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Hoax! With Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear for the Man, the Myth,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the legend, our super producer, mister Max Williams. Max Williams.
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  Speaker 1: And who is that cheering on our super producer? Why
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  Speaker 1: it's none other than mister Noel Brown Nolan. How are
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  Speaker 1: we feeling?
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  Speaker 2: I'm all right?
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  Speaker 1: How are you? I'm okay, man, I'm okay. Got a
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  Speaker 1: lot of.
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  Speaker 3: Run of dreary weather here in Atlanta, finally broke and
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  Speaker 3: that bums me out. So I'm feeling pretty great today, really,
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  Speaker 3: I you know.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm Ben Bullen by the I feel weird, Noel,
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  Speaker 1: because I had just perfected the newest update on my
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  Speaker 1: rainy day playlist, you know what I mean, And I
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  Speaker 1: didn't do it in time for the weather.
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  Speaker 2: What are we talking here? We're talking like chill hip hop,
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  Speaker 2: beast to study.
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  Speaker 1: Too or I loved love a godspeed?
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  Speaker 4: Uh?
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  Speaker 1: Got it back into some Shirley Manson stuff. We'd love
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  Speaker 1: to hear yours garbage? Uh huh, yes, yes, garbage. Pistoln
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  Speaker 1: speaking of the opposite of garbage. We are thrilled you,
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  Speaker 1: Max and myself by a new podcast that is right
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  Speaker 1: up our alley. Hoax created by none other than the
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  Speaker 1: legendary Lizzie Logan and Dana Schwartz and Noel. We have
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  Speaker 1: a special surprise for our ridiculous historians.
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  Speaker 2: Is it true? Are they here?
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  Speaker 1: They're here, They're here this part Welcome to the show.
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  Speaker 2: So happy to have y'all.
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  Speaker 1: Let's get right into it. First, tell us a little
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  Speaker 1: bit about your background. I think you're going to be
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  Speaker 1: both familiar to a lot of our listeners already. Could
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  Speaker 1: you tell us how you guys teamed up and what
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  Speaker 1: inspired you to create a show all about hoaxes.
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  Speaker 4: Lizzie, I was pointing at you, Dana as this as
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  Speaker 4: this podcast was your idea.
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  Speaker 5: Okay, Well, I'm Dana Schwartz. I'm the host of the
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  Speaker 5: history podcast Noble Blood, which is a scripted podcast where
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  Speaker 5: we talk about the history of nobles, you know, and
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  Speaker 5: they're interesting, usually bloody stories. But a fun fact about
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  Speaker 5: me is I'm real life human friends with Lizzie Logan
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  Speaker 5: and I had this idea. I've always been fascinated by
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  Speaker 5: historical hoaxes. There have been a few Noble Blood episodes
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  Speaker 5: that sort of touch on hoaxes, fake royals, you know,
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  Speaker 5: Anastasia stories like that, And I'm captivated about the idea
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  Speaker 5: of why people believe things that aren't true and the
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  Speaker 5: people that purport that they are true. And so I
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  Speaker 5: sent a text message to Lizzie Logan, my real life friend,
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  Speaker 5: about this idea, and we noodled it together, and a
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  Speaker 5: year and change later, here we are.
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  Speaker 4: It's true, And I'm I'm a little bit more of
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  Speaker 4: the modern day scam scandal fan. I love like I was.
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  Speaker 4: I was on the fair noose beat, like from the beginning.
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  Speaker 4: I was fascinated by that, Like fraudsters, annadel Vi, like
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  Speaker 4: anything of that that's in the news, I am like
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  Speaker 4: fascinated by. So it's been really fun to research these
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  Speaker 4: with Dana and find out that people have been hucksters
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  Speaker 4: throughout history. We think of this as sometimes a new
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  Speaker 4: phenomenon of like, oh, people are falling for these scams
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  Speaker 4: and these liars these days. Now nobody you can't trust
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  Speaker 4: anybody anymore. It's like, oh, you could actually never trust anybody.
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  Speaker 4: This has actually been going on since the dawn of lying.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it couldn't come at a more appropriate time, because
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  Speaker 3: it would seem that just about everything we hear about
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  Speaker 3: as a hoax, if it is unflattering to certain folks
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  Speaker 3: in government these days, yeah too about it.
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  Speaker 2: It had to put it out.
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  Speaker 5: Very cy call things hoaxes, and I think like, unfortunately,
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  Speaker 5: at this moment, when AI and deep fakes are so pervasive,
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  Speaker 5: the fundamental question of whether you should believe some information
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  Speaker 5: that's put in front of you, I think is very critical.
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  Speaker 5: And so by using these anecdotes, these fun stories, I mean,
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  Speaker 5: our first episode is about two young girls in nineteen
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  Speaker 5: seventeen saying that they took pictures of fairies. It seems silly,
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  Speaker 5: but the bigger questions about that I think are unfortunately
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  Speaker 5: relevant today. Just like scrolling through Facebook and you see
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  Speaker 5: these like AI slop stories that get like thousands of
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  Speaker 5: likes about someone like being like no one came to
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  Speaker 5: my birthday party, and it's like a cartoon of one
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  Speaker 5: hundred and twenty year old woman.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's like I saw one today where it was
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  Speaker 3: Leonardo DiCaprio covers his face with a cap at Jeff
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  Speaker 3: Bezos's wedding, and it's such an unremarkable and likely thing
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  Speaker 3: to have happened that you look at and you're like, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: sure that happens. But then I look down on the comments,
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  Speaker 3: It's like, this is totally AI. It was based on
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  Speaker 3: a still image that was then AI afied to like animate.
