In 2003, archaeologists digging in a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores uncovered a nearly complete skeleton that shattered everything we thought we knew about human evolution: an adult female just three and a half feet tall, with a brain the size of a chimpanzee's, who lived at the same time as modern humans. Nicknamed the Hobbit, she forced science to rethink what it even means to be human.

This episode unpacks the discovery of Homo floresiensis, from the remarkable anatomy of the specimen known as Flo to the bitter scientific scandals, disease debates, and dating disputes that followed. We explore how isolation on Flores produced an evolutionary funhouse of dwarf elephants and giant rats, why these tiny humans vanished around 50,000 years ago, and what their existence reveals about the messy, branching bush of human ancest ...