Hoax! With Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan

Summary

Ridiculous History - Episode Summary: "Hoax! With Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan"

Release Date: August 14, 2025

In this engaging episode of Ridiculous History, hosts Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown welcome special guests Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan, the dynamic duo behind the new podcast Hoax!. The episode delves deep into the fascinating world of historical and modern hoaxes, exploring their impacts, underlying psychology, and the evolving landscape influenced by technology.

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1. Introduction to Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan

The episode begins with Ben introducing Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan, highlighting their respective backgrounds. Dana, known for her scripted history podcast Noble Blood, shares her fascination with historical hoaxes and her collaboration with Lizzie.

Dana Schwartz [04:34]:

“I've always been fascinated by historical hoaxes…why people believe things that aren't true…”

Lizzie complements Dana’s enthusiasm, setting the stage for a comprehensive discussion on hoaxes.

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2. The Nature of Hoaxes: Then and Now

Dana and Lizzie discuss the enduring nature of hoaxes, comparing historical instances to contemporary scams, especially in the age of AI and social media.

Lizzie Logan [06:15]:

“People were not more stupid in the past… there were always skeptics even then.”

Noel Brown [07:13]:

“Everything we hear about is a hoax if it’s unflattering... AI makes it even harder to sort things out.”

They emphasize that while technology has transformed the methods of deception, the fundamental human susceptibility to believe in hoaxes remains unchanged.

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3. The Cottingly Fairies Hoax

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the Cottingly Fairies hoax of 1917, where two young girls claimed to photograph fairies, captivating figures like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Dana Schwartz [09:20]:

“He believed it because he wanted to believe it… Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a spiritualist.”

Max Williams [10:46]:

“The photos look fake as hell… they don’t look real at all.”

The hosts dissect why even intelligent individuals like Doyle fell for such hoaxes, highlighting the power of desire and confirmation bias in perpetuating false beliefs.

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4. The English Mercury: The Oldest Newspaper Hoax

Dana introduces the story of the English Mercury, a fabricated newspaper from 1588 mistakenly recognized as the oldest newspaper in the world.

Dana Schwartz [21:27]:

“It’s the original fake news… a creative writing exercise that wasn’t meant to deceive.”

Max Williams [24:10]:

“In fifth grade, we made ancient newspapers… Imagine someone finding our Giza Gazette!”

This anecdote underscores how benign deceptions can persist in historical records, often misinterpreted by later generations.

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5. P.T. Barnum: The Master Hoaxer

The conversation shifts to the notorious showman P.T. Barnum, exploring his most impactful hoaxes and their lasting legacy.

Dana Schwartz [26:40]:

“Barnum’s shamelessness in lying for profit… his hoax about George Washington’s cherry tree.”

Max Williams [27:56]:

“His own legacy is a hoax, as depicted in The Greatest Showman.”

They critique Barnum’s manipulative tactics, contrasting his profit-driven hoaxes with more whimsical historical deceptions.

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6. Hoaxes vs. Scams: Understanding the Difference

Dana and Lizzie clarify the distinction between hoaxes and scams, emphasizing intent and impact.

Dana Schwartz [29:05]:

“Hoaxes have an element of whimsy… scams are purely exploitative for profit.”

This differentiation helps listeners understand the varied motivations behind deceitful acts throughout history.

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7. The Impact of AI on Modern Hoaxes

The hosts explore how artificial intelligence complicates the landscape of deception, making hoaxes more sophisticated and harder to detect.

Noel Brown [07:53]:

“AI capitalizes on the urge to be first with news… making critical thinking more crucial than ever.”

Dana Schwartz [09:19]:

“Fewer mechanisms for immediate fact-checking made past hoaxes easier… but today, AI changes everything.”

The discussion highlights the urgent need for enhanced critical thinking skills in the digital age to combat increasingly convincing fabrications.

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8. Practical Advice: Navigating Hoaxes and Misinformation

Ben, Noel, Dana, and Lizzie offer actionable strategies for listeners to discern truth from deception in the information-saturated modern world.

Dana Schwartz [44:28]:

“Don't need to post immediately… wait a beat, verify with friends in person.”

Max Williams [40:30]:

“Keep an open mind… give journalists time to fact-check before forming judgments.”

These tips encourage a mindful approach to consuming and sharing information, advocating for patience and verification over impulsive reactions.

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9. Personal Anecdotes: Falling for Hoaxes

The guests share personal experiences where they believed or were influenced by hoaxes, illustrating the universal vulnerability to deception.

Max Williams [46:37]:

“A girl had a ticket to Fyre Fest and sold it before the disaster… I dodged a bullet.”

