August 14, 2025 • 47 mins
Did you know England's first newspaper was fake? Or that King Arthur is more or less completely made up? The deeper we look into human history, the more we see that civilization is utterly riddled with bizarre hoaxes -- some of which are laughable, and some of which are downright dangerous. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max welcome the legendary Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan to learn more about some of history's greatest hoaxes, which they explore in-depth in their newest podcast, Hoax!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear for the Man, the Myth,
the legend, our super producer, mister Max Williams. Max Williams.
And who is that cheering on our super producer? Why
it's none other than mister Noel Brown Nolan. How are
we feeling?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I'm all right?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
How are you? I'm okay, man, I'm okay. Got a
lot of.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Run of dreary weather here in Atlanta, finally broke and
that bums me out. So I'm feeling pretty great today, really,
I you know.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Oh, I'm Ben Bullen by the I feel weird, Noel,
because I had just perfected the newest update on my
rainy day playlist, you know what I mean, And I
didn't do it in time for the weather.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
What are we talking here? We're talking like chill hip hop,
beast to study.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Too or I loved love a godspeed?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Got it back into some Shirley Manson stuff. We'd love
to hear yours garbage? Uh huh, yes, yes, garbage. Pistoln
speaking of the opposite of garbage. We are thrilled you,
Max and myself by a new podcast that is right
up our alley. Hoax created by none other than the
(01:42):
legendary Lizzie Logan and Dana Schwartz and Noel. We have
a special surprise for our ridiculous historians.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Is it true? Are they here?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
They're here, They're here this part Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So happy to have y'all.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Let's get right into it. First, tell us a little
bit about your background. I think you're going to be
both familiar to a lot of our listeners already. Could
you tell us how you guys teamed up and what
inspired you to create a show all about hoaxes.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
Lizzie, I was pointing at you, Dana as this as
this podcast was your idea.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
Okay, Well, I'm Dana Schwartz. I'm the host of the
history podcast Noble Blood, which is a scripted podcast where
we talk about the history of nobles, you know, and
they're interesting, usually bloody stories. But a fun fact about
me is I'm real life human friends with Lizzie Logan
and I had this idea. I've always been fascinated by
(02:52):
historical hoaxes. There have been a few Noble Blood episodes
that sort of touch on hoaxes, fake royals, you know,
Anastasia stories like that, And I'm captivated about the idea
of why people believe things that aren't true and the
people that purport that they are true. And so I
sent a text message to Lizzie Logan, my real life friend,
(03:15):
about this idea, and we noodled it together, and a
year and change later, here we are.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
It's true, And I'm I'm a little bit more of
the modern day scam scandal fan. I love like I was.
I was on the fair noose beat, like from the beginning.
I was fascinated by that, Like fraudsters, annadel Vi, like
anything of that that's in the news, I am like
(03:43):
fascinated by. So it's been really fun to research these
with Dana and find out that people have been hucksters
throughout history. We think of this as sometimes a new
phenomenon of like, oh, people are falling for these scams
and these liars these days. Now nobody you can't trust
(04:04):
anybody anymore. It's like, oh, you could actually never trust anybody.
This has actually been going on since the dawn of lying.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Well, it couldn't come at a more appropriate time, because
it would seem that just about everything we hear about
as a hoax, if it is unflattering to certain folks
in government these days, yeah too about it.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It had to put it out.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
Very cy call things hoaxes, and I think like, unfortunately,
at this moment, when AI and deep fakes are so pervasive,
the fundamental question of whether you should believe some information
that's put in front of you, I think is very critical.
And so by using these anecdotes, these fun stories, I mean,
our first episode is about two young girls in nineteen
(04:47):
seventeen saying that they took pictures of fairies. It seems silly,
but the bigger questions about that I think are unfortunately
relevant today. Just like scrolling through Facebook and you see
these like AI slop stories that get like thousands of
likes about someone like being like no one came to
my birthday party, and it's like a cartoon of one
hundred and twenty year old woman.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Well, it's like I saw one today where it was
Leonardo DiCaprio covers his face with a cap at Jeff
Bezos's wedding, and it's such an unremarkable and likely thing
to have happened that you look at and you're like, yeah,
sure that happens. But then I look down on the comments,
It's like, this is totally AI. It was based on
a still image that was then AI afied to like animate.
And you know, we're also willing, maybe even want to
(05:30):
be the first one to share something that all of
this stuff just makes it even more difficult to sort
things out because it just capitalizes on that wanting to
be the first one to break the news on something
that impulse is already kind of depriving you of some
critical thinking at a very crucial moment when this kind
of information gets spread like wildfire.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
We want to be Promethean right in the attention economy?
Where are my likes? Where am I rip boost?
Speaker 4 (05:54):
This is?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
This is something that we've explored often flzient data in
our or another show we do called stuff they Don't
Want you to Know. And I think one thing that
really interests Nol and myself and Max and all our
fellow audience members tonight is the idea that a lot
(06:16):
of people, especially before AI Slop, a lot of us
assumed that it was just easier to pull off a
successful hoax in ages past right, just like you know,
every true crime show says, well, you know, it's just
easier to murder people back then. So do we think
that it was easier to pull off a successful hoax
(06:37):
in the past or has AI changed that conversation entirely.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And that lack of critical thinking and that kind of
like you know, knee jerk reaction.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
I'm gonna say yes and now, Yes, it was easier
to pull off a hoax because there were fewer mechanisms
of like immediate fact checking. Like if you say something
to someone, someone can't just like quick google it to
see if it's real. You know, if someone says they're Anastasia,
you can't do a genetic test immediately and prove that
that's not the case. The Princess Anastasia, you know, talking
(07:07):
about the Romano Princess.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
From the animated film.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
From the animated film, and as we know, it was
a happy ending and she lived happily ever after. Yes,
so in some ways it was easier to lie just
because there were fewer ways of fact checking immediately. But
I will say something that continues to come up over
the course of this podcast is people were not more
stupid in the past when we have hoaxes and we say,
(07:30):
oh my god, everyone believed this. That's not the case
with almost every hoax. There were people at the time
calling bullshit. In our first episode we talked about these
coddingly fairies, and it was notable because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, someone you would have
imagined to be a very intelligent man good at deductive reasoning,
(07:51):
was a big defender of these fairy photographs.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
We have talked about this particular story.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah, on both ridiculous history and stuff that don't want
maybe just to remind us a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
It was like the early, very very well done.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Photoshop job that like had people convinced that someone had
photographed like these magical creatures.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Which I just want to go on record and say,
if you haven't looked these episode.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Two, they're nuts.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Two points two points One, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell
for this, and he was a smart guy. Two most
people did not fall for this. Three The photos look
fake as hell, Like they do not look real like
this is this is the thing that.
Speaker 6 (08:36):
People need to understand, Like they don't they just they.
Speaker 7 (08:40):
Don't look real at all, Like the the The idea
that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell for this is so
funny to me because they just don't look real like
on any level.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
He I mean, we get into it in the episode,
but he believed it because he wanted to believe it.
He was a spiritualist. This just reinforced his worldview. But
plenty of people at the time knew that these photos
were fake. Plenty of these people were making fun of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for falling for it. There's one
quote that I love where someone said, knowing children and
(09:17):
knowing that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has legs, I believe
these girls pulled.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
His Like, yeah, there's no dimension to them, there's no
light fall off, there's not completely flat. I think in
my mind I was remembering it looking a lot better,
and I'm looking at it now and you're dead on
it really.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
Don't look like I've seen spooky photos where I'm like, oh,
I understand how a person in the past, or even
a person today would have fallen for this if you
don't know enough exposure is yeah, this is not like
BuzzFeed creepy photos where you're like.
Speaker 6 (09:52):
Oh my god, what is that. This is not that
this is a fake looking photo.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
They do not exist in the same space clearly upon.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
I mean really, what they did was they just one
of the girls just drew fairies and pinned them around
them with hatpins. So the photo itself wasn't manipulated, which
is why they were like, we took these photos to
the expert expert photography people and they prove that it
wasn't a double exposure. It's like, yeah, it wasn't because
these girls just had cardboard cutouts of fairies around them.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And they're nice drawings. To be fair, We don't want
you don't want to call that. Yeah, I do also
want to say, on a positive note, this would be
like a really nice hallmarky type card to send to
your family.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
It's the girl was sixteen. This is like a really
creative art project that she was doing with.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Her cousin's fun.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
And how did the how did the I don't want
to call them culprits. How did the uh let's use
that little culprits, those little scamps, little scamps? Okay, how
did how did the how did the scamps? Uh deal
with this?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It became you know, a subject of conversation on the
level of a meme going viral. Right, So, without spoiling
too much of the episode, could you tell us how
those kids dealt with the the fame and the backlash
and the controversy.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
I mean, the truth is, I think they were both
kind of mortified. They were humiliated at school. They were bullied.