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  Speaker 3: And you know, we're also willing, maybe even want to
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  Speaker 3: be the first one to share something that all of
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  Speaker 3: this stuff just makes it even more difficult to sort
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  Speaker 3: things out because it just capitalizes on that wanting to
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  Speaker 3: be the first one to break the news on something
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  Speaker 3: that impulse is already kind of depriving you of some
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  Speaker 3: critical thinking at a very crucial moment when this kind
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  Speaker 3: of information gets spread like wildfire.
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  Speaker 1: We want to be Promethean right in the attention economy?
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  Speaker 1: Where are my likes? Where am I rip boost?
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  Speaker 4: This is?
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  Speaker 1: This is something that we've explored often flzient data in
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  Speaker 1: our or another show we do called stuff they Don't
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  Speaker 1: Want you to Know. And I think one thing that
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  Speaker 1: really interests Nol and myself and Max and all our
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  Speaker 1: fellow audience members tonight is the idea that a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people, especially before AI Slop, a lot of us
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  Speaker 1: assumed that it was just easier to pull off a
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  Speaker 1: successful hoax in ages past right, just like you know,
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  Speaker 1: every true crime show says, well, you know, it's just
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  Speaker 1: easier to murder people back then. So do we think
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  Speaker 1: that it was easier to pull off a successful hoax
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  Speaker 1: in the past or has AI changed that conversation entirely.
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  Speaker 3: And that lack of critical thinking and that kind of
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  Speaker 3: like you know, knee jerk reaction.
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  Speaker 5: I'm gonna say yes and now, Yes, it was easier
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  Speaker 5: to pull off a hoax because there were fewer mechanisms
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  Speaker 5: of like immediate fact checking. Like if you say something
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  Speaker 5: to someone, someone can't just like quick google it to
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  Speaker 5: see if it's real. You know, if someone says they're Anastasia,
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  Speaker 5: you can't do a genetic test immediately and prove that
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  Speaker 5: that's not the case. The Princess Anastasia, you know, talking
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  Speaker 5: about the Romano Princess.
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  Speaker 2: From the animated film.
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  Speaker 5: From the animated film, and as we know, it was
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  Speaker 5: a happy ending and she lived happily ever after. Yes,
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  Speaker 5: so in some ways it was easier to lie just
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  Speaker 5: because there were fewer ways of fact checking immediately. But
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  Speaker 5: I will say something that continues to come up over
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  Speaker 5: the course of this podcast is people were not more
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  Speaker 5: stupid in the past when we have hoaxes and we say,
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  Speaker 5: oh my god, everyone believed this. That's not the case
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  Speaker 5: with almost every hoax. There were people at the time
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  Speaker 5: calling bullshit. In our first episode we talked about these
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  Speaker 5: coddingly fairies, and it was notable because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
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  Speaker 5: who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, someone you would have
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  Speaker 5: imagined to be a very intelligent man good at deductive reasoning,
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  Speaker 5: was a big defender of these fairy photographs.
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  Speaker 2: We have talked about this particular story.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, on both ridiculous history and stuff that don't want
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  Speaker 3: maybe just to remind us a little bit.
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  Speaker 2: It was like the early, very very well done.
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  Speaker 3: Photoshop job that like had people convinced that someone had
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  Speaker 3: photographed like these magical creatures.
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  Speaker 4: Which I just want to go on record and say,
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  Speaker 4: if you haven't looked these episode.
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  Speaker 2: Two, they're nuts.
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  Speaker 4: Two points two points One, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell
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  Speaker 4: for this, and he was a smart guy. Two most
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  Speaker 4: people did not fall for this. Three The photos look
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  Speaker 4: fake as hell, Like they do not look real like
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  Speaker 4: this is this is the thing that.
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  Speaker 6: People need to understand, Like they don't they just they.
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  Speaker 7: Don't look real at all, Like the the The idea
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  Speaker 7: that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell for this is so
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  Speaker 7: funny to me because they just don't look real like
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  Speaker 7: on any level.
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  Speaker 5: He I mean, we get into it in the episode,
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  Speaker 5: but he believed it because he wanted to believe it.
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  Speaker 5: He was a spiritualist. This just reinforced his worldview. But
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  Speaker 5: plenty of people at the time knew that these photos
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  Speaker 5: were fake. Plenty of these people were making fun of
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  Speaker 5: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for falling for it. There's one
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  Speaker 5: quote that I love where someone said, knowing children and
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  Speaker 5: knowing that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has legs, I believe
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  Speaker 5: these girls pulled.
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  Speaker 3: His Like, yeah, there's no dimension to them, there's no
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  Speaker 3: light fall off, there's not completely flat. I think in
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  Speaker 3: my mind I was remembering it looking a lot better,
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  Speaker 3: and I'm looking at it now and you're dead on
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  Speaker 3: it really.
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  Speaker 4: Don't look like I've seen spooky photos where I'm like, oh,
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  Speaker 4: I understand how a person in the past, or even
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  Speaker 4: a person today would have fallen for this if you
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  Speaker 4: don't know enough exposure is yeah, this is not like
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  Speaker 4: BuzzFeed creepy photos where you're like.
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  Speaker 6: Oh my god, what is that. This is not that
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  Speaker 6: this is a fake looking photo.
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  Speaker 2: They do not exist in the same space clearly upon.
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  Speaker 5: I mean really, what they did was they just one
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  Speaker 5: of the girls just drew fairies and pinned them around
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  Speaker 5: them with hatpins. So the photo itself wasn't manipulated, which
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  Speaker 5: is why they were like, we took these photos to
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  Speaker 5: the expert expert photography people and they prove that it
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  Speaker 5: wasn't a double exposure. It's like, yeah, it wasn't because
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  Speaker 5: these girls just had cardboard cutouts of fairies around them.
