How tall is Superman, really?

What is David Corinwate's true height? Last year, he got hooked up to a lie detector. — Have you ever lied about your height to make yourself seem taller than you are? — No, I don't think so. — That is a lie. — I am David Corinwat and I'm 6'4. — Is that a lie? It's time to gather some evidence from the real world. Internet detective Shane Fan calculated Corinat's height from this photo using these barricades as a reference. — 6'2 and 4th. — But I think he made some mistakes starting with these barricades. — I found an exact model with a height of 43 in. But you can see in this cell phone video I found that it's not the exact model. Drew, a member of our Patreon, went out and actually measured the barriers on this block and found they averaged 43 and 3/4 in. But of course, these things aren't pristine. Their height varies quite a bit. I think Shane did correctly track down cornsweblers first thing in the morning. Hi, I'm just hoping to get a little more information about one of your shoes. A very nice person there put me on hold so she can measure multiple pairs of these specific shoes. Superman. Yeah. — So, 22 to 24 is sort of the range. That's pretty close to the number Shane uses. Final issue. Cornsweet's posture doesn't seem fully upright. I asked an AI to identify his joints, but straightening them out only added 4 to 5 pixels. Put that all together and I calculate a height of 6' 3. 4 in. But I'm going to show you something a lot of internet detectives don't. The uncertainty created by unclear barrier height, socks and shoes, and potential errors I made in my pixel measurements. I'm very confident Cornswe falls in this range, but that's not good enough. This picture was taken on the same day and features better posture and more reliable reference objects. I was able to get in touch with a photographer who confirmed the camera and lens he used, and I sent another Howtown Patreon supporter named Spencer to the Empire State Building where he made a whole bunch of careful measurements. Redoing the calculations and accounting for lens distortion, I now arrive at 6'3. 2 in. And there's a much smaller confidence range below 6'4. But before we pass judgment, consider this paper. Circadian variation in human stature. We gain height at night and start losing it when we stand up in the morning as our bodies compress. The change is about 1% of total height. Based on where the light is falling and the shadow angles, I'd say this photo was taken around 9:15 a. m. right after an appearance on the Today Show. — Morning. Great to see you both. — So, he had already been up for at least a couple hours. This photo has a time stamp around 2 p. m. And if we extrapolate his height at 2 along this curve, we'd expect him to be near 6'3. 5 at 9, very close to our earlier estimate. And at his tallest, the moment he wakes up, he would be 6'4. — I am David Cornsweet and I'm 6'4. — Regardless of the facts, we can't know if David is lying here because we don't know what he believes to be true. But even if this were as simple as determining his actual height, we've seen how reality is complicated. It resists easy answers and clear determinations of precise truth. That's what we're all about here at Howtown. — Yep. — We've got a new full episode about lie detectors. What can scientific experiments tell us about their accuracy? And can they be beaten?