Dana Schwartz [52:47]:

“Miscommunication in an interview made me seem overly reliant on my phone… a minor yet telling example.”

These stories humanize the discussion, showing that even knowledgeable individuals can fall prey to well-crafted hoaxes.

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10. Closing Thoughts: The Future of Hoaxes

In their concluding remarks, Dana and Lizzie reflect on the ongoing battle between truth and deception, especially as technology continues to evolve.

Dana Schwartz [35:40]:

“Critical thinking is dead in a ditch… AI is taking us further down the rabbit hole.”

Noel Brown [35:20]:

“We might be getting a little dumber now… instant information isn’t always good.”

The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to cultivate skepticism and resilience against the ever-present threats of misinformation.

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Notable Quotes

• Dana Schwartz [09:20]:
  “He believed it because he wanted to believe it… Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a spiritualist.”

• Max Williams [10:46]:
  “The photos look fake as hell… they don’t look real at all.”

• Dana Schwartz [44:28]:
  “Don't need to post immediately… wait a beat, verify with friends in person.”

• Noel Brown [35:20]:
  “We might be getting a little dumber now… instant information isn’t always good.”

---

Final Remarks

Ben and Noel express their gratitude to Dana and Lizzie, encouraging listeners to explore their new podcast Hoax! and continue engaging with Ridiculous History for more enthralling tales from the annals of human civilization.

Ben Bowlin [56:38]:

“We love it too. Kind. Thank you so much, Lizzie. Thank you so much, Dana.”

Noel Brown [56:47]:

“We'll see you next time, folks.”

---

For more intriguing stories and historical insights, tune into Ridiculous History on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Ben Bollen]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning in. And let's hear it for the man, the myth, the legend, our super producer, Mr. Max Williams. Max Williams. And who is that cheering on our super producer? Why, it's none other than Mr. Noel Brown. Noel.

[Dana Schwartz]

Me.

[Ben Bollen]

How we feeling?

[Noel Brown]

I'm all right. How are you?

[Ben Bollen]

I'm okay, man. I'm okay. Got a lot of.

[Noel Brown]

I had this like, run of dreary weather here in Atlanta and it finally broke and that bums me out. So I'm feeling pretty great today.

[Ben Bollen]

Really, I, you know, I. Oh, I'm Ben Bollen, by the way.

[Noel Brown]

It's you, Ben.

[Ben Bollen]

I feel weird, Noel, because I had just perfected newest update on my rainy day playlist, you know what I mean? And I didn't do it in time for the weather.

[Noel Brown]

What are we talking here? Are we talking like chill hip hop beast to study to or like emperor.

[Ben Bollen]

I love a God, my love a Godspeed. Got it back into some Shirley Manson stuff. We'd love to hear your garbage. Uhhuh. Yes, yes. Garbage.

[Noel Brown]

She's a pistol. She's a real firecracker. I like Sher.

[Ben Bollen]

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 legendary Lizzie Logan and Dana Schwartz and Noel, we have a special surprise for our ridiculous historians.

[Noel Brown]

Is it true? Are they here? They're here, aren't they?

[Ben Bollen]

They're here. This part's not here.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, my gosh.

[Ben Bollen]

They're here. Welcome to the show.

[Noel Brown]

So happy to have y'.

[Ben Bollen]

All.

[Lizzie Logan]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Manny]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Noel Brown]

Only at Smoothie King.

[Manny]

Why are TSA rules so confusing?

[Ben Bollen]

You got a hoodie on. Take it off.

[Manny]

I'm Manny. I'm Noah.

[Noel Brown]

This is Devin.

[Manny]

And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called no such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming at me? I can't expect what to do now if the rule was the same go off on me. I deserve it, you know. Lock him up. Listen to no Such Thing thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. No such thing.

[Az Fudd]

Hey guys, it's Az Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist, you may know me as an NCAA national champion. You may even know me as the people's princess. Every week on my new podcast, Fut around and find out, I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture basketball and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. Listen to Fut around and find out. A production of iHeart Women's Sports in partnership with Unan Media on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bollen]

Every case that is a cold case.

[Max Williams]

That has DNA right now in a.

[Lizzie Logan]

Backlog will be identified in our lifetime on the new podcast, America's Crime Lab. Every case has a story to tell and the DNA holds the truth.

[Noel Brown]

He never thought he was going to get caught.

[Ben Bollen]

And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases.

[Lizzie Logan]

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bollen]

Let's get right into it. First, tell us a little bit about your background. I think you're gonna 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?