Arthur Conandoyle originally used as a pseudonym when he publishes
the story about these photographs in the strand, but everyone
still knows it's them. The girls recount like photos of them, Yeah,
because it's photos of them. The girls, you know, both
(11:35):
recount being mocked at school. The older girl, Elsie, was
fired from her job because people kept calling and like
trying to the reporters kept calling and coming there. So
it was it was very challenging, and I mean, in
spoiler alert, no spoiler alert, it was a hoax. But
both girls agreed that they would not publicly admit that
(11:58):
the photos were faked until Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and
mister Gardner, who's another like a big proponent of the photographs,
we're both dead.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Oh jeez, Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
I think the interesting part about this to me and
this maybe comes into play with a lot of hooks
is the power of belief and playing into people's superstitions
or playing into people's biases or whatever. That to me
is I think a huge part of successfully perpetrating a hoax.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Sure, yeah, tell the people what they want, you know,
play on that confirmation bias, because who doesn't love feeling?
Beat me here, Max, who doesn't love feeling? Right? You
know what I mean? Like, oh, yeah, I did make
Sherlock Holmes and fairies are real, and here's the one
thing that supports it.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
I think another big lesson to take away from the
hoax is, once you are convinced of something, you can
justify any possible hole anyone points in the argument. People
pointed out that these quota quote fairies, we're wearing very
modern clothing and had very modern hairdos, and he said, well,
(13:07):
they're there thought figures. Fairies are mythical creatures that are
sort of conjured from your imagination, so that of course
their their appearance changes over time or counter explanation. The
reason they look like regular like fairies in a story
book isn't that, you know, strange that they look like
just exactly how people imagine fairies. Look, well, maybe people
(13:28):
just got it right. Maybe our popular imagination of fairies
was based on their reality, and so he just came
up with these counter explanations for any possible hole someone
could point Poe.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Which argument so un Sherlock Holmes, The in of him,
isn't it? I mean, it's like it seems to go
counter to everything that he stands for in terms of
that kind of power of reason and deduction and you know,
not being swayed by bias and looking at only the facts.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
That's interesting people have.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Come to a conclusion when you're arguing with them. The
argument no is no longer do fairies exist or not?
It is are you wrong or not? It is are
you a person who is able to be duped or not?
So like, if I've convinced, like if Dana is convinced
of something, then if I'm arguing with her, it's not
(14:18):
really about the thing we're arguing about. It's am I
able to convince Dana that she is a person who
is like stupid in some way or like gullible in
some way. It's hard for her to swallow that she
is a person who could be wrong.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
Especially if people have been calling me a genius because
I wrote Sherlock Holmes books.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah exactly, not very Hounds of Baskerville. I love you, bro.
But this, this leads us to I think this is
a tremendous point that echoes in the modern day, the
idea of tying one's identity to a conclusion right in
a society that very much does not reward people changing
their minds right are encountering new information. There's a big
(15:00):
sunk cost fallacy in that kind of thing. And if
we stick with the world of print for just a moment,
there's another story you all found and hipped us to
that I had personally never heard of before. The fake
(15:21):
first newspaper in England.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
Oh yeah, this became my own sort of many personal
crusade because if you believe it, this is a hoax
that's still to this day around the world. Museums and
a website still write up as true. It is kind of,
when you think about it, the original fake news. It
is a newspaper called The English Mercury. It was donated
(15:45):
to the British Museum in sort of a cash of
papers in seventeen seventy six by this man named Thomas Birch.
And he donated all these papers that used to belong
to the second Earl of Hardwick. So these papers are
just in the museum for a good long time when
a researcher named George Chalmers finds them and is astonished
(16:06):
because in these papers is this newspaper from fifteen eighty
eight discussing Sir Francis Drake and the English defeating the
Spanish Armada, this massive event in English history. And what
would really be astonishing is that if this English mercury,
this discovery is now the oldest newspaper in the world,
The actual oldest newspaper in the world is a German
(16:29):
newspaper from fifteen ninety four written in Latin. So not
only is this discovery monumental because it's the oldest newspaper
in the world, it's about a marquee event. It's not
just like a regular, you know, Tuesday newspaper. It's like
about the Spanish Armada. And it's proving this to this
British person reading it, that Englishmen have invented the newspaper.
(16:50):
We thought it was German, but it was Us, and
so they're so excited, and for almost half a century
people just take that as fact, and it's not until
forty five years later that a researcher going through the
British Museum archives realizes that the manuscript is so obviously
a hoax, like based on the typeface, based on some spellings.
(17:11):
There's an original manuscript version of it that's in the
handwriting of the second Earl of Hardwick with some corrections
from that friend, Sir Thomas Birch. And what this researcher
figures out is that newspaper was basically just like a
creative writing exercise that the Earl did with his friend.
Like it feels almost like a fifth like an assignment
you would get in fifth grade, where it's like, imagine
(17:33):
that you are at a historical event and you are
a reporter, Like what would a reporter say about the
invasion of the Spanish Armada? Like the Earl and his
friend just did this as a writing exercise, like a
quote unquote literary game. And they weren't even trying to
hoax anyone, to be fair, they just donated it among
all their papers. And I find that very charming, and
(17:57):
still to this day you will see the English Mercury
referenced as as a real historical newspaper from fifteen eighty
eight when it is not.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
I have a distinct memory of doing that in fifth
grade that we were doing a unit on Egypt and
there were two like it was like five A and
five B, like our two fifth grade classes, and we
each had to do like an ancient Egyptian newspaper. And
there was like kind of a rivalry between the two
classes of who could come up with a better name
(18:27):
for their newspaper, and we I forget which class was which,
but one was called the Giza Gazette and the other
was Pyramid Paparazzi. Oh, but it was like one hundred
percent if a thousand years from now.
Speaker 6 (18:40):
Someone then found what we did.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
And was like wow, like did you know ancient Egypt
had newspapers.
Speaker 6 (18:47):
One was called the Giza Zet and the other was
called Pyramid Paparazzi.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
And then they were like, oh, this is not written
in hieroglyphics, this is actually not from ancient Egypt.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Did you say in any of it with like tea
bags to me?
Speaker 6 (19:03):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
I also noticed, Lizzie, this is a bit apropos. You
have a poster of the pretenders?
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Oh yes, why as band very hoxy rock band.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Pending.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Think about it, folks connect those dots. So it also
I think the idea of this fake first newspaper, you know,
we see here not malice, right, not necessarily a heist
nor adrift, but more this idea of something affirming a
concept of English nationalism and exceptional exceptionalism. So we also
(19:47):
see I don't know the idea that people want to
be read on to a mystery, right, people again, we
love the validation. We love not having to change our minds.
Maybe that takes us a little bit closer to the
one and only folks you know him, you know them.
We got to get a sound qu for him, PT book.
(20:18):
We'll do some dances here.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
He is the greatest showman himself.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I was about to say, the greatest show what a musical?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So what makes what makes our what makes our buddy?
Ptb the notorious ptb uh considered the ultimate Hopes not
the best dude.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
There was a certain shamelessness to him. I think that
a lot of the hoaxes that we like to cover
on the show have like a general sweetness, and even
that example of the English mercury Uh, it was like
a fun writing game between two Buddies, and they weren't
even trying to fool anyone. They were having fun, and
that was sort of also at the heart of the
(20:58):
Cuttingly Fairies was just these two young girls. What I
find so disquieting about P. T. Barnum is the shamelessness
with which he was alying to people for profit and
then also exploiting the people that he was using he had.
I think the biggest hoax that I think has the
(21:20):
biggest impact to this day that he perpetrated that I
don't think people realize necessarily was a hoax is the
idea of George Washington and the Cherry Tree story. He
helped popularize that because he in the eighteen hundreds had
a black woman that he traveled with who was very,
(21:40):
very old, who he had claim falsely to be the
one hundred and something year old woman who had helped
raise George Washington. Not true.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
I would also say one of the greatest hoaxes of P. T.
Barnum's life is his own legacy, which is now being
burnished in the film The Greatest Showman, which.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Is really rosy out.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
I also would just say, like our podcast is a
lot about like a suite or innocuous hoaxes, which it
has less to do with the nature of hoaxes and
has more to do with us wanting to have like
a positive, feel good podcast. Like that's less a statement
on the nature of hoaxes and more about like Dana
(22:32):
and I want to have a fun podcast where you like,
learn a little bit and also don't feel bummed out
at the end. So we have purposely chosen hoaxes where
fewer lives are ruined than in other hoaxes. But if
you research hoaxes on your own, you will find many
where people's lives are ruined and people are taking advantage
of It's just you won't find.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
That on our podcast because our podcast is fun.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Yeah. My favorite, my favorite hoaxes are the ones we're
sent where you leave and you just say, well, Leveryn
had a good time. Wasn't that that was interesting?
Speaker 4 (23:03):
That's interesting, that was crazy, had a fun ride.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, uh, that's that's Uh. That's a great point about
the sort of logic and philosophy of our explorations here,
because yeah, you don't want everything to feel like an
endless death march. You know, you don't want every story
to end uh end up feeling like you just accidentally
watched Requiem for a reason.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
No, you want to watch Requen for drink consensually. Ideally,
I will also say an only one. I think we've
sort of thought about the difference, sug. We've sort of
thought about the difference between a hoax and a scam
and something that is just nakedly a scam I think
is just for profit and just meant to exploit people,
(23:49):
where something about a hoax is more performative and also
has an element of whimsy to it. I know it's
when I see it thing the difference.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
There we go. I like that because we've sometimes discussed
over the years on this show, we've discussed heist and
hoaxes that we really enjoyed, and I think we're on
the same pat here because sometimes our favorite ones are
going to end up being someone who just wanted a
(24:18):
little bit of wackiness in their lives, you know. Or
they said something wild to their buddies hanging out, whether
in correspondence or in person, and no one questioned them
on it, And it gets really weird when someone starts
kind of just like the Yankee and Arthur's Court right Connecticut,
(24:39):
Yeak and King Arthur's court when the character Merlin you
realize that he actually believes he has magic powers. I
think it's fascinating how that happens with some real life
historical figures where they, you know, they say they're long
lost prince or what have you to some group of people,
and then those people just believe them, and you know,
(25:01):
fast forward a few decades and this guy's like, yeah, maybe,
I mean, maybe I am.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
I mean, I'm glad that you brought up King Arthur
because I not to put on my noble blood hat.