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  Speaker 1: And they're nice drawings. To be fair, We don't want
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  Speaker 1: you don't want to call that. Yeah, I do also
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  Speaker 1: want to say, on a positive note, this would be
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  Speaker 1: like a really nice hallmarky type card to send to
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  Speaker 1: your family.
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  Speaker 5: It's the girl was sixteen. This is like a really
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  Speaker 5: creative art project that she was doing with.
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  Speaker 2: Her cousin's fun.
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  Speaker 1: And how did the how did the I don't want
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  Speaker 1: to call them culprits. How did the uh let's use
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  Speaker 1: that little culprits, those little scamps, little scamps? Okay, how
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  Speaker 1: did how did the how did the scamps? Uh deal
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  Speaker 1: with this?
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  Speaker 2: Uh?
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  Speaker 1: It became you know, a subject of conversation on the
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  Speaker 1: level of a meme going viral. Right, So, without spoiling
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  Speaker 1: too much of the episode, could you tell us how
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  Speaker 1: those kids dealt with the the fame and the backlash
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  Speaker 1: and the controversy.
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  Speaker 5: I mean, the truth is, I think they were both
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  Speaker 5: kind of mortified. They were humiliated at school. They were bullied.
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  Speaker 5: Arthur Conandoyle originally used as a pseudonym when he publishes
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  Speaker 5: the story about these photographs in the strand, but everyone
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  Speaker 5: still knows it's them. The girls recount like photos of them, Yeah,
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  Speaker 5: because it's photos of them. The girls, you know, both
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  Speaker 5: recount being mocked at school. The older girl, Elsie, was
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  Speaker 5: fired from her job because people kept calling and like
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  Speaker 5: trying to the reporters kept calling and coming there. So
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  Speaker 5: it was it was very challenging, and I mean, in
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  Speaker 5: spoiler alert, no spoiler alert, it was a hoax. But
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  Speaker 5: both girls agreed that they would not publicly admit that
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  Speaker 5: the photos were faked until Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and
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  Speaker 5: mister Gardner, who's another like a big proponent of the photographs,
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  Speaker 5: we're both dead.
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  Speaker 2: Oh jeez, Okay, okay.
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  Speaker 3: I think the interesting part about this to me and
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  Speaker 3: this maybe comes into play with a lot of hooks
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  Speaker 3: is the power of belief and playing into people's superstitions
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  Speaker 3: or playing into people's biases or whatever. That to me
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  Speaker 3: is I think a huge part of successfully perpetrating a hoax.
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  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, tell the people what they want, you know,
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  Speaker 1: play on that confirmation bias, because who doesn't love feeling?
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  Speaker 1: Beat me here, Max, who doesn't love feeling? Right? You
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  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like, oh, yeah, I did make
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  Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes and fairies are real, and here's the one
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  Speaker 1: thing that supports it.
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  Speaker 5: I think another big lesson to take away from the
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  Speaker 5: hoax is, once you are convinced of something, you can
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  Speaker 5: justify any possible hole anyone points in the argument. People
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  Speaker 5: pointed out that these quota quote fairies, we're wearing very
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: modern clothing and had very modern hairdos, and he said, well,
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  Speaker 5: they're there thought figures. Fairies are mythical creatures that are
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  Speaker 5: sort of conjured from your imagination, so that of course
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  Speaker 5: their their appearance changes over time or counter explanation. The
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  Speaker 5: reason they look like regular like fairies in a story
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  Speaker 5: book isn't that, you know, strange that they look like
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  Speaker 5: just exactly how people imagine fairies. Look, well, maybe people
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  Speaker 5: just got it right. Maybe our popular imagination of fairies
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  Speaker 5: was based on their reality, and so he just came
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  Speaker 5: up with these counter explanations for any possible hole someone
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  Speaker 5: could point Poe.
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  Speaker 3: Which argument so un Sherlock Holmes, The in of him,
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  Speaker 3: isn't it? I mean, it's like it seems to go
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  Speaker 3: counter to everything that he stands for in terms of
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  Speaker 3: that kind of power of reason and deduction and you know,
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  Speaker 3: not being swayed by bias and looking at only the facts.
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  Speaker 1: That's interesting people have.
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  Speaker 4: Come to a conclusion when you're arguing with them. The
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  Speaker 4: argument no is no longer do fairies exist or not?
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  Speaker 4: It is are you wrong or not? It is are
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  Speaker 4: you a person who is able to be duped or not?
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  Speaker 4: So like, if I've convinced, like if Dana is convinced
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  Speaker 4: of something, then if I'm arguing with her, it's not
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  Speaker 4: really about the thing we're arguing about. It's am I
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  Speaker 4: able to convince Dana that she is a person who
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  Speaker 4: is like stupid in some way or like gullible in
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  Speaker 4: some way. It's hard for her to swallow that she
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  Speaker 4: is a person who could be wrong.
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  Speaker 5: Especially if people have been calling me a genius because
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  Speaker 5: I wrote Sherlock Holmes books.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, not very Hounds of Baskerville. I love you, bro.
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  Speaker 1: But this, this leads us to I think this is
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  Speaker 1: a tremendous point that echoes in the modern day, the
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: idea of tying one's identity to a conclusion right in
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: a society that very much does not reward people changing
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: their minds right are encountering new information. There's a big
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  Speaker 1: sunk cost fallacy in that kind of thing. And if
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: we stick with the world of print for just a moment,
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  Speaker 1: there's another story you all found and hipped us to
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  Speaker 1: that I had personally never heard of before. The fake
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  Speaker 1: first newspaper in England.
