You're Wrong About - Hoax Spectacular! with Chelsey Weber-Smith

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Sarah talks with Chelsey Weber-Smith, host of American Hysteria, about some of their favorite hoaxes—from the Loch Ness Monster to the Taco Liberty Bell—and ponder the value of pranks in a world of misinformation. You can find Chelsey here.You can find American Hysteria here. Support You're Wrong About:Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are Good[YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseLinks:https://www.chelseywebersmith.com/https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/american-hysteria/id1441348407https://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodhttp://maintenancephase.comSupport the show

Because I think pranks are for people who don't have complex PTSD. Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall and today I am bringing you our Hoax Spectacular, a co-production with Chelsea Weber Smith of American Hysteria, which also has a brand new episode out today, which you can find wherever great podcasts are distributed. Chelsea and I love to talk about urban legends, we love to talk about hoaxes, we love to talk about clowning around. And in this episode, we run down a bunch of our personal favorite hoaxes with points of origin ranging from Taco Bell to Thomas Edison. And we also talk about what the value of hoaxes and pranks are for a friend group, a culture, or a society in the age of misinformation and

what it means to clown around. This was a really fun episode to make. We hope you have a fun time listening to it. And if you want more episodes and haven't signed up yet to listen to You're Wrong About on Patreon or Apple+, this is a great time to do it because we are in the middle of our four-part saga on Britney Spears' memoir, The Woman and Me, with our friend Eve Lindley. We put episode one on our main

feed last week so you could check it out, so give it a listen, see if you want to hear more. And we are putting Britney part three out on Patreon and Apple Plus this month. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for being April Fools. Here's your episode. Welcome to your wrong about the podcast or we have decided that we are no longer going to be a millennial aesthetic podcast and instead are becoming a drive time prime time happy hour show. With me is my fellow shock jock, Chelsea Weber Smith. What's up? What's up? And then we put in a toilet flushing sound somewhere. No, you

guys, that was a prank. I would never do that. And I would never prank you for more than 20 seconds. We'd never put a toilet sound on this podcast. Because I think pranks are for people who don't have complex PTSD. So true, so true. But I'm Sarah Marshall. With me today is Kelsey Weber-Smith, who is our many things correspondent, but I would also say our clowning around correspondent. An honor.

If only that were my official job title in the rest of my life. I would love that. We can work towards that. All right. Okay. Chelsea, you've been coming on our show for like four years now. You're the host of American Hysteria. And tell me about you for a minute. Oh, about me, about me. Well, I am obsessed with things like hoaxes and things like moral panics and urban legends, much like what you cover on your show. And I love getting to the bottom of tales that appear one way but are really another. And I'm excited to talk about hoaxes with you

because it is probably, well, it's really high up there on my most favorite things in the world, period, along with like roses and walk through haunted houses. Yeah, those are all really great things. with like roses and walk through haunted houses. Yeah, those are all really great things. I think hoaxes are also one of my favorite things and we talked most recently about our dearest fears for Halloween, you came by recently. Hoaxes feel like part of the tapestry of folklore

in a way that I wanna to try and delineate today, especially in, you know, I hate to bring it up, but it is 2024. So I was looking at a New York Times article today that was like, people might have amnesia about how bad Trump was. And I was like, I don't even think it's amnesia. It's because the adults can't remember what four years ago was like generally, you know. But the idea of misinformation hasn't gone away as a problem, you know, since Trump left office.

And I mean, some could even argue that there are ways in which it's gotten stronger, I'm sure. But it's a big part of all of our lives today. And the sort of work that we have to do trying to communicate with people while living in a society where we can't agree on a very basic level about what's going on. And I feel like the question of like, when is it productive socially to lie or to trick people is an interesting question. Happy April Fool's Day. We're fun. I am fun. Happy April Fool's Day. We're fun. I am fun. Happy April Fool's Day, everybody.

We're going to talk about themes. This is not a trick. No, and these are important questions. And I think we'll get to the heart of these types of things throughout this episode. And we'll also, I always like to, you know, what do you do? You hide the medicine. So we're going to probably tell you some pretty fun hoaxes, but I have a feeling we'll build to some less fun points later on as we do. But first the fun hoaxes. Yeah, you're talking about April Fool's related stuff specifically. And what do you have going on on American hysteria today? Well, as also fellow Monday podcast, we have an episode out today about probably the most prolific hoaxer in American history. He had decades and decades of hoaxes out there that are just so weird and fun and socially relevant while at the same time being totally absurdist.

And so we're going to kind of go through his life and how those hoaxes tricked Americans and what his points were to doing all of these kind of weird pieces of performance art So make sure you check that out. It's out now. That's so exciting Well in terms of April Fool's Day stuff I was kind of reminiscing and I wonder we were wondering if some of our favorite April Fool's Day hoaxes Overlap and so let me tell you about one of them, which I remember reading about in Nickelodeon magazine When I was like nine probably which is the taco Liberty Bell. Stop, Sarah. That is literally my first. We're historians. We were historians. I'm looking at a giant, giant piece of text that says taco Liberty Bell. Yeah. Oh, tell us about the Taco Liberty Bell. You're my soulmate.

Oh, it's true. It's true, babe. I didn't think we would have the same first. You know, I was like, there's going to be overlap, but God are we twin flames. That's a nice way to warm up. You may be asking, what the fuck is the Taco Liberty Bell? And if you know, you know. And it's kind of a 90s kid thing, not to brag. Yeah, absolutely. So we're going to like, we're going back to April 1st, 1996.

