Hoax!
Episodes
The Gulf Breeze UFOtos
27 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In one of the most famous and widely-reported UFO sightings of all time, a Florida man witnessed, photographed and even interacted with alien beings f...
The Bristol Princess
13 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A girl showed up at a town near Bristol in 1817 wearing a turban, and everyone went nuts. SOURCES:"The Caraboo Hoax," Margaret RussellJohn Matth...
April Fool's Day: Google, Spaghetti Trees and Sidd Finch
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of Hoax is no fun at all. April Fool's! For our (almost) April 1 episode, we explore the holiday's origins and some of the best pranks of...
Napoleon is Dead
16 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Stockmarkets are now battlefields. An aide-de-camp arrived in Dover with the startling, thrilling news that Napoleon had been killed, and the British ...
Crop Circles
02 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Messages from extraterrestrial visitors? Evidence of strange atmospheric conditions? No one knows where crop circles come from or what they mean. Exce...
Joice Heth
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
P.T. Barnum is famous to movie-going audiences as the charming 'Greatest Showman,' but the reality was far more complicated, and much darker. P.T. Bar...
Van Meegeren's Vermeers
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Arrested in 1945 for selling a Vermeer masterpiece to high-ranking Nazi Herman Goring, dutch painter Han van Meegeren had an innovative and shocking d...
The Piltdown Man
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In December 1912, Arthur Smith Woodward, a paleontologist at the British Museum, presented something extraordinary to the Geographical Society: a "mis...
I, Libertine
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Midcentury New Yorkers who couldn't sleep found a friend in Jean Shepherd, the iconoclastic radio personality whose middle of the night monologues mad...
The Mechanical Turk
22 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During the 18th century, as the industrial revolution picks up.... steam, people are dazzled by expertly constructed mechanical marvels: automatons. B...
Lonelygirl15
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When YouTube was barely a year old, the the site's users were gripped by the slowly unfolding tale of Bree, the sheltered, beautiful 16 year old girl ...
Mumler Spirit Photography
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's the Civil War, and the nation is in deep mourning. William Mumler of Boston has something to help: "spirit photographs" of you and a deceased lov...
Report from Iron Mountain
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the height of the Cold War, a "leaked Top Secret Memo" from inside the government proposed a controversial and radical idea: the worst thing that c...
The Impostress Rabbit
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The court anatomist returned the King George I with astonishing news: a woman named Mary Toft has been giving birth.... to rabbits. Sources:&nbs...
Salvator Mundi
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A painting purportedly by Leonardo Da Vinci himself is discovered at a little-known auction house in New Orleans in 2005; a decade later, it fetches t...
The Wild West in Palisade, Nevada
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
People traveling through the west by train in the 1800s expected shootouts and danger and cowboys. The citizens of Palisade gave it to them. Sou...
Ern Malley Poetry
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Two bored poets decide to prank their least favorite snobby magazine editor by submitting intentionally bad poetry to his literary journal and watchin...
The Ireland Shakespeare Relics
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Samuel Ireland was an avid collector, the type of man who boasted and tried to make himself look important. His son, William Henry, just wanted to mak...
Balloon Boy
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For a few tense hours in October 2009, the entire world watched as a homemade aircraft purportedly carrying a 6-year-old boy drifted in mid-air on liv...
Cottingley Fairies
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1917, two young cousins returned from the creek behind their house with thrilling news: they had photographed fairies! Their parents were skeptical...
Introducing: Hoax!
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hoax! is a new show from Dana Schwartz (Noble Blood) and Lizzie Logan (Vulture, Reductress). Listen to the first episode on August 4th.See omnystudio....