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  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, this became my own sort of many personal
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  Speaker 5: crusade because if you believe it, this is a hoax
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  Speaker 5: that's still to this day around the world. Museums and
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: a website still write up as true. It is kind of,
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: when you think about it, the original fake news. It
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: is a newspaper called The English Mercury. It was donated
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: to the British Museum in sort of a cash of
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: papers in seventeen seventy six by this man named Thomas Birch.
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  Speaker 5: And he donated all these papers that used to belong
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  Speaker 5: to the second Earl of Hardwick. So these papers are
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  Speaker 5: just in the museum for a good long time when
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  Speaker 5: a researcher named George Chalmers finds them and is astonished
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  Speaker 5: because in these papers is this newspaper from fifteen eighty
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  Speaker 5: eight discussing Sir Francis Drake and the English defeating the
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  Speaker 5: Spanish Armada, this massive event in English history. And what
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: would really be astonishing is that if this English mercury,
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: this discovery is now the oldest newspaper in the world,
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: The actual oldest newspaper in the world is a German
• 16:29
  Speaker 5: newspaper from fifteen ninety four written in Latin. So not
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: only is this discovery monumental because it's the oldest newspaper
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  Speaker 5: in the world, it's about a marquee event. It's not
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  Speaker 5: just like a regular, you know, Tuesday newspaper. It's like
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  Speaker 5: about the Spanish Armada. And it's proving this to this
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  Speaker 5: British person reading it, that Englishmen have invented the newspaper.
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: We thought it was German, but it was Us, and
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: so they're so excited, and for almost half a century
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  Speaker 5: people just take that as fact, and it's not until
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  Speaker 5: forty five years later that a researcher going through the
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  Speaker 5: British Museum archives realizes that the manuscript is so obviously
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  Speaker 5: a hoax, like based on the typeface, based on some spellings.
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  Speaker 5: There's an original manuscript version of it that's in the
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  Speaker 5: handwriting of the second Earl of Hardwick with some corrections
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  Speaker 5: from that friend, Sir Thomas Birch. And what this researcher
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  Speaker 5: figures out is that newspaper was basically just like a
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  Speaker 5: creative writing exercise that the Earl did with his friend.
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  Speaker 5: Like it feels almost like a fifth like an assignment
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  Speaker 5: you would get in fifth grade, where it's like, imagine
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  Speaker 5: that you are at a historical event and you are
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  Speaker 5: a reporter, Like what would a reporter say about the
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  Speaker 5: invasion of the Spanish Armada? Like the Earl and his
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  Speaker 5: friend just did this as a writing exercise, like a
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  Speaker 5: quote unquote literary game. And they weren't even trying to
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  Speaker 5: hoax anyone, to be fair, they just donated it among
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  Speaker 5: all their papers. And I find that very charming, and
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  Speaker 5: still to this day you will see the English Mercury
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  Speaker 5: referenced as as a real historical newspaper from fifteen eighty
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  Speaker 5: eight when it is not.
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  Speaker 4: I have a distinct memory of doing that in fifth
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  Speaker 4: grade that we were doing a unit on Egypt and
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: there were two like it was like five A and
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: five B, like our two fifth grade classes, and we
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: each had to do like an ancient Egyptian newspaper. And
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: there was like kind of a rivalry between the two
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: classes of who could come up with a better name
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  Speaker 4: for their newspaper, and we I forget which class was which,
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: but one was called the Giza Gazette and the other
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: was Pyramid Paparazzi. Oh, but it was like one hundred
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: percent if a thousand years from now.
• 18:40
  Speaker 6: Someone then found what we did.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: And was like wow, like did you know ancient Egypt
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: had newspapers.
• 18:47
  Speaker 6: One was called the Giza Zet and the other was
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: called Pyramid Paparazzi.
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: And then they were like, oh, this is not written
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: in hieroglyphics, this is actually not from ancient Egypt.
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: Did you say in any of it with like tea
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: bags to me?
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I also noticed, Lizzie, this is a bit apropos. You
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: have a poster of the pretenders?
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: Oh yes, why as band very hoxy rock band.
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: Pending.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Think about it, folks connect those dots. So it also
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I think the idea of this fake first newspaper, you know,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: we see here not malice, right, not necessarily a heist
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: nor adrift, but more this idea of something affirming a
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: concept of English nationalism and exceptional exceptionalism. So we also
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: see I don't know the idea that people want to
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: be read on to a mystery, right, people again, we
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: love the validation. We love not having to change our minds.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Maybe that takes us a little bit closer to the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: one and only folks you know him, you know them.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: We got to get a sound qu for him, PT book.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: We'll do some dances here.
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: He is the greatest showman himself.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: I was about to say, the greatest show what a musical?
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: So what makes what makes our what makes our buddy?
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Ptb the notorious ptb uh considered the ultimate Hopes not
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: the best dude.
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: There was a certain shamelessness to him. I think that
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: a lot of the hoaxes that we like to cover
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: on the show have like a general sweetness, and even
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: that example of the English mercury Uh, it was like
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: a fun writing game between two Buddies, and they weren't
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: even trying to fool anyone. They were having fun, and
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: that was sort of also at the heart of the
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: Cuttingly Fairies was just these two young girls. What I
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: find so disquieting about P. T. Barnum is the shamelessness
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: with which he was alying to people for profit and
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: then also exploiting the people that he was using he had.