A full page advertisement is ran in seven major newspapers. And this is what it says beneath a picture of the Liberty Bell that you and I are so familiar with. You and I, the greater culture of America. So it says, Taco Bell buys the Liberty Bell. In an effort to help the national debt, Taco Bell is pleased to announce that we have agreed to purchase the Liberty Bell, one of our country's most historic treasures. It will now be called the Taco Liberty Bell and will still be accessible to the American public for viewing. While some may find this controversial, we hope our move

will prompt other corporations to take similar action to do their part to reduce the country's debt. And then below that, the Taco Bell symbol with a little crack in the Taco Bell. It's brilliant. Oh, yep. So this is like on its own, really funny, but this was only kind of the beginning of the prank, right? It was apparently a very slow news day. So the Clinton administration White House press secretary, Mike McCurry, decided to kind of like have a little fun with it. And he said, quote, We will be doing a series of these things. Ford Motor Company is joining today in an effort to refurbish the Lincoln Memorial.

It will now be the Lincoln Mercury Memorial. I love that he's like the American people have a sense of humor. Yeah, uh-huh. But do we, or did we freak the hell out? Well, I just, I don't remember, but I have a feeling that we freaked out about it. We freaked. So over the course of the day,

before it was announced that this was a joke people got Really upset. They were very very very angry That's such an important symbol of something we can't remember but we're sure it was important I have no idea why the Liberty Bell is historically significant. I just know it's a big deal It's a big fucking bell. I'm happy we have it even if I don't know what it did. RISA GOLUBOFF Let's see what the hell it was because I don't know either. K A I have gone on record saying it's big. So yeah, we should probably get deeper.

RISA GOLUBOFF An iconic symbol of American independence commissioned by Pennsylvania. Boring, boring, boring. Who cares? Oh, a biblical reference to the best book of the Bible, the book of Leviticus is apparently part of the bell. And Leviticus is the book with all the rules in it, right? Yeah, like you can't have shellfish, you can't wear mixed fibers, you can't have sex with your friend, Sean. So, OK, I don't know. We still didn't really find out what the Liberty Bell was, but I know I just I don't care. I don't care either. I care about the Taco Liberty Bell and the Taco Liberty Bell only.

And I'm sure that that's partly what people were freaking out about at the time. But what I remember is that there was an episode of Brotherly Love, the Lawrence Brothers vehicle sitcom where as a joke, museum guide guy, when the littlest Lawrence brother went to touch the Liberty Bell, he was like, you cracked that. And then the kid was like, oh my family is gonna lose all our money because I cracked the Liberty Bell and so I guess dissociate it with children being anxious. God that reminds me of when I didn't return the shining that I checked out from the school library and I found it in my closet like a year

later and I couldn't sleep. Yeah. like, my parents are going to owe tens of thousands of dollars because I saw a Seinfeld episode about this. Right. And I feel like the anxieties of children can be so intense without them ever mentioning them to anybody in a way that I at least, when I was a child. A hundred. At least for anxious children. But the anxieties of adults, I guess, are more revealed by this kind of thing. And I feel like one of the things we're going to come up against in a lot of these stories is like the issue of credibility. And I feel like part of what this is playing on is that in a more mundane way, we all have to deal with

corporations running our lives and also changing the names of things that are a part of our memories. Oh yeah. Like how the Rose Garden in Portland became the Moda Center. And now I think it's a third thing that I refuse to start calling it. Yeah. Or Crypto.com Arena, which is somehow an even worse name than whatever it was called before. Yeah.

That was sort of like when people summed up this whole experience of the Togo Liberty Bell, it was like the fact that this was believable at all was, you know, so indicative of the nineties and this new world where corporations had the ability. I mean, it wasn't new. It's like corporations were always like presented by like this entire TV show, like this entire Comedian is presented by Vitamita Veggie or something like that

Like I have you watched the George Burns and Gracie Allen show when it was first on they're sponsored by like their entire Episodes where they keep taking breaks to talk about carnation milk, which if anything is like the way podcasts are now Yeah, truly truly guilty as charged taking breaks to talk about Carnation Milk, which if anything is like the way podcasts are now. God, truly, truly guilty as charged. Everybody was freaking out. The phone lines at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which is like one of the big newspapers where this was printed, were totally jammed. Everybody was yelling. The historical park nearby, the city hall,

all these civic organizations where the public thought maybe they could get through to somebody about their outrage were just totally overwhelmed. It's like somehow talk show hosts that night were already talking about the country's values and how lost we were. So the National Park Service actually had to host an impromptu news conference that they weren't planning on having to confirm to the public that everything was all a prank. But this campaign really worked. It cost $300,000 total to, you know, I don't know why it cost that much, but that's how much it costs to create this whole campaign. I guess just for running the full page ads probably mostly, right? Because it was just

like print and then you're done and then people do all the work for you. Yeah. And then like vastly overpaying the marketing executive that came up with this. Well, you know, if you look, if you're a newspaper in 1996, selling ad pages, you're just printing money and it'll never be over. Things will never be different.

No, it's going to be top of the world for the rest of your life. But they made over the next two days more than a million dollars, more than they had typically been making. So it was a massive success. Well, it makes sense, right? Because if everyone is talking about Taco Bell, and all you hear is Taco Bell, Taco Bell, Taco Bell, some number of people, including myself, are going to be like, I could really eat one of those Mexican pizzas right now. Yeah. Or if you're like, that was funny. I'm going to go get some Taco Bell because it is funny.

I think it's funny. Or you're like, I'm so angry that it's making me hungry for Taco Bell. Yeah. Maybe I can eat them to death. So that was, I mean, that's pretty much the whole story. You know, that was really like it. And then it took like a few weeks for people to fully adjust to the fact that it wasn't true, of course.