King Arthur is kind of maybe the longest running hoax
in popular culture because King Arthur did not exist, Like
I'm so sorry to everyone, what I know, it feels
like telling kids Santa Claus didn't exist. He didn't, but
at different periods in history he was sort of used
(25:28):
as propaganda to bolster people's reputations or to serve a
political purpose. This king, Henry the Seventh, the dad of
Henry the Eighth of Wife Fame, had a pretty tenuous
claim to the throne. Tenuous at best, but he won
a battle and when he was trying to sort of
establish his lineage and sort of established to prove that
(25:50):
he was a worthy king. He said on his Welsh
side that his family went back to King Arthur, and
he named his firstborn son Arthur as a way to
sort of create that legacy and tie in people's minds.
Even though Arthur was not a real person, he just
served a valuable political purpose.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
No was he was the popular King Arthur legend. Is
this made from whole cloth or is it an amalgamation
of other previous royals.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
I think the idea of King Arthur is a literary invention,
but it is a literary invention that takes its earliest
tiniest seeds from medieval chronicles. There's this chronicle called the
Historia brittonam in eight hundred and twenty eight that mentions
Arthur not as a king, but as a military leader
(26:44):
who fought off the invading Saxons and beat hundreds of
Saxons in this one battle. But even in that chronicle, Arthur,
a not a king, doesn't have any of the Guenevere
Lancelot cord round tab table.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
Maybe it's anyone ever sets it around table?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Was you know, table technology at that point.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
They probably were making tables round, I'm hoping, so maybe
we're there but even in that chronicle from eight hundred
and twenty eight, by that point, that chronicle has a
lot of flavors of mythology, where it's like they mentioned
that this general Arthur, you know, killed nine hundred people
single handedly in a battle that he they mentioned that
(27:28):
his dog had like a paw print in stone that
stayed in stone, and anytime someone stole the stone, it
would always appear right back where you stole it. That's
not like one of the pieces of the Arthur myth
that that stood the test of time. And there was
another where it's like the grave of Arthur's son if
you measure it any every time you measure it, it's
(27:49):
a different length. So even back in eight hundred, the
closest we can come to Arthur or a quote unquote
real Arthur is a general who was only mentioned in
this chronicle, not really mentioned by other contemporary sources, not
mentioned by other chroniclers who mentioned this battle, So it's
a pretty hazy source. And even then he was a
(28:10):
mythological figure.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
But then like it wouldn't have been til acted. The
fact they referred to them as Arthurian legend, right, like
that was sort of.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Like, yeah, doesn't the myth of the Holy Grail come
from Arthurian legend?
Speaker 5 (28:21):
Yeah, but that comes the idea of like the Holy Grail,
And I mean, I think I'm not good on Christian mythology.
I think probably the idea of the Holy Grail maybe
existed before. But the quest for the Holy Grail and
the sword and the stone and these pieces of Arthuriana
that we associate with King Arthur come centuries and centuries
(28:42):
later in literature.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
As they as they serve first propaganda, right, and then
they later serve literature because nostalgia is a hell of
a drug at some point, and maybe maybe this is
something that a lot of us would hear and think,
oh gosh, look at like we were saying earlier, look
(29:04):
at these suckers from the past. It's really more an
argument about access to information, as you were saying, And
we could argue that now the pendulum is starting to
swing the other waves.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Well, I mean, if anything, where maybe a little bit
dumber now than people were back then because of the
you know, reliance on that kind of technology and that
kind of information gathering and that kind of like you know,
instantaneous gratification. Not to mention what things like AI chat
GPT are doing to us even further down the rabbit
hole as far as that's concerned.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Yeah, critical thinking found dad Niditch.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, yeah, right exactly. Can't wait for the AI pictures
of that one on Facebook. With this, we want to
we want to ask you all a couple of these
larger questions with with hoaxing, with sussing out the fact
(30:01):
from the fiction, right and the truth from the proof
from the propaganda. What would you all recommend people do
when they hear a story that sounds super weird, or
hear a story maybe they really want to be true,
et cetera. How do we, as casual encounters of information
start parsing through all this? Frankly, I'll say it bullshit
(30:26):
that we see on the internet.
Speaker 8 (30:28):
Oh.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
I always just say, like, keep an open mind.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
I always come from a place of like, I don't know,
you know, like you don't need to know right away
if something's real or fake.
Speaker 6 (30:37):
You can take a week, you can take a month,
you can take like.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
I'm I'm luckily like I don't work at CNN, so
I don't need to be the one who decides if
something is real or fake right away. And I don't
need to report on it right away, so I can
take my time and look at different sources, and I
don't need to immediately have a verdict on whether something
(31:02):
is real or true. And I don't you know, we
were talking about like everybody wants to repost right away,
Like you don't need to repost right away, So you
don't need to know right away if it's.
Speaker 6 (31:11):
Real or fake. You can wait for the dust to settle.
You can wait for.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
NPR to weigh in, like there are people out there
who will do the fact checking, and you can wait
for them to do the fact checking, like you don't
need to immediately go into down the rabbit hole. I
see so many people who are immediately up in arms
about like.
Speaker 6 (31:32):
You know, like I'm not to.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
Take it to a super serious thing, but like there
will be like like the hours after like a mass
shooting or like a earthquaker, like some like big story,
Like that's when the least reliable information is and people
are already up in arms about like why aren't they
reporting about the this or the that or the whatever.
And I'm like, yo, like give them a week to
(31:56):
get their story straight, Like give the journalists some time
to do their jobs, then come back to it in
a couple of days and then we'll see like where
you can donate or this, that and the other. Like
you can just give it some time and be patient
and the information I knock on wood still have some
(32:17):
trust that some last dregs of the free press exists
and the good information will make its way to you
through some of our institutions if you give it some time.
But like, you just can't make these snap judgments. I
think that's where a lot of people go wrong, is
that they want the information immediately and they're like, well
(32:40):
this TikToker said and they said that they were there.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
So then that's true.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
But then that proved not to be true, and that
means that you can't trust and it's like give.
Speaker 6 (32:49):
It a day.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Republica by the way, Yeah, we were just talking about
that on stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Matt who you'll know.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Matt Frederick brought us a story about how many like
typos and fact checking errors or even popping up in
the ap now, and it seems like a lot of
that is sort of like the domino effect of that,
you know, first to market kind of attitude, so you
really do have to be careful. But we brought up
Republica and Axios and a few others, like we like
four oh four media, but in really do have to
(33:20):
be careful.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
We'll swing, We'll swing correctly a couple of times. But
it's yeah, this is something that makes me wonder. You know,
have we are Have we arrived full circle at the
heyday of the town crier. That always seemed like a
cool job to me, especially you know, like now we
have not like town criers under royal license. We're patent
(33:44):
from the monarch. We have the town criers of TikTok.
But I do love the idea. This is just a
pitch if any of you invents time travel, what if
we go back in time and bill ourselves as independent
town criers broad like on a circuit. Just walk in,
do a vibe check, and start shouting what we think
is the news or just.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
A counterpoint, something more controversial. Put the established town crier
out of business because ours is more salacious.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, we'll call it. Actually, I feel.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Like there are people you can find standing on the
street yelling their controversial opinions. I feel like you actually
can find people doing that. Maybe they're time travelers.
Speaker 6 (34:24):
Maybe those people are doing Maybe.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
I think all of Lizzie's advice is just like so
smart and dead on. And I would also add you
don't need to post it all unless you were an
elected official, I guess, or you just like screenshots and
the internet are forever and like, you don't need to
weigh in on everything. No one is waiting for your
take on every snow One's like, I can't believe I
(34:48):
can't wait to see what Greg says about this?
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Right?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Where is joh rule Dane When I.
Speaker 6 (34:53):
Talk about this all the time? Shutting up is always
an option.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
Shutting up is always an option. And you know what,
if you find something really interesting and really cool that
you do want to share, I would even say the
best thing to do is way a beat, get coffee
with a friend, meet a friend in person, and say
it to their face, because then if they say that
sounds fake and that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard,
you can be like, oh, maybe you're right, let me
just check on that. And also that you got to
(35:17):
get coffee in person.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
With a friend.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, I like this great advice. Yeah, this is fantastic
insight because it's there are some solid arguments that I
don't think are one hundred percent proven, but there are
solid arguments from a couple of different fields that maybe
it's a hardware problem for the human brain at this point,
like not having evolved to digest all of this information
(35:42):
at this unceasing pace. So it sounds like the idea
of not even totally going full off the grid or
lud eyed or whatever, but just giving your yourself a
second to take a beat with that. Again, fantastic insight.
