rhode Island. (11:36)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She never mentions du Moulin by name, but she doesn\u2019t have to. Newport, Rhode Island, hosted the America\u2019s Cup race from 1930 through 1983<\/a>. Du Moulin first crewed an entry in 1967<\/a>.<\/p>\n Forget \u201cAchieve Your Potential\u201d\u2014Nyad\u2019s program should initiate a new series called \u201cExploit Your Trauma (And Others\u2019) To Win Admiration.\u201d \u201cAnd by the way,\u201d she says, \u201c[marathon swimming\u2019s] an easy sport to click off all the horrendous things that you go through and you feel\u201d (29:28). And off she goes, clickety-click:<\/p>\n I thought, \u201cwill this be the time I die out there?\u201d (23:19)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No again. With a medical team, a flotilla of five boats, and all the precautions she took to overcome the dangers of her swim, she was more likely to die driving to the Straits than swimming in them.<\/p>\n Concerned, perhaps, that her own voluntary traumas would seem superficial, she introduces involuntary ones of others: a couple parenting a severely disabled child \u201cin heartbreaking circumstances\u201d (19:59), and a friend dying young of cancer. \u201cShe had three kids,\u201d Nyad says, \u201ca wonderful husband, parents, the whole thing. . . . It was more elevating\u2014her grace\u2014in realizing it was the end, there was no more fight to do.\u201d (26:44) [need better quote]<\/strong><\/p>\n Terribly sad, but what is her dying friend doing in a talk about marathon swimming? See below.<\/p>\n When Nyad insists she doesn\u2019t want to sound some way or do something, rest assured she\u2019ll sound that way or do that thing soon if she hasn\u2019t already. Here\u2019s what she says after the disabled child and dying friend stories:<\/p>\n So, I never compare myself to someone who\u2019s going to war, or someone who is in that type of a parenthood. (21:28)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So again, let me not compare myself to someone, you know, about to pass away. (27:56)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Except that she just did. By describing those people in this context, she implicitly does<\/em> compare and even liken her elective, swimming-related difficulties to their uninvited trauma. Diana has a distressing habit of using proximity to imply these kinds of false equivalencies. See, for instance, her Holocaust story<\/a>.<\/p>\n In another form of Nyad\u2019s instant hypocrisy, she\u2019ll say she doesn\u2019t want to sound boastful, then immediately boast:<\/p>\n And I don\u2019t want to be the one who sounds too braggartly, but you go interview [my medical team]. And they will tell you that the reason I survived those stings\u2014I shouldn\u2019t have, I should have died that night\u2014was on will. (19:10)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Again, almost everyone stung by the box jellyfish survives. Nyad\u2019s medical team made the odds of a fatal sting nearly zero.<\/p>\n Here are two similar examples from other programs:<\/p>\n When I leave these speeches I do\u2014I don\u2019t mean this in some braggartly way\u2014we\u2019re together in this. I\u2019m in it with these people in these audiences. And they stand up in a standing ovation. (RelationShift Experience<\/a> podcast<\/a><\/em>, 19 July 2017, 42:40)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I don\u2019t want to sound too braggartly, but I think that, on August 13th of this year, standing on the Cuba coast about to set off, that I was in the best physical shape of anybody on the face of the earth for that day. (PBS<\/em> interview, Oct 1978\u2014clip<\/a>\/full program<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nyad\u2019s quest for fame and adoration motivates everything she does. She acknowledged this<\/a> early in her career:<\/p>\n I would not deny that the day to day motivations are fame and fortune. . . . I want very much to be recognized. (Ft. Lauderdale News<\/a>, 16 Nov 1975)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n People show her that she\u2019s worthy by giving up money, time, and dreams to focus solely on her. She also loves for people to shed tears over her accomplishments.<\/p>\n In the Wondrium program, she repeats her \u201cno one got paid\u201d mantra<\/a> (22:39), but she bolsters it with other examples of people giving things up. Her brother and sister \u201cgave up their dreams, because mine was so big\u201d (4:57). Her unpaid \u201cteam\u201d gave \u201ctheir knowledge and their hearts\u201d because they were all so invested and inspired by her mission (12:27). And her fans gave her their tears. \u201cI stood on that beach for those 1000s of people. They were crying. . . because they saw an individual and a team who . . . refused to give up\u201d (26:23).