That was a beautiful moment, a pure moment in 1996, it feels like. And yeah, that was, I'm so happy we had the same first hoax. There are many hoaxes we could have chosen. This feels to me like a great example of an April Fool's Day prank slash hoax. For one thing, it's kind of, it's using a joke to point out something that is in a way very credible and to cause people, well, maybe not reflect, but to at least in some way think and talk about the way that the world

is changing around them. And it's not so different for, I mean, there's some art pieces that are essentially just pranks in that way. Yeah, and I mean, there's some art pieces that are essentially just pranks in that way. Yeah. And I mean, it's there's a weird irony to the fact that it is a kind of social, corporate, capitalistic, like a commentary. Yeah. But it is still by a corporation. So it's like meta in a way. If it were true, not that I have a lot of love for the Liberty Bell, but I don't

have a lot of love for things as being renamed other things that sounds stupid. Like what is it climate pledge arena? Oh, God. Because right. It's like, you know, it's very nice to pledge to do things for the climate. I make little climate pledges all the time, but it's sort of like an arena calling itself, shut up, I'm sorry, leave me alone arena. Yeah, it's, it really, it hurts. Tell me another April Fool's Day hooks or prank that you want to talk about. Okay, I think you're going to really like this one if you don't know it already. Alright, again, it's April 1st, 1992, and NPR's Talk of the Nation is reporting that

former President Richard Nixon has officially declared that he is running for the Republican presidential nomination. Again, kind of believable. 100%. You're not like, that would never happen. Well, you know, it's funny because I didn't really know how people really wanted him to run again. I didn't know that.

That's a little worrying. Yeah, I know. I didn't know that. That's a little worrying. Yeah, I know. I know. And by 88, at the end of the Reagan administration, one of the articles that I read on newspapers.com, our favorite website. Not a sponsorship.

It's just the truth. Yeah, thank you. There was a big selling t-shirt back in 88 that then was printed again in 92 at the next election that said, he's tanned, rested, and ready. Nixon in 88. Which is a reference to the debate that he lost to John F. Kennedy. Ah, oh, that's nice. He was famously sallow, sweaty and generally unkempt. They're like 28 years later, he's finally got this wellness thing down. I was like, I don't think Nixon will ever be rested with those under eye bags.

It is like it, I feel like it maybe feels tempting to feel nostalgic in a general kind of way for Nixon, but I have to point out that he was also an extremely paranoid anti-Semitic person. So he kind of fits in with what we know today. Doesn't seem that different. Who loved lying to the American public almost as much as he loved lying to himself again. Yeah, he was a very bad man. Yeah.

They announced this and they actually had a sound bite that sounded very much like it was Richard Nixon, but it was a comedian named Rich Little who was impersonating his voice. And he's like, I think he did, he was like a well-known impressionist, like he's Monet, but he's like, I feel like I, you hear his name a lot in terms of great impressionists. So like they got somebody good, that's nice. At least people weren't fooled by a hack.

I'd never heard of him before. I like that you had heard of him. So he apparently did a great job and this is what he said. Here we go. Can I do Nixon? You can. You can. It's all about wanting it. I would not boast of a career in which so many tragedies and setbacks have occurred. I would only say that it is the true leader who stands alone. having marched up this hard road and won back your confidence, I ask you once more, my fellow Americans, to make me your president."

Ah! I loved it. That was beautiful. It was all right, right? Look, the point is not to sound exactly like the person, but to do a character that feels true. Yeah. And I felt it. I felt Nixon. Yeah, and again, like it's 1992. Reagan has recently left office as, at the time,

a very old president. Reagan, who I believe was younger when he left office than Trump was when he entered the White House, certainly than Biden was when he entered the White House. I wouldn't worry about it too much. When they creaked open that crypt and let him out by the hand. So yeah, it does make sense to me that you just kind of never know what's going to happen in the Republican Party. And it's truer now than it was then. But I think it was still

very true in 1992. This I mean, I would be. And again, and this kind of actually fits in with the broader question of misinformation, which is that if you hear a hoax that like feels credible and also freaks you out, like the Taco Liberty Bell, I think that you're actually probably more likely to believe it because you get into a heightened state and you're not thinking as well, which is, you know, the same way telemarketing scams work. Yeah, absolutely. To make this NPR report even more credible, they had Harvard professor Lawrence Tribe as well as Newsweek reporter Howard Feynman on to give their professional political opinions about this landmark announcement.

And then they also played a clip from the press secretary of the Bush Quail campaign – that's a throwback – and she said, "'We are stunned and think it's an obvious attempt by Nixon to upstage our foreign policy announcement today.'" Which I don't know what that was. Who knows? Nothing good. No, nope. So then they opened up the phone lines and let people call in about this announcement.

And the really fun thing is that before callers were put on the air, they were told that this was a joke. And those that agreed to play along did. Oh, that's fun. I like that. Which I love, you know, and that was probably so fun. And I wish I couldn't find a recording of this, but I would have loved to get to hear it. I'm sure it's out there somewhere in a dusty basement. Oh, yeah. At the NPR headquarters. Yeah, I'm having a vision of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's somewhere in a dusty basement. Oh, yeah. At the NPR headquarters.

