Humbug! Hoaxes in Literature and Culture.

I’ve decided to make my podcast on one of BBC’s most famous April fool’s hoaxes of  all time: The 1957 Swiss Spaghetti Harvest. In this hoax, BBC successfully fooled the nation in releasing footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees after announcing that Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop due to the mild winter. As a result, hundreds of viewers called BBC that day wanting to buy spaghetti bushes. Like the other podcasts we’ve watched, I plan to take advantage of background music circa 1950. It will be subtle but not overbearing, matching the informal tone I plan to use. I will probably mimick the War of the Worlds podcast in having some guest appearances from Spaghetti “experts” and maybe even a Swiss farmer (hopefully I can find a Swiss international student at Emory so that listeners don’t get too distracted laughing at my horrible accent). Altogether, I hope that in finding a balance between humor and analysis, I will be able to entertain and educate the audience.

For my hoax, I want to tell a fictitious story about Dobbs Hall being haunted. This topic will be well-suited for this medium because I can create many fictional sound effects and sound bytes that will appear to be real. I plan to include eye witness interviews, sound effects that resemble ghost sounds or ghost-like things, and a conversation between me and someone else about these hauntings like the conversation in Sawbones. I also want to including music and fictitious news reports like the War of the Worlds podcast.

I am deciding to do my podcast on the “Publius Enigma”- an internet phenomenon which suggests that Pink Floyd, one of the most successful bands of the 1960s and 70s had suggested encoded scavenger hunt for a “unique prize” in the album “The Division Bell”. I believe that doing a podcast for this hoax is a good idea because I can play the music through the podcast and transmit the hoax aurally rather than through the written word. This will certainly help with my credibility when breaking down the hoax. The War of Worlds podcast was able to use humor and a cleverly sarcastic tone to disprove the hoax, and thus I intend to use a similar approach in scrutinizing the Publius Enigma. Through a podcast, the tone be presented through fluctuations in ones voice and thus sarcastic humor becomes easier to portray.

For my podcast I have decided to talk about Taco Bell’s hoax to buy the Liberty Bell and rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. I plan on exploring this topic and the different public reactions. Starting off with reading the add to the listeners, I would give them a taste of the hoax to see if they would find it believable and put them in the shoes of those who originally saw this add. I’m thinking of making my podcast more informal, similar to that of the Sawbones podcast. I also intend to use sound effects like “The War of the Worlds”, and find testimonies of the public’s reaction to Taco Bell’s add in several papers of having bought the Liberty Bell. This source will have a great deal to talk about because the hoax is more recent, and received a lot of response.

http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/taco_liberty_bell

My podcast will be about the mysteries surrounding Area 51 in regards to aliens and extraterrestrial life. I’m not sure if I’m going to attempt a humorous and satirical podcast or a serious newscast type of podcast yet.  I plan on using sound effects and interviews from  people that worked on the inside to see the two perspectives of the believers and non-believers. I might’ve even found a video source to play for “authenticity”. I plan on using audio evidence and analysis for determining and/or making fun of the hoax-like qualities surrounding the stories of the Area 51 findings. The audience should get a paranormal feeling from the podcast and the information in it.

For our second assignment I’ve decided to discuss the effects of the Y2K hoax and how it successfully many going into the 21st century. I’ve decided to keep a very laid back and informal tone, similar to that in the Sawbones podcast. I believe that more of an informal, conversation setting will allow listeners to stay engaged, as though they are actually a part of the discussion. I find that more formal linguistics allow the audience to become more distant. I would also like to incorporate ‘guest speakers’ to obtain different perspectives about the hoax itself. Due to the fact that I know of people who were directly involved with this hoax (parents, grandparents), it would be interesting if I could incorporate their experiences with the Y2K hoax. Overall, I would like to create the most realistic podcast possible, establishing an atmosphere that enables it to sound as though it came from an actual broadcast.

I would like to make my podcast about an article called “Jimmy’s World” from the Washington Post.   The article was about a young kid named Jimmy with a drug addiction, and the author won a pulitzer prize for the article, but the article was later discovered to be fake.  There are several conversations as well as great potential for auditory imagery that make an analysis of this podcast suitable for a podcast format. Podcasts like “War of the Worlds” used sounds to make the story come to life.  There are scenes involving drugs, the family, and the classroom that will work well with this format.

The Hoax that I have chosen to create a podcast on is “The Hundred-Million-Dollar Robbery of the U.S Treasury”. It was an April Fools hoax, set in 1905 where newspapers published a fabricated story of a crime that had taken place in Washington D.C, however this story was created in Germany and aimed at German media, swiftly fooling Austria, Hungry and nearby countries. This Hoax is well suited for a podcast as it could potentially involve a lot of interviews, including eye-witnesses, pirates (as part of their form of escape was by ship), a U.S government spokesman and German reporters as well as an American reporter covering the story from different angles. There may also be investigators giving scientific background information.  All the interviews will shed different lights on the crime and have different emotions and voice tones. This is a dramatic hoax, like War of the Worlds and hence can use a serious news reporting voice and the effect of breaking news, where I will pretend to cut interrupt a show being televised at that time, swiftly changing the mood.

I would like to do my podcast on Genpets. People are still confounded by them and are not entirely sure whether to believe them or not. Through a podcast, not only would I be able to include my persuasive tone and dialogue to support Genpets, but I can also include primary testimony from people who actually have their own and can approve. While there are many pictures and lots of information regarding the product, what is left to really sell the items is a spokes person and anecdotes from actual clients to confirm the legitimacy and brilliance of such an innovative new toy that science has accomplished to produce.

My podcast will be based on the 1981 26-day marathon hoax. Kimo Nakajimi, a Japanese long distance runner, misinterpreted the directions as running for 26 days rather than 26 miles. The director knew very little Japanese, so his translation had taken on a whole different meaning to Kimo. In 1981, The Daily Mail had even published pictures, concrete evidence, of Kimo running.  In a sports radio show, I will follow the runner in a car and “interview” him every few day on his progress and how he is feeling.  In order to make it seem more credible, I will interview a few spectators on their struggle to urge him to stop running and their rare sightings of him throughtout the 26 days. I will try making whoever is Kimo to sound breathless and exhausted in order to make the audience seem as if the hoax is real. The realistic dialaogue and tone will hopefully effectively convey a sense of disbelief and awe