[Max Williams]

Lizzie, I was pointing at you, Dana, as this podcast was your idea.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 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 historical hoaxes. 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, about this idea and we noodled it together. And a year and change later, here we are.

[Max Williams]

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 Theranos Beat, like, from the beginning, I was fascinated by that. Like, fraudsters, Anna Delvey. Like, anything of that that's in the news, I am, like, 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. Nobody. You can't trust anybody anymore. It's like, oh, you could actually never trust anybody. This has actually been going on since the dawn of lying.

[Noel Brown]

Well, it couldn't come at a more appropriate time because it would seem that just about everything we hear about is a hoax. If it is unflattering to certain folks in government these days. Like, too political about it. I just had to put it out there. Had to put it out there.

[Dana Schwartz]

Very easy to call things hoaxes. And I think, like, unfortunately, at this moment, when AI and deepfakes 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 1917 saying that they took pictures of fairies. It seems silly, but the bigger questions about that, I think, are unfortunately relevant today. Just scrolling through Facebook and you see these AI slop stories that get thousands of likes about someone being like, no one came to my birthday party. And it's like a cartoon of 120-year-old woman.

[Noel Brown]

Well, it's like, I saw one today where it was Leonardo DiCaprio covers his face with a cap at Jeff Bezos wedding. And it's such an unremarkable and likely thing to have happened that you look at it and you're like, yeah, sure, that happened. But then I looked down at the comments. It's like, this is totally AI it was based on a still image that was then AI ified to, like, animate. And, you know, we're also willing, maybe even want to 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.

[Ben Bollen]

We want to be Promethean right in the attention economy. Where are my likes? Where are my reposts? This is something that we've explored often. Lizzie And Dana, in another show we do called Stuff They Don't Want yout To Know. And I think one thing that really interests Noel, myself and Max and all our fellow audience members tonight is the idea that a lot of people, especially before AI slop, a lot of us assumed that it was just easier to pull off a success. Successful hoax in ages past. Right. Just like, you know, every true crime show says, well, you know, it was just easier to murder people back then. So do we think that it was easier to pull off a successful hoax in the past or has AI changed that conversation entirely?

[Noel Brown]

And that lack of critical thinking and that kind of like, you know, knee jerk reaction.

[Dana Schwartz]

I'm going to say yes and no. 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 about the Romanoff princess from the animated film. From the animated film. And as we know, it was a happy ending and she lived happily ever after.

[Ben Bollen]

Yes.

[Dana Schwartz]

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, 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 talk about these cottingly fairies. And it was notable because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes story, is someone you would imagine to be a very intelligent man, good at deductive reasoning, was a big defender of these fairy photographs.

[Noel Brown]

We have talked about this particular story on both ridiculous history and stuff they don't want you to know. Maybe just remind us a little bit. It was like the early, very, very well done Photoshop job that had people convinced that someone had photographed these magical creatures.

[Max Williams]

Which I just want to go on record and say, if you haven't looked these up.

[Noel Brown]

So two, they're nuts.

[Max Williams]

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 people need to understand. Like, they don't. They just. They don't look Real at all.

[Dana Schwartz]

At all.

[Max Williams]

Like the, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

He, I mean, we get into it in the episode, but he believed it because he wanted to believe it. He was a spiritualist who. 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 knowing that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has legs, I believe these girls pulled his.

[Noel Brown]

Like people were just calling them. They're just cutouts. They look, 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.

[Max Williams]

They 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

If you don't know what double exposure is.

[Max Williams]

Yeah. This is not like buzzfeed creepy photos where you're like, oh, my God, what is that? This is not that. This is a fake looking photo.

[Noel Brown]

They do not exist in the same space clearly upon.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, really, what they did was they just. One of the girls just drew fairies and pinned them around them with hat pins. So the photo itself wasn't manipul, 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.

[Ben Bollen]

And they're nice drawings, to be fair.

[Noel Brown]

We don't want, we don't want to kill that.

[Ben Bollen]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

The girl was 16. This is, is like a really creative art project that she was doing with her cousin.

[Ben Bollen]

And how did the, how did the. I, I don't want to call them culprits. How did the. Let's use that. Those little culprits, those little scamps. Okay. How did, how did the. How did the scamps deal with this? It became, you know, a subject of conversation on the level of a meme going viral. So without spoiling too much of the episode, could you tell us how Those kids dealt with the fame and the backlash and the controversy.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, the truth is, I think they were both kind of mortified. They were humiliated at school. They were bullied. Arthur Conan Doyle originally uses a pseudonym when he publishes the story about these photographs in the Strand, but everyone still knows it's them. The girls recount.