Yeah, I'm having a vision of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's somewhere in there. And so did this story get traction, or did people, like how big did this get? It got big. I mean, it was like, again, the calls, as we say, were flooding in, and people were expressing shock

and outrage. And then eventually during the recording at the very end, they revealed that it had been an April Fool's Day joke. But apparently, according to the news articles I read, people were rushing out to tell their mailman people were crying, people were yelling in the street about this like thing that actually people had been really afraid of happening. Like it wasn't again like kind of like the Taco Liberty Bell. Obviously people wanted Nixon to run again. And again, I think it's interesting because at this point before Clinton was elected, it had been 12

years since a Democrat was in the White House. So it's like, well, they were like, who was a couple before this guy? Let's go back and find out. But little did they know that around the bend was William Jefferson Clinton in a saxophone. Famously left leaning. You can have a liberal in the White House

as long as he has bona fide sex p***. God, Sarah, that's kind of hot. It's kind of sexy when you act like Bill Clinton. I don't know what that means. I got to work this into my drag king cabaret show because I also have a Sean Connery. Wow. Yeah, the night of a thousand toxic men. Right in people. If you want to see Sarah Marshall do Bill Quentin in drag.

But what song would I lip sync to? On a self-addressed stamped envelope. You would just do a saxophone lip sync. Right. I would. I would do Baker Street. That's what I would do Baker Street. That's what I would do. So yeah, and it took a while for people to again, like adjust to the fact that it was a joke,

but eventually it calmed down. And I think that's a pretty good one. And also the, again, it feels like it's a prank because there's some element of like, oh no, this is a disaster. And then the relief of being de-hoaxed. And that's sort of a prank for fun, maybe is one where or a prank. What is a prank?

What is a prank alongside the definition of a hoax? Because I would say maybe at this moment that pranks are a variety of hoax, but one that is at least allegedly intended to be in good humor. To me, a prank is like shorter lasting than a hoax, but one that is at least allegedly intended to be in good humor. To me, a prank is like shorter lasting than a hoax and like less in depth, you know? And but I do think that a prank generally doesn't have the same like attempt at some kind of either commentary or deception. Cause a hoax can also be propaganda, I think. A hoax as we have seen recently, especially, there's been a lot of misinformation

in the political arena recently, these stories being told that are not true, and then those are being used to justify horrific things that are happening. And so I think when you have a prank, I think pranks can be really mean-spirited. Oh yeah, especially when frat boys do them. Yeah, when blonde YouTubers do them. Oh my god.

They're really similar, but I do think a hoax has much farther reaching implications than a prank does, whether positive or negative. Right. Well, and then, you know, I was thinking about what is a hoax and what isn't a hoax, right? Because it isn't just a lie necessarily. Many lies are just lies and they're intended to be deceptive and there isn't some kind of deeper meaning behind them and you're not expected to completely experience when you learn the truth. You're just ideally supposed to never know what really happened. And so in terms of defining hoaxes, I find that interesting, right? Because some of the things that get defined as hoaxes, I'm actually not sure if by my own definition,

I would call them that because, you know, for example, you have something like Clifford Irving writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes is a famous example where he was actually able to secure a $650,000 advance for publishing and serializing what he claimed to be and as told to autobiography of Howard Hughes, where he essentially was Hughes' ghostwriter. And it was on the verge of publication

when Howard Hughes was forced to make a statement and say that he didn't know and had never met Clifford Irving, who then actually went to prison for a time and who said that it was a hoax. And so it's called a hoax. There's a movie made about it called The Hoax starring Richard Gere. But like, is it a hoax if your intent is to deceive people and then never undecieve them? Yeah, that's a good question.

And I mean, in terms of misinformation and propaganda meant to inspire war and meant to inspire destruction and death and murder, that also feels connected to monster hoaxes, right? Because we have our harmless cryptids, Bigfoot and his friends who are kind of exist through folklore, which is meant to kind of explain mechanical failures or to sort of express some of the realities of, you know, in the case of the original Bigfoot stories of people working in the timber industry. But then you have the stories that a society will tell in order to, you know, just as we

did at the start of the war on terror when we allegedly had information about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction, you know, the goal is to deceive a God-fearing people and then never undeceive them. Right. So yeah, I think that hoaxes can exist with the hope that they are never uncovered. Yeah. Well, and under Nixon, we had the idea of the domino effect,

which we get to hear about from Baby's sister in Dirty Dancing, but the idea that we have to go to war in Vietnam as the United States and to stay in a war beyond the point of it being potentially winnable because we have to stop the spread of communism. And that being the particular piece of, I would say, misinformation that's selling that war at that time. And yeah, if you look at any war, there's inevitably a pattern of propagandas and hoaxes and misinformation. And I think, yeah, you can't have a war without hoaxes really.

No, absolutely not. And you can't have one because hoaxes exist to completely dehumanize a population by making them out to be monstrous, right? So it's like, you're gonna tell the worst stories that you can possibly think of so that you have the justification to act however you would want to, you know, under the pretense of being on the defense, right? It's like, this is common. It happens in every war. And

it's arguably sort of the vehicle that carries the war. That's why, like, I love hoaxes so much, but they also scare me so deeply. Well, yeah. And they're frequently, you know, and more broadly within folklore, about what we desire and what we fear. And one of the best ways to get a person by the short hairs and keep their attention is to talk to them about what they fear. If you arouse people's emotions or their fears specifically, whether you're talking about Taco Bell or weapons

of mass destruction, then their ability to think will be compromised. And that's part of what we like about acknowledged fakery and something like the Taco Liberty Bell or the Blair Witch Project or Ghost Watch is that there's something kind of wonderful about people standing there saying, this is fake, this is fake, this is fake.

We're doing this and this is fake. Okay, let's do it. That allows everybody to kind of witness in a slightly scientific way within themselves and the people around them, the reactions and the dynamics that make hoaxes so powerful, and then to understand more about them when the consequences are dire.