As Noel's saying, do you all have eddy moments? Let's see,
(36:03):
I don't want to put anybody in the spot here,
but do you all have any moments where you thought
hot Dog I was taking in? I totally believe this
is true. Okay, Yeah, we got a hard nod from
Lizzie on that one too.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
I think everyone does.
Speaker 6 (36:18):
I yeah, I mean, I've, I've.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
I'm trying to think of an actual hoax example. The
only example that's coming to mind is an example of
just like bad reporting.
Speaker 6 (36:27):
Okay, but.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
Oh well, I remember, I know, I know a girl
who had a ticket to Firefest and then but she
didn't end up knowing. And this sounds like I'm lying
to make myself sound good, but I swear I'm not.
Speaker 6 (36:43):
I remember a girl who had.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
To take it to Firefest, and she was telling me
about all of the accommodations and then how much it costs,
and it didn't cost very much, and I remember being like,
you're gonna get sold into white slavery. Like yeah, I
remember being like not that I knew that it was
a scam, but I was like, this sounds like freaking
sus Like I was like, this is that sounds too
good to be true? And then she ended up like
she couldn't go, and she like sold her ticket and
(37:06):
then yeah, bullet dodged. And then when it happened the
like we went back into the office like after the weekend.
Speaker 6 (37:12):
I was like, aren't you so glad you didn't go?
She was like, I'm so glad I didn't go. So
that's what.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Do you know anyone that bought a ticket to Firefest too?
Speaker 4 (37:20):
No?
Speaker 6 (37:21):
I don't think I do.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And maybe that's.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Worth talking about real quick, because when you have something
like Firefest, it's such a scam that's debunked. There's two
documentaries about it, and yet people still bought tickets to
the second one.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
What where does that come from. Is it just pure ignorance?
Is bliss?
Speaker 5 (37:36):
Is it just like I think it's I don't think
it's even ignorance. I think it's knowing the hoax and
thinking like, oh, this will be fun, I'll like make
content about it. I think those people know exactly what
they're getting into, and I think kind of their hope,
almost hoping it's going to be a disaster.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
I also think this is an example of Like I
think this is a great.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
Example of the amplification effect.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
I don't know if that's the real term, but like
I think Firefest two probably sold about five.
Speaker 6 (38:05):
Tickets, five actual I don't think this is a real thing,
like like.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Not the second round of controversy when the trailer came out,
but the first round of controversy when Halle Bailey was
announced as the Little Mermaid, Like there were a few
racist comments and then everybody picked it up and it
became like a thing.
Speaker 6 (38:33):
Like there's a lot of manufactured.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Controversies on the Internet where if you actually trace it back,
it's like three people are mad about.
Speaker 5 (38:42):
This one of the worst, one of the worst developments
to the Internet, And just like this need for so
much content just to like be in the content now
is people report three tweets as a news story.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yes, oh god, no, that's a good It doesn't get
talked about enough, honestly, I mean it's so true.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Ever one of my tweets. That's the part that's the
worst part of it.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
I mean, it's not that much different than like, you know,
if we see a bad review for the podcast or
somebody says something mean about me personally, then I just
assume that's what everybody thinks.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
It's just so easy to like believe that one opinion
represents something so much larger, just because of how everything
kind of in a certain way is equal on the internet. Like,
if it's something that you see, then it's there and
it has the same weight as any other piece of
content that you might run across.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Yeah, if you're not.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Careful or like I remember, like during the Eras tour,
they were listing like resellers were listing floor seats for
like twenty thousand dollars or something, and there were all
of these sites being like, can you believe people are
paying twenty thousand dollars to see Taylor Swift?
Speaker 7 (39:47):
I was like, no, the tickets are available that means.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
They're not sell it, like exactly.
Speaker 8 (39:53):
I was like, how do you know anyone has paid
that much? I was just like that you made that up.
That is a made up price. That's a made up price.
Someone made that up, and you have now made up
that there is a customer for it.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
This is made up. You made that up for your article.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
You made up this consumer to get mad at who
is paying a made up price.
Speaker 6 (40:14):
This is a mini hoax. This is a many hoax
that this is happening.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
This is a little, tiny, little hoax just so that
you can have something to write about.
Speaker 6 (40:24):
Not like I don't know that anyone actually about tickets
to that.
Speaker 5 (40:28):
It almost is a thing where you see something like
on a web page that's like so imminently clickable, where
you're just like, well, I have to see that. It's
the classic rule of thumb that if a headline is
a question, the answer is no.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
No, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
This is is gen Z killing the stock market?
Speaker 1 (40:47):
No, no, right exactly, And that happens often with celebrity news.
Another one that I think works very well in political
reporting is when you see words like ASTs or slabs
or you know, basically capals old Batman style. That usually
means that someone had a quote that was taken out
(41:08):
of context where they were like, yeah, I guess hypothetically,
if this person you're talking about is microwaving camels, I
think it would be a bad thing, And they're like,
how dare you, senator? But this maybe speaks to again
that that requirement of a cadence right, of a publishing
(41:30):
cadence right, we have to have the news, and if
the news does not exist, we have to therefore make
the news.
Speaker 5 (41:37):
I have I have experienced the moment of being taken
out of context in a way that made me seem
incredibly lame. Where I was quoted in an article for
an outlet I will not name. I had made a
TikTok about breastfeeding my son and how much time it
takes and like people don't realize that, like feeding your
children with your body takes up so much on and
(42:00):
was giving an interview about it, and I said something
to the effect of like, when I'm doing it, I
spend a lot of time on my phone, which is
great for my brain. And I was so obviously in
my mind being sarcastic, and they wrote it up as
if she was like, well, lucky for her, like she
is spending a lot of time on her phone, which
Schwartz claims is great for her brain. And I was like,
(42:21):
oh no, and it was just so miscommunicated that then
seeing it in print, just felt this is like such
a tiny example, but it's so easy for something just
to like it wasn't malicious. It was just sort of
like you flippant and it just happened lay a little lazy,
a little just a misunderstanding. It just is a minor
example of just how easy it is for things to
(42:43):
be misconstrued.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Especially true when we're encountering something written in print about
something that was conveyed through audio or video, right, because
we don't really gosh, you know what, No, we should
do a history of strange punctually marks, because we don't
really use like the Entero bang or you know, some
kind of mark that says.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Clearly and I would die on that. A period and
a text is aggressive and I will die on it.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
He'll disagree in lack of a period also seems pretty cold.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Where do you all fall on that issue? Period at
the end of a text aggressive?
Speaker 5 (43:20):
It depends if it's one, if it's one word. It
depends on what the text is. If it says, if
it's fine, period aggressive, not fine, it'd full sentence.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
I agree with that because then you have some nuanced
wild actually communicate a vibe.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
But if it's a word and a period, not a fan.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
I also subscribe to the belief that a text is
not writing it is written speech.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah. I like that. But also we could argue there
are a lot of people in the audience tonight who
would say fine without a period is likewise not the
coolest thing.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Fine isn't general. Fine Also don't like.
Speaker 6 (43:57):
Sounds good?
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Good seems dismissing.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
I do a dash. I like to do a dash.
If it's not a sentence, Yeah, I'll just do a dash.
I'll be like, that sounds great.
Speaker 5 (44:10):
If someone ever texts it is what it is period?
That person.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Was that was that Will Pearson, I'll find it.
Speaker 5 (44:23):
I'm just saying, in context of period can absolutely be devastating.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
All this to say, bring back the Interra Bank in
Terra Bang, I'm telling you it's going to be a winner.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
We're going to do an episode.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Described as this character, this forgotten character.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
So have you ever seen a question mark and an
exclamation mark and thought they should hook up.
Speaker 7 (44:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
It's basically that uh. But there there are so many more,
not just punctuation marks, but there are so many more
Hoaxes that are out there in the past and the
present and probably the future. Not my best segue, but
here we're going. We can't thank you all enough for
making this show. And as you can tell, we're big
fans of your previous writing, your unrelated shows. Right Noble Blood,
(45:06):
Reductress Reductress mc sweeney's, by the way, one of my
dream hangout spots where can people learn more about Eule's work,
not just on Hoax, but on your various other endeavors.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
I feel like the easiest place to find both of
us is Instagram, because, as as Dana mentioned, we're both
staring at our phones way too much, so we're probably
just going to be throwing up links on there. I'm
Lizzie Logan with five z's, so just l i zz
zz ze l O g A N.
Speaker 5 (45:40):
I'm Dana Schwartz, also with a lot of ease, but
my z's are at the end schwartz zz. Listen to
Noble Blood and listen to Hoax, and if you like it,
Please leave a rating, review, subscribe. It's a new podcast,
getting getting new listeners, listening, spreading the word. It means
a lot.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
And if you like our show, you are gonna love this.
When folks, we are not blowing smoke. This is this
us saying hoax is amazing? Is itself not a hoax?
So we want to be clear. And someone had to
say something like that towards the end of the show. Hell,
you love it too, Kui, Thank you so much, Lizzie,
(46:19):
thank you so much. Data. We are no we have
other people to think. We'll do it real quick. Super
producer mister Max Williams, Alex Williams who composed our track.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Chris Prociotis and Jeff Goates here and Spirit, Jonathan Strickland, Bequister,
aj Bahamas, Jacobs The.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Bustler and of course Noel. Thanks to you. Tune in
in the next few days, folks. As the Cinnamte said,
we have such wonders to show you.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear for the Man, the Myth,
the legend, our super producer, mister Max Williams. Max Williams.