[Max Williams]

Like, it's photos of them. Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Cause it's photos of them. The girls both recount being mocked at school. The older girl, Elsie, was fired from her job because people kept calling and trying to. Reporters kept calling and coming there. So it was very challenging. And, I mean, spoiler alert. No spoiler alert. It was a hoax. But both girls agreed that they would not publicly admit that the photos were faked until Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mr. Gardner, who is another big proponent of the photographs, were both dead.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, geez. Okay, okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

They were embarrassed.

[Noel Brown]

I think the interesting part about this, to me, and this maybe comes into play with a lot of hoaxes, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sure, yeah.

[Ben Bollen]

Sell 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 quote unquote fairies were wearing very modern clothing and had very modern hairdos. And he said, well, they're thought figures. Fairies are mythical creatures that are sort of conjured from your imagination. So, of course, their appearance changes over time or counterexplanation. The reason they look like regular, like fairies in a. In a storybook. Isn't that, you know, strange that they look like just exactly how people imagine fairies look? Well, maybe people 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, poke in the argument.

[Noel Brown]

Which is so un Sherlock Holmesian 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.

[Ben Bollen]

It's not very handy.

[Max Williams]

Once people have 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 really about the thing we're arguing about. It's, 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 ways that's hard for her to swallow, that she is a person who could be wrong?

[Dana Schwartz]

Especially if people have been calling me a genius because I wrote Sherlock Holmes books.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, exactly. Not very Hounds of Baskerville of you, bro. But this, this leads us to I, 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 or encountering new information. There's a big sunk cost fallacy in that kind of thing.

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[Manny]

A foot washed up.

[Ben Bollen]

A shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was.

[Dana Schwartz]

Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

[Lizzie Logan]

These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case.

[Max Williams]

That has DNA right now in a.

[Lizzie Logan]

Backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA using New scientific tools. They're finding clues in evidence so tiny, you might just miss it. Peanut.

[Noel Brown]

I never thought he was going to get caught.

[Ben Bollen]

And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha.

[Lizzie Logan]

On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Manny]

Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this.

[Dana Schwartz]

Attention, passengers. The pilot is having an emergency, and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane.

[Manny]

Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying, like, okay, pull this. Until this. Pull that, Turn this. It's just. I can do my eyes closed. I'm Manny.

[Noel Brown]

I'm Noah.

[Az Fudd]

This is Devin.

[Manny]

And on our new show, no so such thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence.

[Ben Bollen]

Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise.

[Manny]

And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the run, right? I'm looking at this thing.

[Ben Bollen]

See?

[Manny]

Listen to no such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Az Fudd]

Hey, guys, it's Az Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion and recent most outstanding player. You may even know me as the people's princess. But now you're also gonna know me as your favorite host every week on my new podcast, futaround, and find out. I'll give you an inside look at everything happening in my crazy life as I try to balance it all, from my travels across the globe to preparing for another run at the natty with my UConn hobby huskies, to just trying to make it to my midterms on time. You'll get the inside scoop on everything. I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture basketball and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. You'll even get to have some fun with the Fudd family. So if you follow me on social media or watch me on tv, you may think you know me, but this show is the only place where you can really Fut around and Find Out. Listen to Fut around and Find Out. A production of I Heart Women's Sports in partnership with Unanimous media on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bollen]

And if we stick with the world of print for. 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 first newspaper in.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, yeah. This became my own sort of mini personal crusade, because if you believe it, this is a hoax that still to this day, around the world, museums and websites 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 to the British Museum in sort of a cache of papers in 1776 by this man named Thomas Birch. And he donated all these papers that used to belong to the 2nd Earl of Hardwicke. So these papers are just in the museum for a good long time when a researcher named George Chalmers finds them and is astonished because in these papers is this newspaper from 1588 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. If this English Mercury, this discovery, is now the oldest newspaper in the world, the actual oldest newspaper in the world is a German newspaper from 1594, 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 Tuesday newspaper. It's about the Spanish Armada. And it's proving to this British person reading it that Englishmen have invented the newspaper. We thought it was German, but it was us. Us. And so they're so excited. And for almost half a century, people just take that as fact. And it's not until 45 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, there's an original manuscript version of it that's in the handwriting of the 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, 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 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. And his friend just did this as a writing exercise, like a quote unquote literary game. And they weren't even trying to. To hoax anyone, to be fair. They just donated it among all their papers. And I find that very charming. And still to this day, you will see the English Mercury referenced as a real historical newspaper from 1588, when it is not.