Yeah, absolutely. And each hoax is so individualized to what could be believed at that moment. You can't go too big. It has to still be within the realm of possibility. And I think that's why hoaxes can teach us a lot about what was in the realm of possibility when they occurred. Yeah, completely.

Well, one, I wonder if this is on your list, is that Google always does April Fool's Day stuff. And in 2000, they said that Google would now be doing telepathic searches. They'll be releasing a new device that would allow you to search telepathically, which again, in 2000 seemed, I think, very futuristic and far off. But today I'm like, give them two years.

I mean, is an algorithm anything other than sort of a psychic? Right. I mean, we're pretty we're approaching the point where the difference is going to be technical at best. And I think that at that point, we already had a sense of that, you know, because the internet felt and was so beyond what our worlds had been like from a technological perspective. And we knew that. And so I think that that fits with the sort of credibility pattern we've been talking about.

And then another one I love, this is just from last year, 2023, Wales Online announced that there would be a 20 mile per hour speed limit imposed on the M4 to reduce crashes that people had while trying to read Welsh signage. Wow. Wow. Did people freak out? Probably. I don't know. I'm sure that there is at least some degree of freaking out in Wales about it. But again, I like that because it feels like a joke that people can share together, you know, that there's a little trip inside of that prank. And at the end of it, you got to enjoy the

fact that that felt real to you because it's something that relates to your life as you live it. And it allows you to agree that you're sharing an experience of the world. Yes, absolutely. Would you like another one? I would love another one. Let's go way back to April 1st, 1878. All right. Nice. When the front page of several major newspapers reads, The Wonder of Wonders, Edison's Marvelous Invention, The Food Machine, Quail on Toast, and Every Delicacy Brought forth by the Slight Turn

of the Wrist. Have you heard about this one? No, I haven't. This makes me a little bit emotional because I'm like, what a dream, you know? I know. Edison was very involved in this prank like he was part of it. Oh, no, Edison, don't be a jerk. So many people are hungry, and you're rich.

It's not funny. And you don't get to be the voice of your horrible little dolls. Listen to American Asterea to learn about Edison and his scary dolls. Haunted dolls is the episode where you can hear that audio. Highly recommend my own podcast because that audio is some of my favorite audio that's ever existed.

So at the time, if we're talking about how could people believe that this could happen? Edison has recently invented the phonograph, which is, as you and I have talked about quite a bit whenever we talk about spiritualism and like talking to the dead, was just something that completely rocked the psyche of America and the world abroad, you know, because it felt like magic. Yeah, cause it world abroad, you know, because it felt like magic. Yeah, because it is magic, you know? I don't understand the science of phonographs, really.

It's magic to me. And you would not be alone. Well, I guess you believe it's magic now. But yes, it was just something that, you know, like the light bulb, it just felt impossible. It felt impossible that you could hear a person's voice coming out of a machine. It was just incomprehensible for people. So.

It's not something that we were evolved to know what to make of. No. Not at all. And we're just do, we're just jogging behind a mail truck for the past century and a half, I would say, as like organisms trying to make sense of the world we've made for ourselves. Oh, that's a great way to put it. Thank you.

He goes to these newspapers that of course that are in on the joke. But he says that essentially by combining dirt taken from the cellar and water taken from the pipes, he can combine these essential elements and he goes into really boring detail about carbon and all of the different elements that exist. They're like, it's got to be real. He's talking about carbon. He's the wizard of Menlo Park, honey. I actually read that this might have been one of the roots of that nickname coming about. They were like, he's the Wizard of Menlo Park because he says he can do things that are

impossible and he can't do them. He said, here's a quote from him. All of our food comes primarily from the earth. The plants and fruits we eat come from moist ground, and the animals we eat live on the plants or other animals which the plants have kept alive. Can't argue with that. So all the food comes from the elements that are stored up in the earth, air, and water. You can eat a grain of wheat, for instance.

The wheat is mainly composed of a few simple gases and salts, blah blah blah blah blah. So he, you know. At this point, I know you've stopped listening blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, exactly. I won't keep going. But that's the Edison hoax. He just kind of keep droning on and then you're like, and so food. Yes. Ta-da. And yeah, so he really just droned on until people zoned out enough to just be like, all right, I just believe you. Like, just stop. I believe you, please. And he said,

the head of every family by turning a crank, or perhaps without turning a crank, if clockwork be attached, can produce more delicious fruits and wines at a tenth of the cost. That Amanda Seyfried show about Theranos should have opened with just an unexplained seven minute long vignette telling this story. Cause it's like the birth of Silicon Valley is like promise something impossible, profit the end. Not that I think was profit the goal here or was he actually having fun? Yes, this was a prank. It was not a money making scheme. It was just a April Fool's joke.

Well, that's nice sort of. Yeah. You know, I mean, and the idea though, of course, as you mentioned earlier was that he had said like, this will solve the world's problems, you know, because part of it was the journalist being like, but what will become of the farmers, Mr. Edison? And then he said, you forget that men work chiefly to obtain food. When food costs them nothing, they will need to work only for shelter clothes and luxuries. So, you know, again, a commentary, a bit on maybe the kind of industrialization that was happening at this time and had really changed everything about the American landscape, especially the American rural landscape.