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: I think the biggest hoax that I think has the
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: biggest impact to this day that he perpetrated that I
• 21:23
  Speaker 5: don't think people realize necessarily was a hoax is the
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: idea of George Washington and the Cherry Tree story. He
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: helped popularize that because he in the eighteen hundreds had
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: a black woman that he traveled with who was very,
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: very old, who he had claim falsely to be the
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: one hundred and something year old woman who had helped
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: raise George Washington. Not true.
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: I would also say one of the greatest hoaxes of P. T.
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: Barnum's life is his own legacy, which is now being
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: burnished in the film The Greatest Showman, which.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Is really rosy out.
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: I also would just say, like our podcast is a
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: lot about like a suite or innocuous hoaxes, which it
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: has less to do with the nature of hoaxes and
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: has more to do with us wanting to have like
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: a positive, feel good podcast. Like that's less a statement
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: on the nature of hoaxes and more about like Dana
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: and I want to have a fun podcast where you like,
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: learn a little bit and also don't feel bummed out
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: at the end. So we have purposely chosen hoaxes where
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: fewer lives are ruined than in other hoaxes. But if
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: you research hoaxes on your own, you will find many
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: where people's lives are ruined and people are taking advantage
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: of It's just you won't find.
• 22:52
  Speaker 6: That on our podcast because our podcast is fun.
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah. My favorite, my favorite hoaxes are the ones we're
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: sent where you leave and you just say, well, Leveryn
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: had a good time. Wasn't that that was interesting?
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: That's interesting, that was crazy, had a fun ride.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, that's that's Uh. That's a great point about
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the sort of logic and philosophy of our explorations here,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: because yeah, you don't want everything to feel like an
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: endless death march. You know, you don't want every story
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: to end uh end up feeling like you just accidentally
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: watched Requiem for a reason.
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: No, you want to watch Requen for drink consensually. Ideally,
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: I will also say an only one. I think we've
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: sort of thought about the difference, sug. We've sort of
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: thought about the difference between a hoax and a scam
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: and something that is just nakedly a scam I think
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: is just for profit and just meant to exploit people,
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: where something about a hoax is more performative and also
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: has an element of whimsy to it. I know it's
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: when I see it thing the difference.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: There we go. I like that because we've sometimes discussed
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: over the years on this show, we've discussed heist and
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: hoaxes that we really enjoyed, and I think we're on
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the same pat here because sometimes our favorite ones are
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: going to end up being someone who just wanted a
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: little bit of wackiness in their lives, you know. Or
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: they said something wild to their buddies hanging out, whether
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in correspondence or in person, and no one questioned them
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: on it, And it gets really weird when someone starts
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: kind of just like the Yankee and Arthur's Court right Connecticut,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeak and King Arthur's court when the character Merlin you
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: realize that he actually believes he has magic powers. I
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: think it's fascinating how that happens with some real life
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: historical figures where they, you know, they say they're long
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: lost prince or what have you to some group of people,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: and then those people just believe them, and you know,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: fast forward a few decades and this guy's like, yeah, maybe,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe I am.
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: I mean, I'm glad that you brought up King Arthur
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: because I not to put on my noble blood hat.
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: King Arthur is kind of maybe the longest running hoax
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: in popular culture because King Arthur did not exist, Like
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: I'm so sorry to everyone, what I know, it feels
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: like telling kids Santa Claus didn't exist. He didn't, but
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: at different periods in history he was sort of used
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: as propaganda to bolster people's reputations or to serve a
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: political purpose. This king, Henry the Seventh, the dad of
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: Henry the Eighth of Wife Fame, had a pretty tenuous
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: claim to the throne. Tenuous at best, but he won
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: a battle and when he was trying to sort of
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: establish his lineage and sort of established to prove that
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: he was a worthy king. He said on his Welsh
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: side that his family went back to King Arthur, and
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: he named his firstborn son Arthur as a way to
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: sort of create that legacy and tie in people's minds.
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: Even though Arthur was not a real person, he just
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: served a valuable political purpose.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: No was he was the popular King Arthur legend. Is
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: this made from whole cloth or is it an amalgamation
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: of other previous royals.
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: I think the idea of King Arthur is a literary invention,
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: but it is a literary invention that takes its earliest
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: tiniest seeds from medieval chronicles. There's this chronicle called the
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: Historia brittonam in eight hundred and twenty eight that mentions
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: Arthur not as a king, but as a military leader
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: who fought off the invading Saxons and beat hundreds of
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: Saxons in this one battle. But even in that chronicle, Arthur,
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: a not a king, doesn't have any of the Guenevere
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: Lancelot cord round tab table.
• 27:01
  Speaker 6: Maybe it's anyone ever sets it around table?
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Was you know, table technology at that point.
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: They probably were making tables round, I'm hoping, so maybe
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: we're there but even in that chronicle from eight hundred
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: and twenty eight, by that point, that chronicle has a
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: lot of flavors of mythology, where it's like they mentioned
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: that this general Arthur, you know, killed nine hundred people
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: single handedly in a battle that he they mentioned that
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: his dog had like a paw print in stone that
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: stayed in stone, and anytime someone stole the stone, it
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: would always appear right back where you stole it. That's
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: not like one of the pieces of the Arthur myth
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: that that stood the test of time. And there was
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: another where it's like the grave of Arthur's son if
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: you measure it any every time you measure it, it's
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: a different length. So even back in eight hundred, the
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: closest we can come to Arthur or a quote unquote
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: real Arthur is a general who was only mentioned in
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: this chronicle, not really mentioned by other contemporary sources, not
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: mentioned by other chroniclers who mentioned this battle, So it's
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: a pretty hazy source. And even then he was a
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: mythological figure.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: But then like it wouldn't have been til acted. The
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: fact they referred to them as Arthurian legend, right, like
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: that was sort of.