[Max Williams]

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 5A and 5B, 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 for their newspaper. And we. I forget which class was which, but one was called the Giza Gazette and the other was Pyramid Paparazzi.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, my God.

[Max Williams]

But it was like 100%. If 1,000 years from now, someone then found what we did and was like, wow. Like, did you know ancient Egypt had newspapers? One was called the Giza Gazette and the other was called Pyramid Paparazzi. And then they were like, oh, this is not written in hieroglyphics. This is actually not from ancient Egypt.

[Noel Brown]

It was in papyrus font.

[Dana Schwartz]

Did you stain any of it with, like, tea bags to make it look like. Oh, sure someone did.

[Max Williams]

I'm sure someone did.

[Noel Brown]

There you go. Teabags and papyrus font. Done.

[Max Williams]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Ben Bollen]

I also notice, Lizzie, this is a bit apropos. You have a poster of the Pretenders.

[Max Williams]

Oh, yes, right.

[Dana Schwartz]

Wow.

[Max Williams]

A hoaxy band. A very hoaxy rock band. And they're pretending.

[Ben Bollen]

Think about it, folks.

[Max Williams]

Think about it.

[Ben Bollen]

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 grift, but more this idea of something affirming a concept of English nationalism and exceptionalism. So we also 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? You know him, we gotta get a sound cue for him. P.T. barnum. Uh oh, we're doing some dances here.

[Dana Schwartz]

He is sort of the greatest showman himself.

[Noel Brown]

I was about to say. This is the greatest show. What a musical.

[Ben Bollen]

So what makes our. What makes our buddy ptb, the notorious ptb, consider the ultimate hoax?

[Noel Brown]

Not the best, dude.

[Dana Schwartz]

There was a certain shamelessness to him. I think that a Lot of the hoaxes that we like to cover on the show have a general sweetness. And even that example of the English Mercury, it was like a fun writing game between two buddies. They weren't even trying to fool anyone. They were having fun. And that was sort of also at the heart of the cottingly fairies was just these two young girls. What I find so disquieting about P.T. barnum is the shamelessness with which he was lying 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 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 1800s had a black woman that he traveled with who was very, very old, who he had claim falsely to be the hundred and something year old woman who had helped raise George Washington. Not true.

[Max Williams]

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 is completely real.

[Ben Bollen]

Rosy outlook.

[Max Williams]

Yeah, I. I also would just say, like, our podcast is a lot about like, sweet or innocuous hoaxes, which 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, that's less a statement on the nature of hoaxes and more about like, like Dana 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, 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 taken advantage of. It's just you won't find that on our podcast because our podcast is fun.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, there we go. My favorite hoaxes are the ones we're set where you leave and you just say, well, everyone had a good time. Wasn't that sweet?

[Max Williams]

That was interesting. That was interesting. That was crazy.

[Ben Bollen]

What a fun ride. 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 don't want every story to end up feeling like you just accidentally watched Requiem for a Dream or something.

[Dana Schwartz]

You want to watch Requiem for a Dream consensually Ideally, I will also say, and only once I'll also say, I think we've sort of thought about the difference between triggered. No, 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. Where something about a hoax is more performative and also has an element of whimsy to it. It's a I know it's when I see it thing. The difference.

[Ben Bollen]

There we go. I like that because we, we've sometimes discussed over the years on this show, we've discussed heist and hoaxes that we really enjoyed. And I, I think we're on the same page here because sometimes our favorite ones are going to end up being someone who just wanted a 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 in Arthur's Court. Right. Connecticut Yankee in 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 say they're a long lost prince or what have you to some group of people and then those people just believe them and fast forward a few decades and this guy's like, yeah, maybe. I mean, maybe I am.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, I'm glad that you brought up King Arthur because 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. I'm so sorry to everyone. Wait, 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 as propaganda to bolster people's reputations or to serve a political purpose. This king Henry vii, the dad of Henry VIII 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 he was a worthy king, he said on his Welsh side that his family went back to, 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.

[Ben Bollen]

Now was the popular King Arthur legend. Is this made from whole cloth or is it an amalgamation of other previous royals?

[Dana Schwartz]

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 Brittonum in 828 that mentions Arthur not as a king, but as a military leader who fought off the invading Saxons and beat hundreds of Saxons in the this one battle. But even in that chronicle, Arthur a not a king doesn't have any of the Guinevere Lancelot court of the round table.

[Max Williams]

At a round table. Maybe it's anyone ever sits at a round table.

[Ben Bollen]

You know what technology at that point.