And you know, I think the fact that people could believe this to be true probably said a lot about what we dreamed our lives could actually be like. And that didn't include child labor and you know, 80 hour weeks in factories where our arms get cut off. Yeah. Right. And this feels like such an innocent kind of a prank because it's like it's a machine. It'll take care of everything. And it turned out that we were the caretakers of the machines. Yeah, that was it. It just immediately added to his, to Edison's status as this kind of spiritual figure, almost like this genius sorcerer. And again, it took a while for it

to get around that it wasn't true, especially at this time. I was seeing articles in late April that were still acting as if this were true. Right, because the technology has changed, but the dynamic socially seems similar where if you hear an outrageous story, that's going to travel farther than the debunking of it. And we know that very well through the way we use social media today. And of course, it's I imagine it's something that like, if you read that or heard about that from somebody, then it was a story you might repeat to people that you met. It could, you know, travel around orally and just kind of become part of the fabric of how people felt when they saw the word Edison.

Definitely. Well, Sarah, do you have any more hoaxes for me? I do. Yeah. Well, actually, one of the things I wanted to talk about takes us just a little bit forward in time, but now we're in the early 1930s in Scotland. Fun. Where the legend of another cryptid is about to be augmented by technology. Who could it be? Who could it be? It's little Renesmee herself, the Loch Ness Monster. She rises from the depths. Yeah. And so, Chelsea, how do you feel about the Loch Ness Monster? Do you feel an attachment to they, them? Well, you know, the only real attachment I have to the Loch Ness Monster comes when I went to a wine and painting night with my mother and her best friend and her daughter,

who's also one of my best friends. And I mean, you know how these wine and painting nights are just the ugliest sunset you could possibly imagine with like the silhouette of a tree and the water, the light on the water, just with colors that are so primary that it makes me want to chop my own head off. But you know, I was like done with it. and I was like, I think my painting needs a little something extra. So I just painted in a little Nessie. And you know, the person who ran the wine and painting night was slowly approaching

and I was like, is she going to be mad at me? Because they went out of the bounds of her, you know, sanctioned creativity. But no, she enjoyed it. I think that she got a little chuckle out of it. But that's really the only thing that I feel about the Loch Ness Monster. Nessie deserves to see the sunset. Well, and I love that you say that you painted Nessie because I think most people listening understand intuitively exactly what that means. And in our Amy Winehouse episode with Eve Lindley,

I think Eve talked about silhouette theory and the idea that like you're truly an icon if like just from your silhouette people would know who you were. Wow. So like Dolly Parton is an icon, Amy Winehouse is an icon, and the Loch Ness Monster is an icon, I would say. Yeah. Because like what did your Ness Monster is an icon, I would say. Yeah. Because like what did your Nessie look like? A pinup.

No, my Nessie looked, you know, it was just the kind of brontosaurian long neck and head and the, you know, just the partial bit of the body popping out of the water. Exactly. And that's the iconic Nessie. And that comes from a photo that is known generally as the surgeon's photograph, which I love as a name for something because it was taken by a gynecologist who was on holiday in Scotland, allegedly. Wow. Yeah, and so the surgeon's photograph, most of us have seen it. If you haven't, actually, let's take a look at it, Chelsea. Sure.

Just look it up. I don't even have to send you a link. You'll get a million of them. The surgeon's photograph. Yep, there it is. Yeah, what do you see? I see exactly what I painted on the line-in-painting night. Yeah, it's just the long neck, the little head, it does just look like a dinosaur to

me. And yeah, just the sort of the ripples around what appears to be part of its body. Yeah, and I mean, it's a great photo because it's very high contrast. You can't see any features on the creature and it's a lone silhouetted against the waves without anything to give you perspective. So like it could be 30 feet high,

it could be 30 centimeters high. It does turn out to be closer to the ladder, but you know, we're getting ahead of ourselves. So the surgeon's photograph is printed in the Daily Mail, which we all know is an unimpeachable news source in April 1934. And it's at the crest of a wave of recent Nessie sightings that actually have been building. Because in May of 1933, a woman named Aldi McKay says that she sees a creature that is rolling around like a whale in the water while she and her husband are driving next to Loch Ness. And so a couple months after that report, we have what's called the Spicer Letter. We have the surgeon's photograph and the Spicer letter. And I'm

going to pull up the Spicer letter to send to you. Hold on. All right. I'm looking. Okay. So on July 31st, Mr. G Spicer sends this letter to the London Courier. And Kelsey, I would love for you to read it to us. Okay. Dear Sir, I have just returned from a motoring holiday in Scotland and am writing to inform you that on Saturday afternoon, 22nd July last, whilst traveling along the east side of Loch Ness between Doris and Foyers Hotel, about halfway in fact, I saw the nearest approach to a dragon or prehistoric animal that I have ever seen in my life. It crossed my road about 30 yards ahead and appeared to be carrying a small lamb or animal

of some kind. It seemed to have a long neck which moved up and down in the manner of a scenic railway, and the body was fairly big with a high back. But if there were any feet, they must have been of the web kind. And as far for a tail, I cannot say, as it moved so rapidly, and when we got to the spot, it had probably disappeared into the lock,

length from six feet to eight feet, and very ugly. I am wondering if you can give me any information about it and I'm enclosing a stamped addressed envelope anticipating your kind reply. Sorry, I just read the next part. Whatever it is, and it may be a land and water animal, I think it should be destroyed. As I am not sure whether had I been quite close to it I should have

cared to have tackled it it is so difficult to give a better description as it moved so swiftly and the whole thing was so sudden there is no doubt that it exists yours etc g Spicer I love it I also love yours, et cetera. We can start signing emails that way. So we don't know what this animal was, but I mean, if you were to guess, is there anything that comes to mind for you? Long neck? I mean, I don't know, like a fucking giraffe?