And who is that cheering on our super producer? Why
it's none other than mister Noel Brown Nolan. How are
we feeling?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I'm all right?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
How are you? I'm okay, man, I'm okay. Got a
lot of.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Run of dreary weather here in Atlanta, finally broke and
that bums me out. So I'm feeling pretty great today, really,
I you know.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Oh, I'm Ben Bullen by the I feel weird, Noel,
because I had just perfected the newest update on my
rainy day playlist, you know what I mean, And I
didn't do it in time for the weather.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
What are we talking here? We're talking like chill hip hop,
beast to study.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Too or I loved love a godspeed?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Got it back into some Shirley Manson stuff. We'd love
to hear yours garbage? Uh huh, yes, yes, garbage. Pistoln
speaking of the opposite of garbage. We are thrilled you,
Max and myself by a new podcast that is right
up our alley. Hoax created by none other than the
(01:42):
legendary Lizzie Logan and Dana Schwartz and Noel. We have
a special surprise for our ridiculous historians.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Is it true? Are they here?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
They're here, They're here this part Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So happy to have y'all.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Let's get right into it. First, tell us a little
bit about your background. I think you're going to be
both familiar to a lot of our listeners already. Could
you tell us how you guys teamed up and what
inspired you to create a show all about hoaxes.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
Lizzie, I was pointing at you, Dana as this as
this podcast was your idea.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
Okay, Well, I'm Dana Schwartz. I'm the host of the
history podcast Noble Blood, which is a scripted podcast where
we talk about the history of nobles, you know, and
they're interesting, usually bloody stories. But a fun fact about
me is I'm real life human friends with Lizzie Logan
and I had this idea. I've always been fascinated by
(02:52):
historical hoaxes. There have been a few Noble Blood episodes
that sort of touch on hoaxes, fake royals, you know,
Anastasia stories like that, And I'm captivated about the idea
of why people believe things that aren't true and the
people that purport that they are true. And so I
sent a text message to Lizzie Logan, my real life friend,
(03:15):
about this idea, and we noodled it together, and a
year and change later, here we are.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
It's true, And I'm I'm a little bit more of
the modern day scam scandal fan. I love like I was.
I was on the fair noose beat, like from the beginning.
I was fascinated by that, Like fraudsters, annadel Vi, like
anything of that that's in the news, I am like
(03:43):
fascinated by. So it's been really fun to research these
with Dana and find out that people have been hucksters
throughout history. We think of this as sometimes a new
phenomenon of like, oh, people are falling for these scams
and these liars these days. Now nobody you can't trust
(04:04):
anybody anymore. It's like, oh, you could actually never trust anybody.
This has actually been going on since the dawn of lying.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Well, it couldn't come at a more appropriate time, because
it would seem that just about everything we hear about
as a hoax, if it is unflattering to certain folks
in government these days, yeah too about it.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It had to put it out.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
Very cy call things hoaxes, and I think like, unfortunately,
at this moment, when AI and deep fakes are so pervasive,
the fundamental question of whether you should believe some information
that's put in front of you, I think is very critical.
And so by using these anecdotes, these fun stories, I mean,
our first episode is about two young girls in nineteen
(04:47):
seventeen saying that they took pictures of fairies. It seems silly,
but the bigger questions about that I think are unfortunately
relevant today. Just like scrolling through Facebook and you see
these like AI slop stories that get like thousands of
likes about someone like being like no one came to
my birthday party, and it's like a cartoon of one
hundred and twenty year old woman.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Well, it's like I saw one today where it was
Leonardo DiCaprio covers his face with a cap at Jeff
Bezos's wedding, and it's such an unremarkable and likely thing
to have happened that you look at and you're like, yeah,
sure that happens. But then I look down on the comments,
It's like, this is totally AI. It was based on
a still image that was then AI afied to like animate.
And you know, we're also willing, maybe even want to
(05:30):
be the first one to share something that all of
this stuff just makes it even more difficult to sort
things out because it just capitalizes on that wanting to
be the first one to break the news on something
that impulse is already kind of depriving you of some
critical thinking at a very crucial moment when this kind
of information gets spread like wildfire.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
We want to be Promethean right in the attention economy?
Where are my likes? Where am I rip boost?
Speaker 4 (05:54):
This is?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
This is something that we've explored often flzient data in
our or another show we do called stuff they Don't
Want you to Know. And I think one thing that
really interests Nol and myself and Max and all our
fellow audience members tonight is the idea that a lot
(06:16):
of people, especially before AI Slop, a lot of us
assumed that it was just easier to pull off a
successful hoax in ages past right, just like you know,
every true crime show says, well, you know, it's just
easier to murder people back then. So do we think
that it was easier to pull off a successful hoax
(06:37):
in the past or has AI changed that conversation entirely.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And that lack of critical thinking and that kind of
like you know, knee jerk reaction.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
I'm gonna say yes and now, Yes, it was easier
to pull off a hoax because there were fewer mechanisms
of like immediate fact checking. Like if you say something
to someone, someone can't just like quick google it to
see if it's real. You know, if someone says they're Anastasia,
you can't do a genetic test immediately and prove that
that's not the case. The Princess Anastasia, you know, talking
(07:07):
about the Romano Princess.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
From the animated film.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
From the animated film, and as we know, it was
a happy ending and she lived happily ever after. Yes,
so in some ways it was easier to lie just
because there were fewer ways of fact checking immediately. But
I will say something that continues to come up over
the course of this podcast is people were not more
stupid in the past when we have hoaxes and we say,
(07:30):
oh my god, everyone believed this. That's not the case
with almost every hoax. There were people at the time
calling bullshit. In our first episode we talked about these
coddingly fairies, and it was notable because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, someone you would have
imagined to be a very intelligent man good at deductive reasoning,
(07:51):
was a big defender of these fairy photographs.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
We have talked about this particular story.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah, on both ridiculous history and stuff that don't want
maybe just to remind us a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
It was like the early, very very well done.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Photoshop job that like had people convinced that someone had
photographed like these magical creatures.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Which I just want to go on record and say,
if you haven't looked these episode.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Two, they're nuts.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Two points two points One, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell
for this, and he was a smart guy. Two most
people did not fall for this. Three The photos look
fake as hell, Like they do not look real like
this is this is the thing that.
Speaker 6 (08:36):
People need to understand, Like they don't they just they.
Speaker 7 (08:40):
Don't look real at all, Like the the The idea
that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell for this is so
funny to me because they just don't look real like
on any level.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
He I mean, we get into it in the episode,
but he believed it because he wanted to believe it.
He was a spiritualist. This just reinforced his worldview. But
plenty of people at the time knew that these photos
were fake. Plenty of these people were making fun of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for falling for it. There's one
quote that I love where someone said, knowing children and
(09:17):
knowing that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has legs, I believe
these girls pulled.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
His Like, yeah, there's no dimension to them, there's no
light fall off, there's not completely flat. I think in
my mind I was remembering it looking a lot better,
and I'm looking at it now and you're dead on
it really.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
Don't look like I've seen spooky photos where I'm like, oh,
I understand how a person in the past, or even
a person today would have fallen for this if you
don't know enough exposure is yeah, this is not like
BuzzFeed creepy photos where you're like.
Speaker 6 (09:52):
Oh my god, what is that. This is not that
this is a fake looking photo.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
They do not exist in the same space clearly upon.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
I mean really, what they did was they just one
of the girls just drew fairies and pinned them around
them with hatpins. So the photo itself wasn't manipulated, which
is why they were like, we took these photos to
the expert expert photography people and they prove that it
wasn't a double exposure. It's like, yeah, it wasn't because
these girls just had cardboard cutouts of fairies around them.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And they're nice drawings. To be fair, We don't want
you don't want to call that. Yeah, I do also
want to say, on a positive note, this would be
like a really nice hallmarky type card to send to
your family.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
It's the girl was sixteen. This is like a really
creative art project that she was doing with.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Her cousin's fun.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
And how did the how did the I don't want
to call them culprits. How did the uh let's use
that little culprits, those little scamps, little scamps? Okay, how
did how did the how did the scamps? Uh deal
with this?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It became you know, a subject of conversation on the
level of a meme going viral. Right, So, without spoiling
too much of the episode, could you tell us how
those kids dealt with the the fame and the backlash
and the controversy.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
I mean, the truth is, I think they were both
kind of mortified. They were humiliated at school. They were bullied.
Arthur Conandoyle originally used as a pseudonym when he publishes
the story about these photographs in the strand, but everyone
still knows it's them. The girls recount like photos of them, Yeah,
because it's photos of them. The girls, you know, both
(11:35):
recount being mocked at school. The older girl, Elsie, was
fired from her job because people kept calling and like
trying to the reporters kept calling and coming there. So
it was it was very challenging, and I mean, in
spoiler alert, no spoiler alert, it was a hoax. But
both girls agreed that they would not publicly admit that
(11:58):
the photos were faked until Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and
mister Gardner, who's another like a big proponent of the photographs,
we're both dead.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Oh jeez, Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
I think the interesting part about this to me and
this maybe comes into play with a lot of hooks
is the power of belief and playing into people's superstitions
or playing into people's biases or whatever. That to me
is I think a huge part of successfully perpetrating a hoax.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Sure, yeah, tell the people what they want, you know,
play on that confirmation bias, because who doesn't love feeling?
