SYMHC Classics: Three Legendary Pranks

This 2021 episode covers three prank stories, including a joke that became a living legend, a large-scale prank that created havoc, and a televised hoax that reminds us all of the importance of critical thinking. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 3:08Speaker 05

  Happy Saturday, everybody. January 24, 1929, was the first appearance of a prank on the campus of Brown University, one that has continued on and on since then into the 21st century. So, happy birthday to that prank, which is one of the three that we talk about in today's Saturday Classic. This originally came out on December 1, 2021. Enjoy.

• 3:34Speaker 05

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 3:45Speaker 05

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, not too long ago, Tracy, I was looking up another possible episode, which will go nameless in case it comes up, because I still might do it.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  And I stumbled across a list of historical pranks and hoaxes. And we've covered some of those before, but some of these were new to me, and it got me thinking about such things, and whether any one of them might make another good episode. But really, the ones I was most interested in are a little bit shy of having enough information to be an episode all their own. So today, I grouped a few together. If you are listening, you may be wondering, why not hold this until April Fool's Day? That seems like a perfect match, and it is. But here's the answer. It's twofold. One, I just didn't want to.

• 4:33Speaker 05

  I just didn't feel like it. If I'm interested in something, I tend to want to do it usually right then. And if I wait, my interest may wane, and then where will we be? And two, I will confess to everyone now, I'm not the biggest fan of April Fool's Day. Here is why. It's a little bit of a snooty thing. It always feels a little bit like an amateur hour of irritation pranks. I don't like that.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  Which is not to say all pranks are bad, because some of them are very clever and legitimately fun. And there are things that happen on April Fool's Day that some people do that I really love. But two of the ones we're covering today are actually pretty delightful, and one was an April Fool's prank. One of the ones that we're talking about today would have left me in a full-blown rage if I had been a part of it. But all of these pranks are fairly legendary, and they're all quite different. So you're gonna get a smattering of things. So we've got a joke that kind of became a living legend. We have a large-scale prank that created complete havoc. And we have a televised hoax that reminds us all of the importance of critical thinking.

• 5:41Speaker 05

  So first of these three, on January 24th, 1929, at Brown University, a notice was posted on the university hall bulletin board that advertised an upcoming lecture. And here is what it said. "On Thursday evening at 8:15 in Sales Hall, J.S. Carberry will give a lecture on archaic Greek architectural revetments in connection with Ionian philology. For tickets and further information, apply to Professor John Spath." So this was the birth of a prank seemingly with no end. From the beginning, there were doubters as to the identity and credentials of J.S. Carberry.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  Upon seeing this lecture flyer, one of Professor Spade's colleagues, Professor Ben Clow, is said to have inserted the word "not" into the text so that it read, "Carberry will not give a lecture." We should note here, too, that even in the documentation that you can find at Brown University, sometimes the word "philology" in that lecture title is listed as though it said "phenology."

• 6:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Clow, which is also a name I've heard people say as "cluff," because there's lots of ways to say things, followed up with Professor Spade to ask him what this was all about. And Spade had loads of details about Carberry to share with this doubter. Carberry was a professor of psycho-ceramics, the study of cracked pots. He had a wife named Laura, who was described as ungrammatical, and two daughters, Patricia and Lois. Patricia was a poet, and Lois hunted puffins. There was even an assistant in the mix to fill out this story. That was a Truman Grayson, who was prone to accidents and being bitten by things that begin with the letter "A." This all just sounds like a description from a children's book to me.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's all very silly right out of the gate. And clearly, this was all just a bit of fun. But unlike the other pranks on today's show, Josiah's story did not fade or blow over. It grew. It became further embellished, and it became a 20th-century legend. Of course, because of that legendary status, the Carberry story has not only grown, but it has also developed some inconsistencies over the years. For example, his birthday may have been in 1820. His career may have started in 1825. Both of those milestones have at times been attributed instead to that year that the flyer first appeared in University Hall, 1929.

