Hoax!

In January 2019, ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett was the victim of a racial and homophobic hate crime perpetrated in Chicago that shocked the nation and sparked an outcry from seemingly Hollywood’s entire A-list. But it didn’t take long for cracks in his story to emerge. In our season 1 finale, we explore the logic holes, inconsistencies, and downright bizarre twists in this years-long saga involving race, sexuality, police brutality and celebrity. Plus, a lot of tangents.

SOURCES
The Truth About Jussie Smollett? (Netflix)
https://www.biography.com/actor/jussie-smollett
https://www.out.com/entertainment/2016/1/28/exclusive-jussie-smollett-being-black-and-gay-hollywood
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/feb/03/im-the-gay-tupac-jussie-smollett
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/jussie-smollett-video-shows-brothers-red-hat-ski-mask/
https://time.com/5560430/jussie-smollett-donald-trump-fbi/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chicago-police-chief-eddie-johnson-fired-after-series-ethical-lapses-n1094301
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2021/12/02/jussie-smolletts-legal-team-begins-defense-at-actors-trial-for-allegedly-staging-and-reporting-a-phony-hate-crime/
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/samuel-l-jackson-offered-support-for-smollett-in-letter-read-at-sentencing
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/21/jussie-smollett-conviction-overturned
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/25/jussie-smollett-chicago-charities-settle-lawsuit
https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/prosecutor-kim-foxx-defends-jussie-smollett-decision-in-wbez-interview/ddc80843-d6ee-4c25-a635-02ad49c325e6
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-47317701
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/jussie-smollett-2007-dui-arrest/4508/
https://www.businessinsider.com/jussie-smollett-2007-false-information-case-2019-2
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/jussie-smollett-hate-crime-netflix-documentary-comeback-1236487316/
https://www.citybureau.org/black-caucus-timeline
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chicago-police-department-routinely-violated-people-s-rights-feds-say-n706586

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A landlord claimed that his daughter was haunted, by the deceased wife of a former tenant. Most shocking of all, this ghost was accusing her husband of murder. Ghosts aren't real (most of the time, sorry), but murders plots can be very, very real. But who is the real murderer here?

SOURCES:
Gentlemen’s Magazine archives (by Samuel Johnson) 
“Ghostly Hands and Ghostly Agency,” Jennifer Bann
“Missionaries, Methodists, and a Ghost,” Travis Glasson
“We See a Ghost: Hogarth’s Satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs,” Bernd Krysmanski
“Samuel Johnson and Spectral Media,” Rachael Scarborough King 
Elizabeth [called the Cock Lane Ghost], Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

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From 1998 to 2001, a man claiming to be visiting our "world-line" on a mission from the year 2036 enthralled a corner of the nascent internet with his explanations of time travel, the world of the future, and the wars to come. While few of his "predictions" came true, his story remains haunting -- who was this enigmatic early forum poster? Why did he claim time ended in 2564? How did he know so much about early computers? And where, or when, did he go?

SOURCES
https://rileyraccoon.substack.com/p/time-travel-tales
https://vimeo.com/11661023
https://web.archive.org/web/20170622161305/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11945420/Who-was-John-Titor-the-time-traveller-who-came-from-2036-to-warn-us-of-a-nuclear-war.html
https://www.discoveryuk.com/mysteries/john-titor-the-internets-most-mysterious-time-traveller/
https://web.archive.org/web/20260102173511/https://www.postbulletin.com/rochester-magazine/john-titor-who-was-the-time-traveler-that-visited-rochester
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/john-titor-time-traveler-predictions-story
https://johntitorresearch.wordpress.com/

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Anastasia Romanov inspired a play, an Academy Award-winning movie, and a Dana-and-Lizzie-loving animated feature. But the legend of the missing princess is stranger and more involved than a movie with a talking bat might have led you to believe.