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: Like, yeah, doesn't the myth of the Holy Grail come
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: from Arthurian legend?
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but that comes the idea of like the Holy Grail,
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: And I mean, I think I'm not good on Christian mythology.
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: I think probably the idea of the Holy Grail maybe
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: existed before. But the quest for the Holy Grail and
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: the sword and the stone and these pieces of Arthuriana
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: that we associate with King Arthur come centuries and centuries
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: later in literature.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: As they as they serve first propaganda, right, and then
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: they later serve literature because nostalgia is a hell of
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: a drug at some point, and maybe maybe this is
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: something that a lot of us would hear and think,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: oh gosh, look at like we were saying earlier, look
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: at these suckers from the past. It's really more an
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: argument about access to information, as you were saying, And
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: we could argue that now the pendulum is starting to
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: swing the other waves.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, if anything, where maybe a little bit
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: dumber now than people were back then because of the
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: you know, reliance on that kind of technology and that
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: kind of information gathering and that kind of like you know,
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: instantaneous gratification. Not to mention what things like AI chat
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: GPT are doing to us even further down the rabbit
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: hole as far as that's concerned.
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, critical thinking found dad Niditch.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right exactly. Can't wait for the AI pictures
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: of that one on Facebook. With this, we want to
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: we want to ask you all a couple of these
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: larger questions with with hoaxing, with sussing out the fact
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: from the fiction, right and the truth from the proof
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: from the propaganda. What would you all recommend people do
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: when they hear a story that sounds super weird, or
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: hear a story maybe they really want to be true,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: et cetera. How do we, as casual encounters of information
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: start parsing through all this? Frankly, I'll say it bullshit
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: that we see on the internet.
• 30:28
  Speaker 8: Oh.
• 30:28
  Speaker 6: I always just say, like, keep an open mind.
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: I always come from a place of like, I don't know,
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: you know, like you don't need to know right away
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: if something's real or fake.
• 30:37
  Speaker 6: You can take a week, you can take a month,
• 30:39
  Speaker 6: you can take like.
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: I'm I'm luckily like I don't work at CNN, so
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: I don't need to be the one who decides if
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: something is real or fake right away. And I don't
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: need to report on it right away, so I can
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: take my time and look at different sources, and I
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: don't need to immediately have a verdict on whether something
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: is real or true. And I don't you know, we
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: were talking about like everybody wants to repost right away,
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: Like you don't need to repost right away, So you
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: don't need to know right away if it's.
• 31:11
  Speaker 6: Real or fake. You can wait for the dust to settle.
• 31:13
  Speaker 6: You can wait for.
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: NPR to weigh in, like there are people out there
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: who will do the fact checking, and you can wait
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: for them to do the fact checking, like you don't
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: need to immediately go into down the rabbit hole. I
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: see so many people who are immediately up in arms
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: about like.
• 31:32
  Speaker 6: You know, like I'm not to.
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: Take it to a super serious thing, but like there
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: will be like like the hours after like a mass
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: shooting or like a earthquaker, like some like big story,
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: Like that's when the least reliable information is and people
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: are already up in arms about like why aren't they
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: reporting about the this or the that or the whatever.
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, yo, like give them a week to
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: get their story straight, Like give the journalists some time
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: to do their jobs, then come back to it in
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: a couple of days and then we'll see like where
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: you can donate or this, that and the other. Like
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: you can just give it some time and be patient
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: and the information I knock on wood still have some
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: trust that some last dregs of the free press exists
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: and the good information will make its way to you
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: through some of our institutions if you give it some time.
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: But like, you just can't make these snap judgments. I
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: think that's where a lot of people go wrong, is
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: that they want the information immediately and they're like, well
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: this TikToker said and they said that they were there.
• 32:44
  Speaker 6: So then that's true.
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: But then that proved not to be true, and that
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: means that you can't trust and it's like give.
• 32:49
  Speaker 6: It a day.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: Republica by the way, Yeah, we were just talking about
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: that on stuff they don't want you to know.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Matt who you'll know.
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: Matt Frederick brought us a story about how many like
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: typos and fact checking errors or even popping up in
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: the ap now, and it seems like a lot of
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: that is sort of like the domino effect of that,
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: you know, first to market kind of attitude, so you
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: really do have to be careful. But we brought up
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: Republica and Axios and a few others, like we like
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: four oh four media, but in really do have to
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: be careful.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: We'll swing, We'll swing correctly a couple of times. But
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: it's yeah, this is something that makes me wonder. You know,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: have we are Have we arrived full circle at the
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: heyday of the town crier. That always seemed like a
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: cool job to me, especially you know, like now we
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: have not like town criers under royal license. We're patent
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: from the monarch. We have the town criers of TikTok.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: But I do love the idea. This is just a
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: pitch if any of you invents time travel, what if
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: we go back in time and bill ourselves as independent
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: town criers broad like on a circuit. Just walk in,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: do a vibe check, and start shouting what we think
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: is the news or just.
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: A counterpoint, something more controversial. Put the established town crier
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: out of business because ours is more salacious.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll call it. Actually, I feel.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: Like there are people you can find standing on the
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: street yelling their controversial opinions. I feel like you actually
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: can find people doing that. Maybe they're time travelers.
• 34:24
  Speaker 6: Maybe those people are doing Maybe.
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: I think all of Lizzie's advice is just like so
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: smart and dead on. And I would also add you
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: don't need to post it all unless you were an
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: elected official, I guess, or you just like screenshots and
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: the internet are forever and like, you don't need to
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: weigh in on everything. No one is waiting for your
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: take on every snow One's like, I can't believe I
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: can't wait to see what Greg says about this?