• 8:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  In May of 1929, the school paper reported that Carberry, who at that time was referred to as an expert in Hendo ceramic pottery, was going to the Southwestern Arkansas Normal Institute as a loner from Brown University. Carberry has had a number of titles attached to his name, but the one that sticks the most is "Professor of Psycho-Ceramics."

• 8:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, depending on what you look at, you'll see him listed in a variety of different ways. It's usually always related to pottery in some form or another. Over the years, there have been a great many lectures that Josiah S. Carberry was scheduled to deliver, only to have some conflict arise to prevent the presentation. But there has always been a very good reason for such cancellations. Primarily, that reason was his world travels to places allegedly like Turkey, Hawaii, or Mongolia that would keep him away.

• 9:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  But travels are no. It seems that Carberry, whose middle name is apparently Stinkney, manages to be ever present at Brown in one way or another. Over the years, his family has produced a great deal of correspondence and placed so many notices about their various doings in the paper that the Providence Journal banned them completely.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's apparently a kill order that if the name Carberry comes up, not to run it. Like, it's not real.

• 9:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's like maybe like no more coin hordes, except those are real.

• 9:42Speaker 05

  In 1955, Carberry sent a check from his travels abroad in the amount of $101.01. And the accompanying missive indicated that that money was intended to set up a memorial fund for his, quote, "future late wife," which should be named not after her, but should be called the Josiah S. Carberry Fund. That $101.01 was seed money. In receiving it, the university had to agree to establish a donation drive every Friday the 13th and every leap day of February 29th, where anyone could donate their loose change into Brown jugs to add to the fund. That money was to be used to purchase books that the good professor might or might not approve of. It has been used to purchase things.

• 10:27Speaker 05

  You can find a list of them, the Brown University Library's site. In 1992, Carberry also wrote a cookbook, The Carberry Cookbook from Nuts to Soup. It includes contributions from other people, but he was the primary editor. And the proceeds of that were also to go to the Carberry Fund. It contained recipes for such delights as chocolate icebox pie, shrimp in beer, and stuffed camel, and boiled water.

• 10:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Chocolate icebox pie is a real thing.

• 10:58Speaker 05

  Yes, and that came from a contributor. Shrimp in beer is that you can find that recipe online, and it's basically like dump shrimp in beer.

• 11:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  No, thanks.

• 11:10Speaker 05

  All right.

• 11:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  So that 1955 donation, the following year, an article titled Josiah S. Carberry, The Professor and the Legend, appeared in the Brown Daily Herald. And in it, the return address of this famed initial donation to the Carberry Fund was exposed as being the New Hampshire State Liquor Store. So these Carberry mysteries continue.

• 11:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, there are so many that we're not gonna list here, but imagine more such things happening over the years. And over the years, Carberry's name has appeared on a number of academic papers, and it has been mentioned in a variety of magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, which claimed he was the world's greatest traveler. His books have been cited in the footnotes of other books. In 2013, 16 Minutes ran a segment on Carberry. That's right, 16, not 60. It is a very artful spoof of the 60 Minutes story style, produced by the Brown Club of Rhode Island and Friends of Brown University Library. And that particular piece is full of very fun Carberry lore, including the information

• 12:18Speaker 05

  that there have even been allegedly financial concerns over the mysterious faculty member, particularly whether he may have been added to the payroll at some point in time.

• 12:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 2005, a letter from Carberry appeared in the Brown Daily Herald, under the pleading headline, "Make Me Famous Again, Brown." He relays that he's on a fishing trawler out of Russia, sifting through pottery shards that the crew pulls up while they quest after a mythical whale. But despite a lot of chatter, his real aim really seems to be securing his legacy by making sure that the Carberry Sandwich, which at that point has two chicken patties on it, is upgraded with a third patty. You may worry about his fame, he has, incidentally, never been photographed with his face visible.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  Carberry, it appears, is either immortal or merely blessed with both longevity and vitality. It seems like as long as his name lives on, it's going to stay that way.