SOURCES:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/february-6/anastasia-arrives-in-the-united-states
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-fresh-dna-authenticate-bones-russia.html
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19600212&id=tuUlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EncDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7046,629353&hl=en
https://www.nytimes.com/1958/08/24/archives/anastasia-grand-duchess-or-grand-hoax-the-last-act-in-the-drama-of.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20250331152750/http://www.readthehook.net/86004/cover-jack-amp-anna-remembering-czar-charlottesville-eccentricshttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68616
https://blog.newspapers.com/anna-anastasia-anderson/
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/grondahl-anastasia-or-imposter-local-author-12950650.php

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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 from another planet several times over the course of many months, sparking a frenzy of speculation and excitement. Then again...a Florida man...
SOURCES:
War of the Words by Craig R Meyers
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/16/congress-uap-obama-aliens-real-podcast/88699039007/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-files-released-scientists-trump/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/09/10/ufo-hearing-video-hellfire-missile/86073340007/
Professor Andrew Fraknoi

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A girl showed up at a town near Bristol in 1817 wearing a turban, and everyone went nuts. 

SOURCES:
"The Caraboo Hoax," Margaret Russell
John Matthew Gutch's narrative
English Eccentrics, by Edith Sitwell
"Devonshire Characters and Strange Events"
"British Performances of Java," Matthew Isaac Cohen

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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 the 20th and 21st centuries: Google's various exploits (Pokemon Go!), that time the BBC produced a piece on Spaghetti Trees, and the Curious Case of Sidd Finch, the Mets pitcher who could throw 168 MPH.

SOURCES:
https://www.rutgers.edu/news/how-did-april-fools-day-get-started
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/03/april-fools/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/01/king-kugel-an-april-fools-history-lesson/
https://frenchmoments.eu/april-fools-day-traditions-in-france-le-1er-avril/
https://bylines.scot/society/hunt-the-gowk-day/
https://www.scotsmagazine.com/articles/hunt-the-gowk-april-fools-scotland/
https://www.icelandreview.com/news/iceland-celebrates-april-fools%E2%80%99-day/
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-april-fools-day-pranks-coronavirus-2021-3
https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10/15/curious-case-sidd-finch
https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10/21/si-60-curious-case-sidd-finch-mark-mulvoy-myra-gelband
https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/sports/legendary-sidd-finch-finally-makes-it-to-mets-home-game-40-years-later/
https://niemanstoryboard.org/2014/04/01/whys-this-so-good-no-90-george-plimpton-and-sidd-finch/
https://www.milb.com/news/legend-of-sidd-finch-lives-on-in-brooklyn-145695984
https://sports.yahoo.com/still-curious-catching-those-brought-150800240.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/sports/baseball/an-old-baseball-april-fools-hoax.html
https://www.mlb.com/news/sidd-finch-hoax-recalled-at-sabr-convention/c-133074166
ESPN: Unhittable: Sidd Finch and the Tibetan Fastball
BBC: Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino 
https://fox59.com/news/national-world/greatest-april-fools-prank-of-all-time-the-story-of-the-bbcs-spaghetti-trees/
https://retrospectjournal.com/2023/09/25/the-spaghetti-trees-of-ticino/
https://ericajurus.ca/2024/04/02/the-tradition-of-pranking-and-fooling/
http://www.grandvoyageitaly.com/cucina/when-i-was-a-kid-i-learned-that-spaghetti-grew-on-trees

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Stockmarkets are now battlefields. An aide-de-camp arrived in Dover with the startling, thrilling news that Napoleon had been killed, and the British stock market behaved accordingly. The problem was, Napoleon wasn't dead.

SOURCES:
Napoleon Is Dead by Richard Dale
Trial transcript

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Messages from extraterrestrial visitors? Evidence of strange atmospheric conditions? No one knows where crop circles come from or what they mean. Except, we do know, but for believers, that's the start, not the end, of the story. The history of crop circles is a case study in conspiratorial thinking...plus art in wheat fields!

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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. Barnum's very first foray into showbusiness was purchasing an enslaved woman named Joice Heth, whom he displayed as a public spectacle, promoting her a 161-year-old woman who once nursed George Washington.

SOURCES:
'The Showman and the Slave' by Benjamin Reiss
'Medical Apartheid' by Harriet A. Washington
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-pt-barnum-greatest-humbug-them-all-180967634/
“P.T. Barnum and Africa” Bernth Lindfors 
The Colossal P.T. Barnum Reader, edited by James W. Cook

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