Beat me here, Max, who doesn't love feeling? Right? You
know what I mean? Like, oh, yeah, I did make
Sherlock Holmes and fairies are real, and here's the one
thing that supports it.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
I think another big lesson to take away from the
hoax is, once you are convinced of something, you can
justify any possible hole anyone points in the argument. People
pointed out that these quota quote fairies, we're wearing very
modern clothing and had very modern hairdos, and he said, well,
(13:07):
they're there thought figures. Fairies are mythical creatures that are
sort of conjured from your imagination, so that of course
their their appearance changes over time or counter explanation. The
reason they look like regular like fairies in a story
book isn't that, you know, strange that they look like
just exactly how people imagine fairies. Look, well, maybe people
(13:28):
just got it right. Maybe our popular imagination of fairies
was based on their reality, and so he just came
up with these counter explanations for any possible hole someone
could point Poe.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Which argument so un Sherlock Holmes, The in of him,
isn't it? I mean, it's like it seems to go
counter to everything that he stands for in terms of
that kind of power of reason and deduction and you know,
not being swayed by bias and looking at only the facts.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
That's interesting people have.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Come to a conclusion when you're arguing with them. The
argument no is no longer do fairies exist or not?
It is are you wrong or not? It is are
you a person who is able to be duped or not?
So like, if I've convinced, like if Dana is convinced
of something, then if I'm arguing with her, it's not
(14:18):
really about the thing we're arguing about. It's am I
able to convince Dana that she is a person who
is like stupid in some way or like gullible in
some way. It's hard for her to swallow that she
is a person who could be wrong.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
Especially if people have been calling me a genius because
I wrote Sherlock Holmes books.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah exactly, not very Hounds of Baskerville. I love you, bro.
But this, this leads us to I think this is
a tremendous point that echoes in the modern day, the
idea of tying one's identity to a conclusion right in
a society that very much does not reward people changing
their minds right are encountering new information. There's a big
(15:00):
sunk cost fallacy in that kind of thing. And if
we stick with the world of print for just a moment,
there's another story you all found and hipped us to
that I had personally never heard of before. The fake
(15:21):
first newspaper in England.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
Oh yeah, this became my own sort of many personal
crusade because if you believe it, this is a hoax
that's still to this day around the world. Museums and
a website still write up as true. It is kind of,
when you think about it, the original fake news. It
is a newspaper called The English Mercury. It was donated
(15:45):
to the British Museum in sort of a cash of
papers in seventeen seventy six by this man named Thomas Birch.
And he donated all these papers that used to belong
to the second Earl of Hardwick. So these papers are
just in the museum for a good long time when
a researcher named George Chalmers finds them and is astonished
(16:06):
because in these papers is this newspaper from fifteen eighty
eight discussing Sir Francis Drake and the English defeating the
Spanish Armada, this massive event in English history. And what
would really be astonishing is that if this English mercury,
this discovery is now the oldest newspaper in the world,
The actual oldest newspaper in the world is a German
(16:29):
newspaper from fifteen ninety four written in Latin. So not
only is this discovery monumental because it's the oldest newspaper
in the world, it's about a marquee event. It's not
just like a regular, you know, Tuesday newspaper. It's like
about the Spanish Armada. And it's proving this to this
British person reading it, that Englishmen have invented the newspaper.
(16:50):
We thought it was German, but it was Us, and
so they're so excited, and for almost half a century
people just take that as fact, and it's not until
forty five years later that a researcher going through the
British Museum archives realizes that the manuscript is so obviously
a hoax, like based on the typeface, based on some spellings.
(17:11):
There's an original manuscript version of it that's in the
handwriting of the second Earl of Hardwick with some corrections
from that friend, Sir Thomas Birch. And what this researcher
figures out is that newspaper was basically just like a
creative writing exercise that the Earl did with his friend.
Like it feels almost like a fifth like an assignment
you would get in fifth grade, where it's like, imagine
(17:33):
that you are at a historical event and you are
a reporter, Like what would a reporter say about the
invasion of the Spanish Armada? Like the Earl and his
friend just did this as a writing exercise, like a
quote unquote literary game. And they weren't even trying to
hoax anyone, to be fair, they just donated it among
all their papers. And I find that very charming, and
(17:57):
still to this day you will see the English Mercury
referenced as as a real historical newspaper from fifteen eighty
eight when it is not.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
I have a distinct memory of doing that in fifth
grade that we were doing a unit on Egypt and
there were two like it was like five A and
five B, like our two fifth grade classes, and we
each had to do like an ancient Egyptian newspaper. And
there was like kind of a rivalry between the two
classes of who could come up with a better name
(18:27):
for their newspaper, and we I forget which class was which,
but one was called the Giza Gazette and the other
was Pyramid Paparazzi. Oh, but it was like one hundred
percent if a thousand years from now.
Speaker 6 (18:40):
Someone then found what we did.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
And was like wow, like did you know ancient Egypt
had newspapers.
Speaker 6 (18:47):
One was called the Giza Zet and the other was
called Pyramid Paparazzi.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
And then they were like, oh, this is not written
in hieroglyphics, this is actually not from ancient Egypt.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Did you say in any of it with like tea
bags to me?
Speaker 6 (19:03):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
I also noticed, Lizzie, this is a bit apropos. You
have a poster of the pretenders?
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Oh yes, why as band very hoxy rock band.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Pending.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Think about it, folks connect those dots. So it also
I think the idea of this fake first newspaper, you know,
we see here not malice, right, not necessarily a heist
nor adrift, but more this idea of something affirming a
concept of English nationalism and exceptional exceptionalism. So we also
(19:47):
see I don't know the idea that people want to
be read on to a mystery, right, people again, we
love the validation. We love not having to change our minds.
Maybe that takes us a little bit closer to the
one and only folks you know him, you know them.
We got to get a sound qu for him, PT book.
(20:18):
We'll do some dances here.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
He is the greatest showman himself.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I was about to say, the greatest show what a musical?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So what makes what makes our what makes our buddy?
Ptb the notorious ptb uh considered the ultimate Hopes not
the best dude.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
There was a certain shamelessness to him. I think that
a lot of the hoaxes that we like to cover
on the show have like a general sweetness, and even
that example of the English mercury Uh, it was like
a fun writing game between two Buddies, and they weren't
even trying to fool anyone. They were having fun, and
that was sort of also at the heart of the
(20:58):
Cuttingly Fairies was just these two young girls. What I
find so disquieting about P. T. Barnum is the shamelessness
with which he was alying to people for profit and
then also exploiting the people that he was using he had.
I think the biggest hoax that I think has the
(21:20):
biggest impact to this day that he perpetrated that I
don't think people realize necessarily was a hoax is the
idea of George Washington and the Cherry Tree story. He
helped popularize that because he in the eighteen hundreds had
a black woman that he traveled with who was very,
(21:40):
very old, who he had claim falsely to be the
one hundred and something year old woman who had helped
raise George Washington. Not true.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
I would also say one of the greatest hoaxes of P. T.
Barnum's life is his own legacy, which is now being
burnished in the film The Greatest Showman, which.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Is really rosy out.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
I also would just say, like our podcast is a
lot about like a suite or innocuous hoaxes, which it
has less to do with the nature of hoaxes and
has more to do with us wanting to have like
a positive, feel good podcast. Like that's less a statement
on the nature of hoaxes and more about like Dana
(22:32):
and I want to have a fun podcast where you like,
learn a little bit and also don't feel bummed out
at the end. So we have purposely chosen hoaxes where
fewer lives are ruined than in other hoaxes. But if
you research hoaxes on your own, you will find many
where people's lives are ruined and people are taking advantage
of It's just you won't find.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
That on our podcast because our podcast is fun.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Yeah. My favorite, my favorite hoaxes are the ones we're
sent where you leave and you just say, well, Leveryn
had a good time. Wasn't that that was interesting?
Speaker 4 (23:03):
That's interesting, that was crazy, had a fun ride.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, uh, that's that's Uh. That's a great point about
the sort of logic and philosophy of our explorations here,
because yeah, you don't want everything to feel like an
endless death march. You know, you don't want every story
to end uh end up feeling like you just accidentally
watched Requiem for a reason.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
No, you want to watch Requen for drink consensually. Ideally,
I will also say an only one. I think we've
sort of thought about the difference, sug. We've sort of
thought about the difference between a hoax and a scam
and something that is just nakedly a scam I think
is just for profit and just meant to exploit people,
(23:49):
where something about a hoax is more performative and also
has an element of whimsy to it. I know it's
when I see it thing the difference.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
There we go. I like that because we've sometimes discussed
over the years on this show, we've discussed heist and
hoaxes that we really enjoyed, and I think we're on
the same pat here because sometimes our favorite ones are
going to end up being someone who just wanted a
(24:18):
little bit of wackiness in their lives, you know. Or
they said something wild to their buddies hanging out, whether
in correspondence or in person, and no one questioned them
on it, And it gets really weird when someone starts
kind of just like the Yankee and Arthur's Court right Connecticut,
(24:39):
Yeak and King Arthur's court when the character Merlin you
realize that he actually believes he has magic powers. I
think it's fascinating how that happens with some real life
historical figures where they, you know, they say they're long
lost prince or what have you to some group of people,
and then those people just believe them, and you know,
(25:01):
fast forward a few decades and this guy's like, yeah, maybe,
I mean, maybe I am.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
I mean, I'm glad that you brought up King Arthur
because I not to put on my noble blood hat.