• 13:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  And before we jump into our next story, which is a very ambitious prank, we will take a break and have a word from our sponsors.

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• 17:39Speaker 05

  So for this next one, the street that the hoax took place in is what gives it its name. And that was at 54 Burner Street, London. On November 27th, 1810, starting at 5 a.m., Burner Street became so overrun with visitors and deliveries to the residents there that the entire street became gridlocked, and the blocks surrounding the address were also jammed to the point that passage was impossible. And that whole mess was the result of a hoax, a hoax that started with a bet.

• 18:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  So a quick note on the dates here. Write-ups about this from the 1840s have put this hoax as happening in the year 1809. You'll see that repeated a lot, but searching through newspaper archives online, all the contemporary write-ups about it are from 1810.

• 18:29Speaker 05

  And the architect of this whole thing was a man named Theodore Edward Hook. Hook was born on September 22nd, 1788, so he was 22 at the time of the Burner Street hoax. His father was composer James Hook, and Theodore was the second son born to James and his first wife. Theodore's brother, James, was 18 years old when Theodore was born, and their mother died when Theodore was still fairly young. Some accounts place her death in 1802. That means he would have been right around 14. He was sent to a seminary school while he was still a boy, but he was very precocious there. At one point, it was discovered he had skipped three full weeks of school. And although he eventually found that he really enjoyed writing,

• 19:13Speaker 05

  he never really did like school, no matter which one he went to, and wrote later in his life, quote, "My school life was not a happy one. I was idle and careless of my tasks. I had no aptitude for learning languages. I hated Greek and absolutely shuddered at Hebrew. I fancied myself a genius, and anything that could be done in a hurry, I did tolerably well, but application I had not."

• 19:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Even when his father arranged for Theodore to attend Oxford with the intent that he would become a lawyer, Theodore almost tanked the whole thing by making jokes during the entrance ceremony that infuriated the chancellor. This was more or less how he conducted his life, and he became a well-known writer and wit. As writer J. Murray put it in 1843, quote, "He carried the spirit of rebellious frolic with him." And we're giving you all this biographical information to set up who the sort of person was who would pull this particular type of involved prank. In the book, The Lives of Wits and Humorists, written in 1862, author John Timms put it this way,

• 20:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  quote, "Sheridan, as we have seen in the present volume, had a great taste, we may say, constructive skill in hosting, but he is far exceeded by Hook. He was known to do things like order a coach with a friend and then stage a fight as they got close to their destination. So then he would jump out of the coach and leave his friend to pay the fare. He did a lot of fare dumping as jokes.

• 20:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't think that's so funny, right?

• 20:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Let's stick your friends with the bill as a joke over and over.

• 20:54Speaker 05

  He did a lot of that. Um, you know, humor's subjective. Uh, one day in November 1810, Hook, it's said, was strolling down Burner Street with a friend and noticed a house which is described in accounts as, quote, "particularly neat and modest in appearance." It belonged to a shopkeeper's widow, and for some reason, Hook got an idea. And he is said to have turned to his friend and said, quote, "I lay you a guinea that in one week, that nice, quiet dwelling shall be the most famous in all London."

• 21:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  When his friend took the bet, Hook went into action to make sure he would win it. Over the next four or five days, Thomas Hook wrote a thousand pieces of correspondence. These were orders to all manner of tradesmen stating the need for services, all of them to be scheduled on November 27th and all in a short period of hours. Some were written to public officials and socially prominent Londoners requesting that they call on the address on the morning of November 27th, all on some important matter or another, depending on what Hook thought would most entice the recipient to show up. For example, one note which was reported in the papers read,

• 22:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  quote, "Mrs. Tottenham requests Mr. Blank will call upon her at 2 tomorrow as she wishes to consult him about the sale of an estate."