Big fucked up giraffe? One of your fears? That would be terrible. Yeah. Well, some have theorized just based on some of the other aspects of the description that it was a river otter. What? Yeah, because they have kind of a lot. I mean, because part of the problem too is that people

generally are not great at describing things that they're seeing from a distance or that are moving quickly. We would like to be, and it's one of maybe the areas that we feel a little bit ashamed of evolutionarily that we're not so great at it. But there's definitely elements of it that fit Otter. And also elements, you know, the neck doesn't really fit that well, but also an Otter has kind of a small head and a tubular shaped body. I don't know. I take issue with this because not only is an otter not six feet to eight feet,

but it's also not very ugly. I know. That's very true. He didn't say it was very cute and had little whiskers, did he? So, you know. Yeah. No. And he eats little shells on its tummy and holds hands, although I hear that they're very mean. Oh, yeah. I mean, and I think the hand holding is like it's for like non cute reasons that I forget

what they are. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Anthropomorphizing animals is only going to embarrassingly show us how we want to make everything we love more like ourselves in the end. But otters are sick in a good way. Now, Sarah, do people generally believe that this Loch Ness monster is one dinosaur that has survived or whatever, or that there are several of them that continue to breed. I mean, again, because we don't have any in custody.

Famously, yeah. There's a lot of people in either camp, but there's a great John McPhee piece called Pieces of the Frame, which is in a collection of the same title, where he goes to a Loch Ness Monster Research Center and talks to somebody who believes that there is a population of Loch Ness monsters in there, that there's a whole community of them,

and that this is a population as yet undiscovered by science. And actually, let me read you a little bit from that article. Okay. Okay. With the exception of one report recorded in the 6th century, which said that the monster, fitting the description of the contemporary creatures in the lake, had killed a man in a single bite, there have been no other examples of savagery on its part. To the contrary, its sensitivity to people seems to be acute, and it keeps a wide

margin between itself and mankind. In all likelihood, it feeds on fish, and particularly on eels, of which there are millions in the lake. Loch Ness is unparalleled in eel fishing circles and has drawn commercial eel fishermen from all over the United Kingdom. The monster has been observed with its neck bent down in the water, like a swan feeding. When the creatures die, they apparently settle into the 700-foot floor of the lake, where the temperature is always 42 degrees Fahrenheit, so cold that the lake is known for never giving up its dead. Loch Ness never freezes despite its high latitude, so if the creature breathes air, as has seemed apparent from the reports of observers who have watched its mouth rhythmically opening

and closing, it does not lose access to the surface in winter. It clearly prefers the smooth, sun-baked waterscapes of summer, however, for it seems to love to bask in the sun, like an upturned boat, slowly rolling, plunging, squirming around with what can only be taken as pleasure. By observers' reports, the creature has two pairs of lateral flippers and when it swims off, tail thrashing, it leaves behind it a wake as impressive as the wake of a small warship. When it dives from a still position, it inexplicably goes down without leaving a bubble. When it dives as it swims, it leaves on the surface a churning signature of foam. Oh, beautiful.

Yeah, I love that description. And this is a piece that is, you know, kind of describing Nessie as if she were as real as any other creature, which to be clear, I'm gonna de-hoax you in a minute. So I'm sorry. But describing an entire community of people who have shaped their lives around Nessie and, you know, a cryptid who people are reporting sightings of all the time, which is a fascinating thing. And just thinking about how many times, maybe this is a problem I have more than other people, but when somebody gives you binoculars or something, or when you don't have binoculars and they're pointing at something on the horizon or in a forest, and they're like, do you see that tree I'm pointing at? They're like, see that thing I mean? And you're like pointing at something on the horizon or like in a forest and they're like, do you see that tree I'm pointing at?

They're like, see that thing I mean? And you're like, I'm trying to see the thing you mean. And then you see so many things that like could be the thing they mean. You're like, is that the thing they mean? And then when you really see it, you're like, oh no, that's the thing they mean. But when you're looking for something,

everything looks like something sometimes, especially if it's like the surface of a lock with waves and sun glancing off of it and foam and other living creatures. And I wonder if there is, because the way that that was describing Nessie felt almost spiritual in its like gentleness. Like could we believe that something this big and mysterious could still be like gentle and playful? It feels sort of like there's something there. And I wonder, do you know anything about whether there are people who feel spiritually connected to the Loch Ness Monster?

I don't specifically, but I mean, let me try and read you a quote from one of the the Nessie hunters. Okay. Let's see. I shouldn't say hunter. That's too aggressive. One of the Nessie searchers. So this is a guy named Clem Lister Skelton. And McPhee writes, I know. Okay. Skelton drank some more tea and refilled a cup he had given me. I must know what it is, he went on. I shall never rest peacefully until I know what it is. Some of the largest creatures in the world are out there, and we can't name them. It may take 10 years, but we're going to identify the genus. Most people are not as fanatical as I, but I would like to see this through to the end, if I don't get too broke first."

And that's not spiritual, exactly, but to me that does express something about what cryptids bring out even in me and definitely me as a kid watching all these history channel specials about Nessie that were like 45 minutes of padding of like the surgeon's photograph. Is she real? Is she not? Who knows? By Prilosec OTC. But the feeling of wanting to know, but also wanting to preserve the earth as a place where there were still mysteries and as a place where there could be, you know, a whole world of sea monsters

or mermaids or Bigfoot or whoever who were living peacefully. And also there being enough wilderness to protect them. Totally. It's a cliche, but we've only explored five percent of the ocean. One of my big fears. And like that is really wild. Yeah. You know, and I love the idea that like, the ocean is so big and we've only explored 5% of it, we probably polluted much more than that, but the dream is still that nature is able to outpace

the damage we can do to it. Yeah, totally. And you know, the truth about the Loch Ness Monster, or at least the surgeon's photograph, despite all of those history channel specials I watched growing up is that we've known since 1994 that the Surgeon's photograph was a fake. It was done by a small group of people but it was led by a guy named and I am not shitting you Chelsea

Marmaduke Weatherall. No. Yes. It's like a margarine animal mascot. Or like a marmite mascot. Sorry, I mean a marmalade animal mascot. Yeah. But it's right. Marmaduke Wetheral's marmalade. That's what I want. And so he had first attempted to hoax the Daily Mail with some large Nessie type footprints that he turned out to have used with a rhinoceros foot umbrella holder, which is just a thing that people own, just a normal everyday item if you're a Marmaduke Wetheral. Okay, of course.