King Arthur is kind of maybe the longest running hoax
in popular culture because King Arthur did not exist, Like
I'm so sorry to everyone, what I know, it feels
like telling kids Santa Claus didn't exist. He didn't, but
at different periods in history he was sort of used
(25:28):
as propaganda to bolster people's reputations or to serve a
political purpose. This king, Henry the Seventh, the dad of
Henry the Eighth of Wife Fame, had a pretty tenuous
claim to the throne. Tenuous at best, but he won
a battle and when he was trying to sort of
establish his lineage and sort of established to prove that
(25:50):
he was a worthy king. He said on his Welsh
side that his family went back to King Arthur, and
he named his firstborn son Arthur as a way to
sort of create that legacy and tie in people's minds.
Even though Arthur was not a real person, he just
served a valuable political purpose.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
No was he was the popular King Arthur legend. Is
this made from whole cloth or is it an amalgamation
of other previous royals.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
I think the idea of King Arthur is a literary invention,
but it is a literary invention that takes its earliest
tiniest seeds from medieval chronicles. There's this chronicle called the
Historia brittonam in eight hundred and twenty eight that mentions
Arthur not as a king, but as a military leader
(26:44):
who fought off the invading Saxons and beat hundreds of
Saxons in this one battle. But even in that chronicle, Arthur,
a not a king, doesn't have any of the Guenevere
Lancelot cord round tab table.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
Maybe it's anyone ever sets it around table?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Was you know, table technology at that point.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
They probably were making tables round, I'm hoping, so maybe
we're there but even in that chronicle from eight hundred
and twenty eight, by that point, that chronicle has a
lot of flavors of mythology, where it's like they mentioned
that this general Arthur, you know, killed nine hundred people
single handedly in a battle that he they mentioned that
(27:28):
his dog had like a paw print in stone that
stayed in stone, and anytime someone stole the stone, it
would always appear right back where you stole it. That's
not like one of the pieces of the Arthur myth
that that stood the test of time. And there was
another where it's like the grave of Arthur's son if
you measure it any every time you measure it, it's
(27:49):
a different length. So even back in eight hundred, the
closest we can come to Arthur or a quote unquote
real Arthur is a general who was only mentioned in
this chronicle, not really mentioned by other contemporary sources, not
mentioned by other chroniclers who mentioned this battle, So it's
a pretty hazy source. And even then he was a
(28:10):
mythological figure.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
But then like it wouldn't have been til acted. The
fact they referred to them as Arthurian legend, right, like
that was sort of.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Like, yeah, doesn't the myth of the Holy Grail come
from Arthurian legend?
Speaker 5 (28:21):
Yeah, but that comes the idea of like the Holy Grail,
And I mean, I think I'm not good on Christian mythology.
I think probably the idea of the Holy Grail maybe
existed before. But the quest for the Holy Grail and
the sword and the stone and these pieces of Arthuriana
that we associate with King Arthur come centuries and centuries
(28:42):
later in literature.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
As they as they serve first propaganda, right, and then
they later serve literature because nostalgia is a hell of
a drug at some point, and maybe maybe this is
something that a lot of us would hear and think,
oh gosh, look at like we were saying earlier, look
(29:04):
at these suckers from the past. It's really more an
argument about access to information, as you were saying, And
we could argue that now the pendulum is starting to
swing the other waves.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Well, I mean, if anything, where maybe a little bit
dumber now than people were back then because of the
you know, reliance on that kind of technology and that
kind of information gathering and that kind of like you know,
instantaneous gratification. Not to mention what things like AI chat
GPT are doing to us even further down the rabbit
hole as far as that's concerned.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Yeah, critical thinking found dad Niditch.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, yeah, right exactly. Can't wait for the AI pictures
of that one on Facebook. With this, we want to
we want to ask you all a couple of these
larger questions with with hoaxing, with sussing out the fact
(30:01):
from the fiction, right and the truth from the proof
from the propaganda. What would you all recommend people do
when they hear a story that sounds super weird, or
hear a story maybe they really want to be true,
et cetera. How do we, as casual encounters of information
start parsing through all this? Frankly, I'll say it bullshit
(30:26):
that we see on the internet.
Speaker 8 (30:28):
Oh.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
I always just say, like, keep an open mind.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
I always come from a place of like, I don't know,
you know, like you don't need to know right away
if something's real or fake.
Speaker 6 (30:37):
You can take a week, you can take a month,
you can take like.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
I'm I'm luckily like I don't work at CNN, so
I don't need to be the one who decides if
something is real or fake right away. And I don't
need to report on it right away, so I can
take my time and look at different sources, and I
don't need to immediately have a verdict on whether something
(31:02):
is real or true. And I don't you know, we
were talking about like everybody wants to repost right away,
Like you don't need to repost right away, So you
don't need to know right away if it's.
Speaker 6 (31:11):
Real or fake. You can wait for the dust to settle.
You can wait for.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
NPR to weigh in, like there are people out there
who will do the fact checking, and you can wait
for them to do the fact checking, like you don't
need to immediately go into down the rabbit hole. I
see so many people who are immediately up in arms
about like.
Speaker 6 (31:32):
You know, like I'm not to.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
Take it to a super serious thing, but like there
will be like like the hours after like a mass
shooting or like a earthquaker, like some like big story,
Like that's when the least reliable information is and people
are already up in arms about like why aren't they
reporting about the this or the that or the whatever.
And I'm like, yo, like give them a week to
(31:56):
get their story straight, Like give the journalists some time
to do their jobs, then come back to it in
a couple of days and then we'll see like where
you can donate or this, that and the other. Like
you can just give it some time and be patient
and the information I knock on wood still have some
(32:17):
trust that some last dregs of the free press exists
and the good information will make its way to you
through some of our institutions if you give it some time.
But like, you just can't make these snap judgments. I
think that's where a lot of people go wrong, is
that they want the information immediately and they're like, well
(32:40):
this TikToker said and they said that they were there.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
So then that's true.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
But then that proved not to be true, and that
means that you can't trust and it's like give.
Speaker 6 (32:49):
It a day.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Republica by the way, Yeah, we were just talking about
that on stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Matt who you'll know.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Matt Frederick brought us a story about how many like
typos and fact checking errors or even popping up in
the ap now, and it seems like a lot of
that is sort of like the domino effect of that,
you know, first to market kind of attitude, so you
really do have to be careful. But we brought up
Republica and Axios and a few others, like we like
four oh four media, but in really do have to
(33:20):
be careful.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
We'll swing, We'll swing correctly a couple of times. But
it's yeah, this is something that makes me wonder. You know,
have we are Have we arrived full circle at the
heyday of the town crier. That always seemed like a
cool job to me, especially you know, like now we
have not like town criers under royal license. We're patent
(33:44):
from the monarch. We have the town criers of TikTok.
But I do love the idea. This is just a
pitch if any of you invents time travel, what if
we go back in time and bill ourselves as independent
town criers broad like on a circuit. Just walk in,
do a vibe check, and start shouting what we think
is the news or just.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
A counterpoint, something more controversial. Put the established town crier
out of business because ours is more salacious.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, we'll call it. Actually, I feel.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Like there are people you can find standing on the
street yelling their controversial opinions. I feel like you actually
can find people doing that. Maybe they're time travelers.
Speaker 6 (34:24):
Maybe those people are doing Maybe.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
I think all of Lizzie's advice is just like so
smart and dead on. And I would also add you
don't need to post it all unless you were an
elected official, I guess, or you just like screenshots and
the internet are forever and like, you don't need to
weigh in on everything. No one is waiting for your
take on every snow One's like, I can't believe I
(34:48):
can't wait to see what Greg says about this?
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Right?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Where is joh rule Dane When I.
Speaker 6 (34:53):
Talk about this all the time? Shutting up is always
an option.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
Shutting up is always an option. And you know what,
if you find something really interesting and really cool that
you do want to share, I would even say the
best thing to do is way a beat, get coffee
with a friend, meet a friend in person, and say
it to their face, because then if they say that
sounds fake and that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard,
you can be like, oh, maybe you're right, let me
just check on that. And also that you got to
(35:17):
get coffee in person.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
With a friend.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, I like this great advice. Yeah, this is fantastic
insight because it's there are some solid arguments that I
don't think are one hundred percent proven, but there are
solid arguments from a couple of different fields that maybe
it's a hardware problem for the human brain at this point,
like not having evolved to digest all of this information
(35:42):
at this unceasing pace. So it sounds like the idea
of not even totally going full off the grid or
lud eyed or whatever, but just giving your yourself a
second to take a beat with that. Again, fantastic insight.
As Noel's saying, do you all have eddy moments? Let's see,
(36:03):
I don't want to put anybody in the spot here,
but do you all have any moments where you thought
hot Dog I was taking in? I totally believe this
is true. Okay, Yeah, we got a hard nod from
Lizzie on that one too.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
I think everyone does.