• 22:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, presumably those names were left out so that people would not be harangued for having fallen for this very silly prank. And in addition to sending all of those missives out, Hook rented a room across the street from Mrs. Tottenham's and sat with two of his friends watching the whole thing play out.

• 22:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  There are some inconsistencies with this story right out of the gate because Hook himself wrote about it, but it's not known what degree of license he took with the material. In his version, for example, he says that this happened in 1809 and he indicated that he and his friends had worked out the plan over a longer period than just a week. But the question that never gets answered in any account is why Hook selected that particular house. There's been some speculation that he had some kind of disagreement with Mrs. Tottenham or that one of his friends did. But there's also precedent in his behavior that he just did a lot of things with no specific motivation at all. It's entirely possible that he saw what looked like

• 23:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  the most boring house on the street and he decided that was a challenge.

• 23:29Speaker 05

  Now, we mentioned at the beginning of this story that this shut down all passage in the area and that cannot have been a surprise. Hook knew that the nature of the street layout was going to cause a jam because there were not as many connecting points in the city at that time that would allow you to pass through. So according to an 1843 write-up of the affair at the time, quote, "Oxford Road was not approachable either from Westminster or Mayfair or the city, otherwise than through a complicated series of lanes. It may be feebly and a far-off guest what the crash and jam and tumult of that day was." That's because Burner Street kind of connected up to Oxford. It was one of the few connections. And in fact, Hook himself later estimated

• 24:13Speaker 05

  that this whole thing had impacted about a quarter of the town.

• 24:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  In short, it was an abysmal mess. The Morning Post ran a story about what had happened the next day, opening with a line that must surely- Have delighted Theodore Hook, quote, "The greatest hoax that has ever been heard of in this metropolis was yesterday practiced in Burner Street, Oxford Street." The paper describes a dozen deliveries all arriving at once.

• 24:41Speaker 05

  And that's really like the light version because this did start first thing in the morning with a chimney sweep and the woman of the house, Mrs. Tottenham, had not ordered a sweep and so that person was sent away and reportedly a dozen more chimney sweeps showed up not long after and that was just the first of what would be a long line of tradesmen who appeared at the house that day. According to various accounts, coal wagons showed up, bakers with wedding cakes, dentists, jewelers, wig makers, midwives, even an undertaker who had made a custom coffin for the very alive Mrs. Tottenham. Furniture began to arrive, couch after couch and then organs and even butchers with massive

• 25:25Speaker 05

  deliveries of meat that had not actually been ordered. Basically, anything one might order for delivery had been ordered by Hook as part of the prank and it had been ordered in multiples.

• 25:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  The mayor of London, having received what he believed to be a letter regarding a meeting from Mrs. Tottenham, arrived by carriage. Although by that time, the street was already clogged with deliveries and onlookers who had gathered to marvel at all these comings and goings and often to mock the various tradespeople who were being turned away from the house. The mayor was taken to the nearby Marlborough Street Police Office to get him out of the crowd. To try to contain things, police officers were posted at the street corners to preemptively turn deliveries away and it took until the late evening to get the crowd to go home and get the street unjammed.

• 26:15Speaker 05

  This all may have seemed like a really funny idea to Hook, but it was actually a big issue for a lot of people. The Quarterly Review wrote about the incident and outlined just how much damage far beyond mere nuisance had been done by the prank. Quote, "Perhaps no assassination, no conspiracy, no royal demise, or ministerial revolution of recent times was greater gossip." Send to the newspapers than this audacious piece of mischief. In Hook's own theatrical world, he was instantly suspected, but no sign escaped whether him or his confidants. The affair was beyond that circle, a serious one. Fierce were the growlings of the doctors and surgeons, scores of whom had been cheated of valuable hours.