So Marmaduke Wetheral was a big game hunter, among other things, so a very sympathetic protagonist. And so in December of 1933, he went hunting for Nessie for the Daily Mail. And he said that he found the footprints of a, quote, very powerful, soft-footed animal about 20 feet long. And these were actually examined by the Natural History Museum. And they determined that it looked like a hippopotamus foot, which you think would be hard to come by in Scotland.

But if you're a big game hunter, you actually would be rather likely to have one around for decorative purposes, because that's very normal and nice to have. Which, you know, big game hunting is strange and disgusting, but also hippopotamuses are actually very dangerous and I just want to point that out if nothing else. Don't fuck with hippopotami. They're very, very, very scary. Almost as mean as an otter, I've heard.

And bigger. And so after this, Barbaralee Dukweatherl drafts his son Ian and Ian's stepbrother, a sculptor named Christian Sperling to build a model monster, which he does. This is quoting a New York Times article from 1994 that reports all this. The monster in the photograph was a bogus 12-inch high model made from plastic wood and a toy submarine purchased for two shilling sixpence in Woolworths in Richmond, a London suburb, two researchers say. But yeah, it's that you can get, you could, and maybe still where it exists, get anything there, including a little submarine, which you can then modify.

And then all you have to do is take it to just a shallow bit of the lock and take some photos. And that's what they did. Wow. And they stabilized it with a little bit of lead on the bottom. Wow. Then they all got lead poisoning.

Wow. I mean, it's that easy. It's funny because I don't think that I knew that it had been thoroughly debunked. That's the thing. Like you have to go looking for that information. The History Channel is not going to eat its own lunch by being like in these debunked photos that everyone has known for were fake for 30 years.

You have to kind of kick the ball down the road. Same as with a shroud of Turin. Right. Yeah. And so then Colonel Robert Wilson is just the front man for this. And he's the one who submits the photographs and says that he was there, I think, on a fishing trip and took these photos after his friend noticed the monster and said, my God, it's the monster. It's a quote. And Colonel Wilson gets in on it because he loves a prank. And all this is confirmed by Chris Consperling at the age of about 90 when all this comes to light. Wow.

And the surgeon's photograph was debunked in 1994 by researchers named David Martin and Alastair Boyd. Go look up how they did it. It's very interesting. And it involves newspapers.com type research, as most things do. But yeah, and I think that there's to me, there's something appropriate about the fact that this has been public knowledge for about as long as we've been alive. But yeah, and I think that there's to me there's something appropriate about the fact that this has been public knowledge for about as long as we've been alive, but like we grew up not knowing or caring and we were corrupted kids. Absolutely. It's that whole thing of like we want to believe we're not like generally maybe not you or

I specifically but like culturally once we start to believe, we just want to continue to, whether that be in a positive or negative way, whether it be like, oh, I like to believe this because it gives me a sense of whimsy and possibility, or oh, I want to believe this because it confirms a narrative that I need confirmed for me to take some kind of action that otherwise I wouldn't feel justified in taking. Maybe part of what we have to work with is that as humans we are irrational creatures for the most part who are able to use reason to some extent but not as a given and not all the time and not always for everyone.

And thinking about, you know, what are the things that I want to believe that are helpful for me to want to believe what are the innate beliefs I have that are helping me in some way you know I want to believe that the three inmates got away from Alcatraz on their raft and I want to believe that DB Cooper got away with all that money or well some of it because they kept finding it for years. And I want to believe that Bigfoot is there and that the Nessies are swimming under the water.

And these are all beliefs about kind of freedom and in a way, the sanctity of life, you know, I guess for people to people and cryptids and animals to be able to, to live on. And then I was taking a walk today and I was actually thinking about how like one of my innate beliefs learned incorrectly is that I'm unworthy of love. And that's a belief I have that's not serving me. And I can find things that I can use to confirm it for myself and I can only seek out stories

that allow me to keep believing it, but that's just me hurting myself. And that's even in the scheme of things, not that worrying a belief because it's not about how I need to kill anybody else. it but that's just me hurting myself and that's even in the scheme of things not that worrying a belief because it's not about how I need to kill anybody else. Sarah it's a hoax. It's a hoax. The self-hate is a hoax. You definitely deserve love. I know about hundreds of thousands of people who would tell you that that it's nothing more than a hoax. I don't believe it. Believe it.

Okay. Just come over and have a slumber party and we'll make you believe it with some sweet treats and watching movies from the 80s. Yep. And that was our episode. Thank you so much again for joining me and Chelsea Weber-Smith on this romp through history and hoaxes and pranks. You can listen to Chelsea over on American Hysteria, which continues to be an essential

show for understanding the world we are in. Thank you so much also to American Hysteria's own and our own Miranda Zichler for editing this episode. And thank you so much, as always, to Carolyn Kendrick for producing it. Thank you for being here with us. We will see you again in two weeks.