Speaker 6 (36:18):
I yeah, I mean, I've, I've.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
I'm trying to think of an actual hoax example. The
only example that's coming to mind is an example of
just like bad reporting.
Speaker 6 (36:27):
Okay, but.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
Oh well, I remember, I know, I know a girl
who had a ticket to Firefest and then but she
didn't end up knowing. And this sounds like I'm lying
to make myself sound good, but I swear I'm not.
Speaker 6 (36:43):
I remember a girl who had.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
To take it to Firefest, and she was telling me
about all of the accommodations and then how much it costs,
and it didn't cost very much, and I remember being like,
you're gonna get sold into white slavery. Like yeah, I
remember being like not that I knew that it was
a scam, but I was like, this sounds like freaking
sus Like I was like, this is that sounds too
good to be true? And then she ended up like
she couldn't go, and she like sold her ticket and
(37:06):
then yeah, bullet dodged. And then when it happened the
like we went back into the office like after the weekend.
Speaker 6 (37:12):
I was like, aren't you so glad you didn't go?
She was like, I'm so glad I didn't go. So
that's what.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Do you know anyone that bought a ticket to Firefest too?
Speaker 4 (37:20):
No?
Speaker 6 (37:21):
I don't think I do.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And maybe that's.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Worth talking about real quick, because when you have something
like Firefest, it's such a scam that's debunked. There's two
documentaries about it, and yet people still bought tickets to
the second one.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
What where does that come from. Is it just pure ignorance?
Is bliss?
Speaker 5 (37:36):
Is it just like I think it's I don't think
it's even ignorance. I think it's knowing the hoax and
thinking like, oh, this will be fun, I'll like make
content about it. I think those people know exactly what
they're getting into, and I think kind of their hope,
almost hoping it's going to be a disaster.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
I also think this is an example of Like I
think this is a great.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
Example of the amplification effect.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
I don't know if that's the real term, but like
I think Firefest two probably sold about five.
Speaker 6 (38:05):
Tickets, five actual I don't think this is a real thing,
like like.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Not the second round of controversy when the trailer came out,
but the first round of controversy when Halle Bailey was
announced as the Little Mermaid, Like there were a few
racist comments and then everybody picked it up and it
became like a thing.
Speaker 6 (38:33):
Like there's a lot of manufactured.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Controversies on the Internet where if you actually trace it back,
it's like three people are mad about.
Speaker 5 (38:42):
This one of the worst, one of the worst developments
to the Internet, And just like this need for so
much content just to like be in the content now
is people report three tweets as a news story.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yes, oh god, no, that's a good It doesn't get
talked about enough, honestly, I mean it's so true.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Ever one of my tweets. That's the part that's the
worst part of it.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
I mean, it's not that much different than like, you know,
if we see a bad review for the podcast or
somebody says something mean about me personally, then I just
assume that's what everybody thinks.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
It's just so easy to like believe that one opinion
represents something so much larger, just because of how everything
kind of in a certain way is equal on the internet. Like,
if it's something that you see, then it's there and
it has the same weight as any other piece of
content that you might run across.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Yeah, if you're not.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Careful or like I remember, like during the Eras tour,
they were listing like resellers were listing floor seats for
like twenty thousand dollars or something, and there were all
of these sites being like, can you believe people are
paying twenty thousand dollars to see Taylor Swift?
Speaker 7 (39:47):
I was like, no, the tickets are available that means.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
They're not sell it, like exactly.
Speaker 8 (39:53):
I was like, how do you know anyone has paid
that much? I was just like that you made that up.
That is a made up price. That's a made up price.
Someone made that up, and you have now made up
that there is a customer for it.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
This is made up. You made that up for your article.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
You made up this consumer to get mad at who
is paying a made up price.
Speaker 6 (40:14):
This is a mini hoax. This is a many hoax
that this is happening.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
This is a little, tiny, little hoax just so that
you can have something to write about.
Speaker 6 (40:24):
Not like I don't know that anyone actually about tickets
to that.
Speaker 5 (40:28):
It almost is a thing where you see something like
on a web page that's like so imminently clickable, where
you're just like, well, I have to see that. It's
the classic rule of thumb that if a headline is
a question, the answer is no.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
No, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
This is is gen Z killing the stock market?
Speaker 1 (40:47):
No, no, right exactly, And that happens often with celebrity news.
Another one that I think works very well in political
reporting is when you see words like ASTs or slabs
or you know, basically capals old Batman style. That usually
means that someone had a quote that was taken out
(41:08):
of context where they were like, yeah, I guess hypothetically,
if this person you're talking about is microwaving camels, I
think it would be a bad thing, And they're like,
how dare you, senator? But this maybe speaks to again
that that requirement of a cadence right, of a publishing
(41:30):
cadence right, we have to have the news, and if
the news does not exist, we have to therefore make
the news.
Speaker 5 (41:37):
I have I have experienced the moment of being taken
out of context in a way that made me seem
incredibly lame. Where I was quoted in an article for
an outlet I will not name. I had made a
TikTok about breastfeeding my son and how much time it
takes and like people don't realize that, like feeding your
children with your body takes up so much on and
(42:00):
was giving an interview about it, and I said something
to the effect of like, when I'm doing it, I
spend a lot of time on my phone, which is
great for my brain. And I was so obviously in
my mind being sarcastic, and they wrote it up as
if she was like, well, lucky for her, like she
is spending a lot of time on her phone, which
Schwartz claims is great for her brain. And I was like,
(42:21):
oh no, and it was just so miscommunicated that then
seeing it in print, just felt this is like such
a tiny example, but it's so easy for something just
to like it wasn't malicious. It was just sort of
like you flippant and it just happened lay a little lazy,
a little just a misunderstanding. It just is a minor
example of just how easy it is for things to
(42:43):
be misconstrued.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Especially true when we're encountering something written in print about
something that was conveyed through audio or video, right, because
we don't really gosh, you know what, No, we should
do a history of strange punctually marks, because we don't
really use like the Entero bang or you know, some
kind of mark that says.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Clearly and I would die on that. A period and
a text is aggressive and I will die on it.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
He'll disagree in lack of a period also seems pretty cold.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Where do you all fall on that issue? Period at
the end of a text aggressive?
Speaker 5 (43:20):
It depends if it's one, if it's one word. It
depends on what the text is. If it says, if
it's fine, period aggressive, not fine, it'd full sentence.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
I agree with that because then you have some nuanced
wild actually communicate a vibe.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
But if it's a word and a period, not a fan.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
I also subscribe to the belief that a text is
not writing it is written speech.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah. I like that. But also we could argue there
are a lot of people in the audience tonight who
would say fine without a period is likewise not the
coolest thing.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Fine isn't general. Fine Also don't like.
Speaker 6 (43:57):
Sounds good?
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Good seems dismissing.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
I do a dash. I like to do a dash.
If it's not a sentence, Yeah, I'll just do a dash.
I'll be like, that sounds great.
Speaker 5 (44:10):
If someone ever texts it is what it is period?
That person.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Was that was that Will Pearson, I'll find it.
Speaker 5 (44:23):
I'm just saying, in context of period can absolutely be devastating.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
All this to say, bring back the Interra Bank in
Terra Bang, I'm telling you it's going to be a winner.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
We're going to do an episode.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Described as this character, this forgotten character.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
So have you ever seen a question mark and an
exclamation mark and thought they should hook up.
Speaker 7 (44:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
It's basically that uh. But there there are so many more,
not just punctuation marks, but there are so many more
Hoaxes that are out there in the past and the
present and probably the future. Not my best segue, but
here we're going. We can't thank you all enough for
making this show. And as you can tell, we're big
fans of your previous writing, your unrelated shows. Right Noble Blood,
(45:06):
Reductress Reductress mc sweeney's, by the way, one of my
dream hangout spots where can people learn more about Eule's work,
not just on Hoax, but on your various other endeavors.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
I feel like the easiest place to find both of
us is Instagram, because, as as Dana mentioned, we're both
staring at our phones way too much, so we're probably
just going to be throwing up links on there. I'm
Lizzie Logan with five z's, so just l i zz
zz ze l O g A N.
Speaker 5 (45:40):
I'm Dana Schwartz, also with a lot of ease, but
my z's are at the end schwartz zz. Listen to
Noble Blood and listen to Hoax, and if you like it,
Please leave a rating, review, subscribe. It's a new podcast,
getting getting new listeners, listening, spreading the word. It means
a lot.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
And if you like our show, you are gonna love this.
When folks, we are not blowing smoke. This is this
us saying hoax is amazing? Is itself not a hoax?
So we want to be clear. And someone had to
say something like that towards the end of the show. Hell,
you love it too, Kui, Thank you so much, Lizzie,
(46:19):
thank you so much. Data. We are no we have
other people to think. We'll do it real quick. Super
producer mister Max Williams, Alex Williams who composed our track.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Chris Prociotis and Jeff Goates here and Spirit, Jonathan Strickland, Bequister,
aj Bahamas, Jacobs The.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Bustler and of course Noel. Thanks to you. Tune in
in the next few days, folks. As the Cinnamte said,
we have such wonders to show you.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Noel Brown
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