<\/p>\n A word about her team. She often includes them\u2014says \u201cwe did it\u201d instead of \u201cI did it\u201d\u2014not to show her generosity, as she wants you to think, but to make her narcissism palatable. No one could stomach it undiluted, so she pretends her exploits are not all about her.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, with all those loyal fans and steadfast crew members believing in her, how could she possibly be a fraud? (Said EVERY OTHER CON ARTIST WHO EVER LIVED!) Sorry for shouting.<\/p>\n On my gravestone, the two things that I would like said about me, first would be \u201cshe was the best friend anybody ever had.\u201d If Bonnie and Candice and Nina, the three closest people in my life, stand up as they do at certain toasts and say, \u201cYou don\u2019t know what a friend is, until you\u2019ve had Diana as your best friend. . . .\u201d The second thing is . . . I am a good storyteller. (36:56)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For someone who doesn\u2019t want a gravestone\u2014 \u201cI am not going to have a headstone,\u201d she told the Orlando Sentinel<\/em> in 2016<\/a>, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t believe in burials\u201d\u2014Diana talks a lot about gravestones. In previous presentations, she has said that she wanted either the \u201cbest friend\u201d or \u201cgood storyteller\u201d inscription. Until Wondrium, she never asked for both. That will make a crowded, boastful headstone for someone who denies wanting to sound \u201cbraggartly\u201d and didn\u2019t want a headstone in the first place.<\/p>\n Moreover, in a program meant to help people achieve their potential, what kind of narcissist crows about friends toasting her magnificence and wanting that magnificence carved in granite? Perhaps one who also declares that people \u201cneed to hear\u201d her fabrication-riddled stories (26:42, 40:50) and who clothes her relatively minor difficulties in the borrowed robes of genuine tragedy.<\/p>\n ><((\u0317(\u0302(\u00b0>\u00a0 \u00a0 <\u00b0))\u0302)\u0316)><<\/p>\n NOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Diana brought her Marathon Swimming Medicine Show to the online learning company Wondrium. It promised a fact-checked, vetted program. Did it deliver?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cuba-florida"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Diana](\"https:\/\/nyadfactcheck.com\/annex\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/2022.04.12.heather-carruthers.jpg\")
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What Happened to the Trials?<\/h5>\n
Working Her Core: Diana Hints at How She Managed the Cuba-Florida Fraud<\/h5>\n
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The Unforgiven: Nyad\u2019s First Cuba-Florida Navigator<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Recurring Themes<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Trauma<\/h5>\n
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\nFlorida Straits sharks are \u201cvery intelligent,\u201d according to Nyad. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to come eat you whole. Now they will<\/em> come take a leg.\u201d (9:50)<\/li>\n
\nDuring \u201cthat short little two and a half minutes that you\u2019re stopped you\u2019re not pushing north, you\u2019re getting dragged east\u201d (11:30). But Nyad took breaks of up to 20 minutes or longer<\/a>\u2014and she stopped swimming for 80 or 90 minutes during a storm<\/a>\u2014yet her GPS readings, taken every 10\u201315 minutes, show no eastward deviations. (Here\u2019s the course from her blog<\/a> via public radio station KPCC. Here\u2019s a finer-grained chart<\/a> created from all her GPS readings.)<\/li>\n
\n\u201cThere are 1000s of species of jellyfish, but the only one that will kill you almost instantly is the box jellyfish\u201d (16:41). Not true. Most people survive box jelly stings, even those stung by the much more toxic Australian ones. Most of what Nyad says about box jellies<\/a> is nonsense.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nInstant Hypocrisy: Add Water and Serve<\/h3>\n
Every Con Artist\u2019s Dream<\/h3>\n
Diana\u2019s Epitaph(s)<\/h5>\n
![\"Lady](\"https:\/\/nyadfactcheck.com\/annex\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/netrebko.jpg\")
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![course from her blog<\/a> via public radio station KPCC. Here\u2019s a](\"https:\/\/a.scpr.org\/i\/6d00e8fee7ad3492cb376d11a62b39f9\/67382-full.jpg\"){kind=link}