Hoax!
Why do so many people believe things that aren’t true? In an era when claims of “fake news” come as natural as breathing, and social media allows lies to spread and multiply like viruses, the question feels more relevant than ever. From the teenage girls who convinced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that fairies were real in the 19th century to “Balloon boy” in 2009, Hoax! will explore the most audacious and ambitious tricks in history. And along the way, we’ll uncover the reasons people let themselves be fooled, and how we can live our lives and engage with the media with a more critical eye. Co-hosted by Noble Blood’s Dana Schwartz and pop culture writer Lizzie Logan, we’ll bring you stories of pranks and grifts throughout history so big and bold they make us question why we believe what we believe in the first place.
Episodes
The Jussie Smollett Incident
In January 2019, ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett was the victim of a racial and homophobic hate crime perpetrated in Chicago that shocked the nation and sparked an outcry from seemingly Hollywood’s entire A-list. But it didn’t take long for cracks in his story to emerge. In our season 1 finale, we explore the logic holes, inconsistencies, and downright bizarre twists in this
Scratching Fanny of Cock Lane
A landlord claimed that his daughter was haunted, by the deceased wife of a former tenant. Most shocking of all, this ghost was accusing her husband of murder. Ghosts aren't real (most of the time, sorry), but murders plots can be very, very real. But who is the real murderer here? SOURCES:Gentlemen’s Magazine archives (by Samuel Johnson) “Ghostly Hands and Ghostly Agency,”
Time Traveler John Titor
From 1998 to 2001, a man claiming to be visiting our "world-line" on a mission from the year 2036 enthralled a corner of the nascent internet with his explanations of time travel, the world of the future, and the wars to come. While few of his "predictions" came true, his story remains haunting -- who was this enigmatic early forum poster? Why did he claim time ended in 2564? How did he know so mu
Fake Anastasias
Anastasia Romanov inspired a play, an Academy Award-winning movie, and a Dana-and-Lizzie-loving animated feature. But the legend of the missing princess is stranger and more involved than a movie with a talking bat might have led you to believe. SOURCES:https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/february-6/anastasia-arrives-in-the-united-stateshttps://phys.org/news/2018-07-fresh-dna-authenticate-
The Gulf Breeze UFOtos
In one of the most famous and widely-reported UFO sightings of all time, a Florida man witnessed, photographed and even interacted with alien beings from another planet several times over the course of many months, sparking a frenzy of speculation and excitement. Then again...a Florida man...SOURCES:War of the Words by Craig R Meyershttps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/16/congress-ua
The Bristol Princess
A girl showed up at a town near Bristol in 1817 wearing a turban, and everyone went nuts. SOURCES:"The Caraboo Hoax," Margaret RussellJohn Matthew Gutch's narrativeEnglish Eccentrics, by Edith Sitwell"Devonshire Characters and Strange Events""British Performances of Java," Matthew Isaac CohenSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
April Fool's Day: Google, Spaghetti Trees and Sidd Finch
This episode of Hoax is no fun at all. April Fool's! For our (almost) April 1 episode, we explore the holiday's origins and some of the best pranks of the 20th and 21st centuries: Google's various exploits (Pokemon Go!), that time the BBC produced a piece on Spaghetti Trees, and the Curious Case of Sidd Finch, the Mets pitcher who could throw 168 MPH. SOURCES:https://www.rutgers.edu/news/how-did-a
Napoleon is Dead
Stockmarkets are now battlefields. An aide-de-camp arrived in Dover with the startling, thrilling news that Napoleon had been killed, and the British stock market behaved accordingly. The problem was, Napoleon wasn't dead. SOURCES:Napoleon Is Dead by Richard DaleTrial transcriptSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Crop Circles
Messages from extraterrestrial visitors? Evidence of strange atmospheric conditions? No one knows where crop circles come from or what they mean. Except, we do know, but for believers, that's the start, not the end, of the story. The history of crop circles is a case study in conspiratorial thinking...plus art in wheat fields!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Joice Heth
P.T. Barnum is famous to movie-going audiences as the charming 'Greatest Showman,' but the reality was far more complicated, and much darker. P.T. Barnum's very first foray into showbusiness was purchasing an enslaved woman named Joice Heth, whom he displayed as a public spectacle, promoting her a 161-year-old woman who once nursed George Washington. SOURCES:'The Showman and the Slave' by Benjamin
Van Meegeren's Vermeers
Arrested in 1945 for selling a Vermeer masterpiece to high-ranking Nazi Herman Goring, dutch painter Han van Meegeren had an innovative and shocking defense: he was guilty not of collaboration but of art forgery, faking half a dozen "Vermeers" over the previous decade. But under the reign of the Third Reich, where do you draw the line between opportunism and profiteering? SOURCEShttps://museumhack
The Piltdown Man