[Dana Schwartz]

They probably were making tables round. I'm hoping so maybe we're there. But even in that chronicle from 828 by that point, that chronicle has a lot of of flavors of mythology where it's like they mention that this General Arthur killed 900 people single handedly in a battle. They mention that his dog had 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 one of the pieces of the Arthur myth that stood the test of time. And there was another where it's like the grave of Arthur's son. If you measure it, every time you measure it it's a different length. So Even back in 800, the closest we can come to Arthur or a quote unquote real Arthur is a general who is only mentioned in this chronicle, not really mentioned by other contemporary sources, not mentioned by other chroniclers who mention this battle. So it's a pretty hazy source. And even then he was a mythological.

[Noel Brown]

Figure, but then it wouldn't have been until after the fact they referred to them as Arthurian legend. Right. Like that was sort of like, yeah.

[Max Williams]

Doesn'T the myth of the Holy Grail come from Arthurian legend?

[Dana Schwartz]

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 later in.

[Ben Bollen]

Literature 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 this is something that a lot of us would hear and think, oh gosh, like we were saying earlier, look 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 way.

[Noel Brown]

Well, I mean, if anything, we're maybe a little bit dumber now than people were back then because of the 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 ChatGPT are doing to us even for further down the rabbit hole as far as that's concerned.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, critical thinking found dead in a ditch.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Can't wait for the AI pictures of that one on Facebook.

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[Ben Bollen]

A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it.

[Manny]

They had no idea who it was.

[Dana Schwartz]

Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

[Lizzie Logan]

These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case.

[Dana Schwartz]

That has DNA right now in a.

[Lizzie Logan]

Backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA using new scientific tools. They're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.

[Noel Brown]

He never thought he was going to.

[Ben Bollen]

Get caught and I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha.

[Lizzie Logan]

On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Manny]

Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this.

[Dana Schwartz]

Attention, passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane.

[Manny]

Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying, like, okay, pull this. Until this, pull that, turn this. It's just. I can do my eyes closed.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, exactly.

[Manny]

Hey, I'm Manny.

[Noel Brown]

I'm Noah.

[Az Fudd]

This is Devin.

[Manny]

And on our new show, no Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence.

[Ben Bollen]

Those who lack expertise, lack the expertise. They need to recognize that they lack expertise.

[Manny]

And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the Runway. I'm looking at this thing.

[Ben Bollen]

See?

[Manny]

Listen to no Such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Ben Bollen]

With this, though, we wanna. We wanna ask you all a couple of these larger questions with. With hoaxing, with sussing out the fact from the fiction, right? And the truth from the proof from the. 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 that we see on the Internet?

[Max Williams]

Oh, I always just say, like, keep an open mind. 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. You can take a week, you can take a month. You can take, like, 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 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 real or fake. You can wait for the dust to settle. You can wait for 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, you know, like, I'm not to take it to a super serious thing, but like, there will be like, like the hours after, like a mass shooting or like a earthquake or 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, like, yo, like, give them a week to get their story straight. Like, give the journalists some time to do their jobs, then come back to it in a couple 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, I knock on wood, still have some trust that some last dregs of the free press exist. 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, this tiktoker said. And they said that they were there. So Then that's true. But then that proved not to be true. And that means that you can't trust. And it's like, give it a day, shout out.

[Ben Bollen]

ProPublica, by the way.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, we were just talking about that on stuff they don't want you to know. Matt who? You know, Matt Frederick brought us a story about how many, like, typos and fact checking errors are 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 404 Media, but you really do have to be careful.

[Ben Bollen]

We'll swing. We'll swing correctly a couple times, but it's. Yeah. This is something that makes me wonder, you know, 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 or patent 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? We're like, on a circuit. We just walk in, do a vibe check, and start shouting what we think is the news.

[Dana Schwartz]

Or just a counterpoint, something more controversial. Put the. Put the established town crier out of business because ours is more salacious.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, we'll call it.

[Max Williams]

Actually, I feel 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. Maybe those people are time travelers.

[Dana Schwartz]

Maybe.

[Ben Bollen]

Maybe.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 at all unless you're 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. You're. No one is waiting for your take on every. No one's. Like, I can't believe. I can't wait to see what Greg says about this.

[Ben Bollen]

Right. Where is Ja Rule?

[Max Williams]

Dana and I talk about this all the time. Shutting up is always an option.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 wait. 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, you got to have coffee in person with a friend.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, I like that.