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Where is joh rule Dane When I.
• 34:53
  Speaker 6: Talk about this all the time? Shutting up is always
• 34:55
  Speaker 6: an option.
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: Shutting up is always an option. And you know what,
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: if you find something really interesting and really cool that
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: you do want to share, I would even say the
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: best thing to do is way a beat, get coffee
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: with a friend, meet a friend in person, and say
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: it to their face, because then if they say that
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: sounds fake and that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard,
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: you can be like, oh, maybe you're right, let me
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: just check on that. And also that you got to
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: get coffee in person.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: With a friend.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like this great advice. Yeah, this is fantastic
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: insight because it's there are some solid arguments that I
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: don't think are one hundred percent proven, but there are
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: solid arguments from a couple of different fields that maybe
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: it's a hardware problem for the human brain at this point,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: like not having evolved to digest all of this information
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: at this unceasing pace. So it sounds like the idea
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: of not even totally going full off the grid or
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: lud eyed or whatever, but just giving your yourself a
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: second to take a beat with that. Again, fantastic insight.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: As Noel's saying, do you all have eddy moments? Let's see,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: I don't want to put anybody in the spot here,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: but do you all have any moments where you thought
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: hot Dog I was taking in? I totally believe this
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: is true. Okay, Yeah, we got a hard nod from
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Lizzie on that one too.
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: I think everyone does.
• 36:18
  Speaker 6: I yeah, I mean, I've, I've.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to think of an actual hoax example. The
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: only example that's coming to mind is an example of
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: just like bad reporting.
• 36:27
  Speaker 6: Okay, but.
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: Oh well, I remember, I know, I know a girl
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: who had a ticket to Firefest and then but she
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: didn't end up knowing. And this sounds like I'm lying
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: to make myself sound good, but I swear I'm not.
• 36:43
  Speaker 6: I remember a girl who had.
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: To take it to Firefest, and she was telling me
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: about all of the accommodations and then how much it costs,
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: and it didn't cost very much, and I remember being like,
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: you're gonna get sold into white slavery. Like yeah, I
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: remember being like not that I knew that it was
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: a scam, but I was like, this sounds like freaking
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: sus Like I was like, this is that sounds too
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: good to be true? And then she ended up like
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: she couldn't go, and she like sold her ticket and
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: then yeah, bullet dodged. And then when it happened the
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: like we went back into the office like after the weekend.
• 37:12
  Speaker 6: I was like, aren't you so glad you didn't go?
• 37:14
  Speaker 6: She was like, I'm so glad I didn't go. So
• 37:16
  Speaker 6: that's what.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: Do you know anyone that bought a ticket to Firefest too?
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: No?
• 37:21
  Speaker 6: I don't think I do.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: And maybe that's.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Worth talking about real quick, because when you have something
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: like Firefest, it's such a scam that's debunked. There's two
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: documentaries about it, and yet people still bought tickets to
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: the second one.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: What where does that come from. Is it just pure ignorance?
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Is bliss?
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: Is it just like I think it's I don't think
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: it's even ignorance. I think it's knowing the hoax and
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: thinking like, oh, this will be fun, I'll like make
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: content about it. I think those people know exactly what
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: they're getting into, and I think kind of their hope,
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: almost hoping it's going to be a disaster.
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: I also think this is an example of Like I
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: think this is a great.
• 37:57
  Speaker 6: Example of the amplification effect.
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: I don't know if that's the real term, but like
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: I think Firefest two probably sold about five.
• 38:05
  Speaker 6: Tickets, five actual I don't think this is a real thing,
• 38:09
  Speaker 6: like like.
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: Not the second round of controversy when the trailer came out,
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: but the first round of controversy when Halle Bailey was
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: announced as the Little Mermaid, Like there were a few
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: racist comments and then everybody picked it up and it
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: became like a thing.
• 38:33
  Speaker 6: Like there's a lot of manufactured.
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: Controversies on the Internet where if you actually trace it back,
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: it's like three people are mad about.
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: This one of the worst, one of the worst developments
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: to the Internet, And just like this need for so
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: much content just to like be in the content now
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: is people report three tweets as a news story.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: Yes, oh god, no, that's a good It doesn't get
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: talked about enough, honestly, I mean it's so true.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Ever one of my tweets. That's the part that's the
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: worst part of it.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's not that much different than like, you know,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: if we see a bad review for the podcast or
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: somebody says something mean about me personally, then I just
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: assume that's what everybody thinks.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: It's just so easy to like believe that one opinion
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: represents something so much larger, just because of how everything
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: kind of in a certain way is equal on the internet. Like,
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: if it's something that you see, then it's there and
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: it has the same weight as any other piece of
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: content that you might run across.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're not.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: Careful or like I remember, like during the Eras tour,
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: they were listing like resellers were listing floor seats for
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: like twenty thousand dollars or something, and there were all
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: of these sites being like, can you believe people are
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: paying twenty thousand dollars to see Taylor Swift?
• 39:47
  Speaker 7: I was like, no, the tickets are available that means.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: They're not sell it, like exactly.
• 39:53
  Speaker 8: I was like, how do you know anyone has paid
• 39:55
  Speaker 8: that much? I was just like that you made that up.
• 39:58
  Speaker 8: That is a made up price. That's a made up price.
• 40:01
  Speaker 8: Someone made that up, and you have now made up
• 40:04
  Speaker 8: that there is a customer for it.
• 40:06
  Speaker 6: This is made up. You made that up for your article.
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: You made up this consumer to get mad at who
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: is paying a made up price.
• 40:14
  Speaker 6: This is a mini hoax. This is a many hoax
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: that this is happening.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: This is a little, tiny, little hoax just so that
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: you can have something to write about.