In December 1912, Arthur Smith Woodward, a paleontologist at the British Museum, presented something extraordinary to the Geographical Society: a "missing link" fossil, a species he named "Dawson's Dawn-man" after the Sussex solicitor who found the original fossil. It was the find of a lifetime, and a much-needed bit of national pride for the English. The only problem? It wasn't real. SOURCES:The
I, Libertine
Midcentury New Yorkers who couldn't sleep found a friend in Jean Shepherd, the iconoclastic radio personality whose middle of the night monologues made him a cult comedy figure and leader of the underground Night People movement. When he proposed to prank the book world by demanding a novel that didn't exist, the title became so popular his followers more or less willed it into being. SOURCEShttps
The Mechanical Turk
During the 18th century, as the industrial revolution picks up.... steam, people are dazzled by expertly constructed mechanical marvels: automatons. But Wolfgang von Kempelen brings something to the royal court in Vienna that people have never seen before: an automaton capable of playing chess. SOURCES:The Mechanical Turk by Tom Standagehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/debunking-mechanica
Lonelygirl15
When YouTube was barely a year old, the the site's users were gripped by the slowly unfolding tale of Bree, the sheltered, beautiful 16 year old girl whose parents kept her locked in her bedroom with no one but the internet and her only friend, Daniel, for company. As Bree's situation grew more dire, she became one of the first online obsessions, paving the way for hundreds of hoaxes to come
Mumler Spirit Photography
It's the Civil War, and the nation is in deep mourning. William Mumler of Boston has something to help: "spirit photographs" of you and a deceased loved one. Is it a scam, or is technology now capable of traversing the thin line between life and death? Eventually, it will be up to the court to decide. Sources:Special thanks to u/Naturalog on Reddit and Stephen Berkman'The Apparitionists' by
Report from Iron Mountain
At the height of the Cold War, a "leaked Top Secret Memo" from inside the government proposed a controversial and radical idea: the worst thing that could happen to humanity was worldwide ... peace. Sources:https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/30/us/l-c-lewin-writer-of-satire-of-government-plot-dies-at-82.htmlGhost of Iron Mountain by Phil TinlineJFK (1991, O. Stone)https://hvmag.com/life-style/a-histo
The Impostress Rabbit
The court anatomist returned the King George I with astonishing news: a woman named Mary Toft has been giving birth.... to rabbits. Sources: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/07/05/an-extraordinary-delivery-of-rabbits/https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mary-toft-gave-birth-to-rabbitshttps://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/exhibns/month/aug2009.htmlhttps://academi
Salvator Mundi
A painting purportedly by Leonardo Da Vinci himself is discovered at a little-known auction house in New Orleans in 2005; a decade later, it fetches the highest price for a work of art ever sold at auction. Sources:The Lost LeonardoSavior For Salehttps://therenaissanceworkshop.com/leonardo-da-vinci/https://www.mos.org/leonardo/biography.htmlhttps://www.rct.uk/collection/912525/the-drapery-of-a-che
The Wild West in Palisade, Nevada
People traveling through the west by train in the 1800s expected shootouts and danger and cowboys. The citizens of Palisade gave it to them. Sources:"Westward Hoax: The Secret History of Palisade, Nevada," Very Special Episodes.Fakes, Frauds & Other Malarkey by Kathryn Lindskoog."Mark Twain's Nevada Newspaper Hoaxes" Andrew R. Giarrelli.Mark Twain's writing for the Territorial Enterprise
Ern Malley Poetry
Two bored poets decide to prank their least favorite snobby magazine editor by submitting intentionally bad poetry to his literary journal and watching with mirth as he and his fellows delight in publishing it. Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m3bytB5ULwhttps://theconversation.com/the-greatest-poet-who-never-lived-ern-malley-at-80-234905https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4533011085http
The Ireland Shakespeare Relics
Samuel Ireland was an avid collector, the type of man who boasted and tried to make himself look important. His son, William Henry, just wanted to make his dad proud of him. Sources: The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare, by Doug StewartShakespeare and Others by S. Schoenbaum'The Poet's Hand,' Adam Gopnik, The New Yorkerhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Henry-Irelandhttps://www.n
Balloon Boy
For a few tense hours in October 2009, the entire world watched as a homemade aircraft purportedly carrying a 6-year-old boy drifted in mid-air on live television. When the balloon landed, there was no boy inside. Sources: Wife Swap Season 5, Episode 1: “Heene/Martell”Wife Swap Season 5, Episode 18: “Heene/Silver” The video that I showed Dana of the YourShakeDown invention:
Cottingley Fairies
In 1917, two young cousins returned from the creek behind their house with thrilling news: they had photographed fairies! Their parents were skeptical, but soon the photos of the "Cottingley Fairies" were circulated, eventually finding a champion in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sources: ‘Fairies Photographed: An Epoch-Making Event.’ Strand Magazine, 1920'The Coming of the
Introducing: Hoax!
Hoax! is a new show from Dana Schwartz (Noble Blood) and Lizzie Logan (Vulture, Reductress). Listen to the first episode on August 4th.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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