[Noel Brown]

This is great advice.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, this is fantastic insight, because there are some solid arguments that I don't think are 100% 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 at this unceasing pace. So it sounds like the idea of not even totally going full off the grid or Luddite or whatever, but just giving yourself a second to take a beat with that. Again, fantastic insight, as Noel said. Do you all have any moments? Let's see. I don't want to put anybody on the spot here, but do you all have any moments where you thought, hot dog, I was taken in? I totally believe this is true. Okay, we got a hard nod from Lizzie on that one, too.

[Dana Schwartz]

I think everyone does.

[Max Williams]

I. Yeah, I mean, I've. I've. 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.

[Ben Bollen]

Okay.

[Max Williams]

But. Oh, well, I remember. I know. I know a girl who had a ticket to Fyre Fest, and then.

[Noel Brown]

But she didn't end up going, oh, yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

And this.

[Max Williams]

This sounds like I'm lying to make myself sound good, but I swear I'm not. I remember a girl who had a ticket to Fyre Fest, and she was telling me about all of the accommodations and then how much it cost, and it didn't cost very much. And I remember being like, you're gonna get sold into white slavery. Like, I remember being like, not that I knew that it was a scam, but I was like, this sounds like 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 then I. Bullet dodged. Yeah, bullet dodged. And then when it happened, the. Like, we went back into the office, like, after the weekend, 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.

[Noel Brown]

But do you know anyone that bought a ticket to Fyre Fest 2?

[Dana Schwartz]

No, I don't think I do.

[Noel Brown]

And Maybe that's worth talking about real quick, because when you have something like Fyre Fest, it's such a scam that's debunked. There's two documentaries about it, and yet people still bought tickets to the second. Second one. Where does that come from? Is it just pure ignorance is bliss? Is it just like giving a second chance?

[Dana Schwartz]

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 they're almost hoping it's going to be a disaster.

[Max Williams]

I also think this is an example of, like, I think this is a great example of the. The amplification effect. I don't know if that's a real term, but, like, I think Fyre Fest 2 probably sold about five tickets.

[Ben Bollen]

Five actual.

[Max Williams]

I don't think this is a real thing. Like. Like, 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 thick. Like, there's a lot of manufactured controversies on the Internet where if you actually trace it back, it's like, three people are mad about this.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 mill is people report three tweets as a news story.

[Max Williams]

Yeah.

[Ben Bollen]

Yes.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, my God. No, that's a good. And it doesn't get talked about enough, honestly. I mean, it's so true.

[Ben Bollen]

And they're never one of my tweets. That's the part that's the worst part of it.

[Noel Brown]

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. You know, 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 if you're not careful.

[Max Williams]

Or, like, I remember, like, during the ERAS tour, they were listing, like, resellers were listing floor seats for, like, $20,000 or something, and there were all of these sites being, like, can you believe people are paying $20,000 to see Taylor Swift? I was like, like, no, the tickets are available. That means they're not selling.

[Noel Brown]

Like, exactly.

[Max Williams]

I was like, how do you know anyone has paid that? 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. This is made up. You made that up for your article. You made up this consumer to get mad at who is paying a made up price. This is a mini hoax. This is a mini hoax that this is happening.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh, I like that.

[Max Williams]

This is a little, tiny little hoax just so that you can have something to write about. A little amusement too. Like, I don't know that anyone actually bought tickets to that.

[Dana Schwartz]

It almost is a thing where you see something like on a webpage that's like so imminently clickable, where you're just like, well, I have to see that. I know it's the classic rule of thumb that if a headline is a question, the answer is no. No.

[Ben Bollen]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. This is.

[Max Williams]

Is Gen Z killing the stock market?

[Ben Bollen]

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 blasts or slabs or you know, basically kapows, old Batman style. That usually means that someone had a quote that was taken out 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 requirement of a cadence, of a publishing cadence. Right? We have to have the news and if the news does not exist, we have to therefore or make the news.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 people don't realize that feeding your children with your body takes up so much time. And I 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, oh, no, that's not real. 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 flippant. And it just happened. A little lazy, a little. Just a misunderstanding. It just is a minor example of just how easy it is for things to be misconstrued.

[Ben Bollen]

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, Noel? We should do a history of strange punctuation marks because we don't really use, like, the interrobang or, you know, some kind of mark that says clearly and.

[Noel Brown]

I will die on the hill. A period and a text is aggressive.

[Ben Bollen]

And I will die on the hill. Disagree. I think the lack of a period also seems pretty cold.

[Noel Brown]

Where do y' all fall on that issue? Period at the end of a text, aggressive.

[Dana Schwartz]

It depends if it's one. If it's one word, it depends on what the text is. If it's says if it's fine. Period aggressive.