• 40:24
  Speaker 6: Not like I don't know that anyone actually about tickets
• 40:28
  Speaker 6: to that.
• 40:28
  Speaker 5: It almost is a thing where you see something like
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: on a web page that's like so imminently clickable, where
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: you're just like, well, I have to see that. It's
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: the classic rule of thumb that if a headline is
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: a question, the answer is no.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: No, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: This is is gen Z killing the stock market?
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: No, no, right exactly, And that happens often with celebrity news.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Another one that I think works very well in political
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: reporting is when you see words like ASTs or slabs
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: or you know, basically capals old Batman style. That usually
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: means that someone had a quote that was taken out
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: of context where they were like, yeah, I guess hypothetically,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: if this person you're talking about is microwaving camels, I
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: think it would be a bad thing, And they're like,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: how dare you, senator? But this maybe speaks to again
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: that that requirement of a cadence right, of a publishing
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: cadence right, we have to have the news, and if
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the news does not exist, we have to therefore make
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: the news.
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: I have I have experienced the moment of being taken
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: out of context in a way that made me seem
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: incredibly lame. Where I was quoted in an article for
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: an outlet I will not name. I had made a
• 41:50
  Speaker 5: TikTok about breastfeeding my son and how much time it
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: takes and like people don't realize that, like feeding your
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: children with your body takes up so much on and
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: was giving an interview about it, and I said something
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: to the effect of like, when I'm doing it, I
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: spend a lot of time on my phone, which is
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: great for my brain. And I was so obviously in
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: my mind being sarcastic, and they wrote it up as
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: if she was like, well, lucky for her, like she
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: is spending a lot of time on her phone, which
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: Schwartz claims is great for her brain. And I was like,
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: oh no, and it was just so miscommunicated that then
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: seeing it in print, just felt this is like such
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: a tiny example, but it's so easy for something just
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: to like it wasn't malicious. It was just sort of
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: like you flippant and it just happened lay a little lazy,
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: a little just a misunderstanding. It just is a minor
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: example of just how easy it is for things to
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: be misconstrued.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Especially true when we're encountering something written in print about
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: something that was conveyed through audio or video, right, because
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: we don't really gosh, you know what, No, we should
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: do a history of strange punctually marks, because we don't
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: really use like the Entero bang or you know, some
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: kind of mark that says.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Clearly and I would die on that. A period and
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: a text is aggressive and I will die on it.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: He'll disagree in lack of a period also seems pretty cold.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: Where do you all fall on that issue? Period at
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: the end of a text aggressive?
• 43:20
  Speaker 5: It depends if it's one, if it's one word. It
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: depends on what the text is. If it says, if
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: it's fine, period aggressive, not fine, it'd full sentence.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: I agree with that because then you have some nuanced
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: wild actually communicate a vibe.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: But if it's a word and a period, not a fan.
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: I also subscribe to the belief that a text is
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: not writing it is written speech.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I like that. But also we could argue there
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: are a lot of people in the audience tonight who
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: would say fine without a period is likewise not the
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: coolest thing.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Fine isn't general. Fine Also don't like.
• 43:57
  Speaker 6: Sounds good?
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: Good seems dismissing.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I do a dash. I like to do a dash.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: If it's not a sentence, Yeah, I'll just do a dash.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: I'll be like, that sounds great.
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: If someone ever texts it is what it is period?
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: That person.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Was that was that Will Pearson, I'll find it.
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: I'm just saying, in context of period can absolutely be devastating.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: All this to say, bring back the Interra Bank in
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: Terra Bang, I'm telling you it's going to be a winner.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: We're going to do an episode.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Described as this character, this forgotten character.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: So have you ever seen a question mark and an
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: exclamation mark and thought they should hook up.
• 44:42
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: It's basically that uh. But there there are so many more,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: not just punctuation marks, but there are so many more
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Hoaxes that are out there in the past and the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: present and probably the future. Not my best segue, but
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: here we're going. We can't thank you all enough for
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: making this show. And as you can tell, we're big
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: fans of your previous writing, your unrelated shows. Right Noble Blood,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Reductress Reductress mc sweeney's, by the way, one of my
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: dream hangout spots where can people learn more about Eule's work,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: not just on Hoax, but on your various other endeavors.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: I feel like the easiest place to find both of
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: us is Instagram, because, as as Dana mentioned, we're both
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: staring at our phones way too much, so we're probably
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: just going to be throwing up links on there. I'm
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Lizzie Logan with five z's, so just l i zz
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: zz ze l O g A N.
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: I'm Dana Schwartz, also with a lot of ease, but
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: my z's are at the end schwartz zz. Listen to
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: Noble Blood and listen to Hoax, and if you like it,
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: Please leave a rating, review, subscribe. It's a new podcast,
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: getting getting new listeners, listening, spreading the word. It means
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: a lot.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: And if you like our show, you are gonna love this.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: When folks, we are not blowing smoke. This is this
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: us saying hoax is amazing? Is itself not a hoax?
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: So we want to be clear. And someone had to
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: say something like that towards the end of the show. Hell,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: you love it too, Kui, Thank you so much, Lizzie,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: thank you so much. Data. We are no we have
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: other people to think. We'll do it real quick. Super
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: producer mister Max Williams, Alex Williams who composed our track.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: Chris Prociotis and Jeff Goates here and Spirit, Jonathan Strickland, Bequister,
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: aj Bahamas, Jacobs The.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Bustler and of course Noel. Thanks to you. Tune in
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: in the next few days, folks. As the Cinnamte said,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: we have such wonders to show you.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.