[Ben Bollen]

Not fine.

[Dana Schwartz]

Full sentence.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, I agree with that.

[Ben Bollen]

Full sentence.

[Noel Brown]

I agree with that. Because then you have some nuances, you're able to actually communicate a vibe. But if it's a word and a period. Not a fan.

[Max Williams]

I also subscribe to the belief that a text is not writing, it is written speech.

[Ben Bollen]

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.

[Noel Brown]

Fine isn't great. Also, someone who's mad, like, sure, not a fan of sh.

[Max Williams]

Sounds good. I'm.

[Ben Bollen]

I'm.

[Max Williams]

Sounds good.

[Noel Brown]

I've got a little chill vibe to it. If someone seems dismissive, I do a dash.

[Ben Bollen]

I like to do a dash. If it's not a text, yeah, I'll just do a dash. I'll be like, that sounds great.

[Dana Schwartz]

If someone ever texts, it is what it is. Period. That person wants.

[Ben Bollen]

Also true. Who does that?

[Dana Schwartz]

No one. Thank God. Was that.

[Ben Bollen]

Was that Will Pearson? I'll find.

[Dana Schwartz]

I'm just saying in context, a period can absolutely be devastating.

[Noel Brown]

All this to say, bring back the interrobang. That's all.

[Ben Bollen]

Interrobang. I'm telling you, it's going to be a winner. We're going to do an episode.

[Noel Brown]

What is it again? Been described as this character, this forgotten.

[Ben Bollen]

Character, so have you ever seen a question mark and an exclamation mark and thought they should hook up? It's basically that. But 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 reductress. Reductress McSweeney's. By the way, one of my dream hangout spots. Where can people learn more about you all's work, not just on Hoax, but on your various other endeavors?

[Max Williams]

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 Lizzy Logan with five Z's, so just L, I, Z, Z Z Z I, E L, O, G A N.

[Dana Schwartz]

I'm Dana Schwartz, also with a lot of Z's, 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 the listeners listening, spreading the word. It means a lot.

[Ben Bollen]

And if you like our show, you are going to love this one. Folks, we're not blowing smoke. This is this. Us saying hoax is amazing is itself not a hoax. So we want to be. Someone had to say something like that toward the end of the show. We love it too. Kind. Thank you so much, Lizzie. Thank you so much. Data. We are. No, we have other people to thank. We'll do it real quick. Super producer, Mr. Max Williams. Alex Williams, who composed our track oh gosh, yes.

[Noel Brown]

Christopher Rossiotes. And you, Jeff Goats here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzter, AJ Bahamas Jacobs.

[Ben Bollen]

The Puzzler and of course, Noel. Thanks to you. Tune in in the next few days, folks. As the Cenobites said, we have such wonders to show you.

[Noel Brown]

We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Manny]

Why are TSA rules so confusing?

[Ben Bollen]

You got a hoodie on. Take it all.

[Manny]

I'm Manny. I'm Noah, this is Devin and we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called no Such Thing where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? Well, I can't expect what to do now if the rule was the same, Go off on me. I deserve it, you know. Lock him up. Listen to no Such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No Such thing.

[Az Fudd]

Hey, guys, it's Az Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist, you may know me as an NCAA national champion. You may even know me as a people's princess. Every week on my new podcast, Fut around and Find out, I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture basketball and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. Listen to FUT around and find out. A production of iHeart Women's Crew in partnership with Unanimous Media on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bollen]

Every case that is a cold case.

[Max Williams]

That has DNA right now in a.

[Lizzie Logan]

Backlog will be identified in our lifetime on the new podcast, America's Crime Lab. Every case has a story to tell and the DNA holds the truth.

[Noel Brown]

He never thought he was going to get caught.

[Ben Bollen]

And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases.

[Lizzie Logan]

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bollen]

Tune in to all the Smoke podcast where Matt and Stack sit down with former first lady Michelle Obama. Folks find it hard to hate up close.

[Az Fudd]

And when you get to know people.

[Dana Schwartz]

And you're sitting in their kitchen tables.

[Ben Bollen]

And when they're talking like we're talking.

[Dana Schwartz]

You know, you hear our story, how.

[Max Williams]

We grew up, how Barack grew up. And you get a chance for people to unpack and get beyond race.

[Noel Brown]

All the Smoke featuring Michelle Obama.

[Ben Bollen]

To hear this podcast and more, open your free iHeartRadio app, search all the.

[Dana Schwartz]

Smoke and listen Now.

[Lizzie Logan]

This is an iHeart podcast.