• 26:59Speaker 05

  Attorneys, teachers of all kinds, hairdressers, tailors, popular preachers, parliamentary philanthropists had been alike victimized and were in their various notes alike vociferous. But the tangible material damage done was itself no joking matter. There had been an awful smashing of glass, china, harpsichord, and coach panels. Many a horse fell, never to rise again. Beer barrels and wine barrels had been overturned and exhausted with impunity amid the press of countless multitudes. It had been a fine field day for pickpockets. There arose a fervent hue and cry for the detection of the wholesale deceiver and destroyer.

• 27:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  That write-up was written several decades later, and as it indicates, Hook was not immediately identified as the hoaxer. He feigned illness for a couple of weeks and then went to the country under the guise of seeking wellness through fresh air and rest. There was, however, a satirical print that was released in 1810 that hints that people knew it must be Hook's work. There's a speech bubble in the picture that has the mayor saying, "Oh, this is a pretty hoax, but I'll find it out by hook or by crook," with the word "hook" capitalized like it's a proper name.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  As the news of this hoax hit the press, similar copycat pranks started popping up around England and even some in France. And Hook was apparently miffed by the imitators and wrote as much as his autobiographical, but fictional persona Gilbert Gurney, intimating that anyone doing the same prank after him was a plagiarist. He later wrote, "Copy the joke and it ceases to be one. Any fool can imitate an example once set, but for originality of thought and design, I do think that was perfect."

• 28:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hook, who of course, won his bet, does not appear to have been sobered by all the trouble that he caused. After things blew over and he returned from the country, he kept brewing up pranks, including one where he gave a well-known actor of the day, Romeo Coates, forged tickets to a lavish party being thrown by the Prince Regent. As for Mrs. Tottenham, there's not much information on how she recovered after what must have really just been an exhausting and confusing and infuriating day. I would have set something on fire, but uh, the third hoax on our list is in fact, my favorite, and it is not nearly so stressful to think about as the chaos of Burner Street. And we will get right to

• 29:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  it after we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.

• 29:39Speaker 07

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• 30:10Speaker 02

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• 30:26Speaker 03

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medul- Thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type two. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic

• 31:11Speaker 03

  reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plant to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 31:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 32:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  On April 1st, 1957, a short film ran on the BBC Current Events show Panorama titled Spaghetti Harvest in Tchino. It explains how the early spring had resulted in, quote, "an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop in Tchino, Switzerland, which is right on the border with Italy." According to the segment, which ran less than three minutes, quote, "The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer. There's always the chance of a late frost, which, while not entirely ruining the crop, generally impairs the flavor and makes it difficult for him to obtain top prices in world markets."

• 33:24Speaker 05

  This informative.

• 33:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Peace continues, explaining that Swiss efforts at growing spaghetti are quite small compared to Italian spaghetti agriculture. And it makes references to the vast spaghetti plantations in the Po Valley of Italy. All of this information is conveyed via a voiceover as the camera pans over these idyllic scenes of women harvesting spaghetti from the trees that the spaghetti dangles from the branches before it's plucked. The pesky spaghetti weevil, according to the narration, has disappeared, and that has led to a bumper harvest. The freshly picked spaghetti is so beautifully uniform, we're told, thanks to careful cultivation by skilled growers over a period of years.

• 34:10Speaker 05

  And the voiceover of this short film was Richard Dimbleby, the host of Panorama, and he is earnest in his delivery throughout. It is very convincing. When Michael Peacock, who approved the project, was interviewed about it in 2014, he told the BBC of Dimbleby, quote, "He knew perfectly well we were using his authority to make the joke work. He loved the idea."

• 34:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  So, were viewers convinced? That's really a mixed bag. The phones at the BBC started to ring as soon as the segment finished. Some people seemed to want to correct them to explain that spaghetti did not grow on trees. Some viewers clearly did get the joke. There were occasional family arguments that had people calling the network to settle the matter about whether it was real or a hoax. Some people just thought it was in poor taste that a news program would run any sort of fake story. And a handful reportedly wanted to know if there was somewhere they could purchase spaghetti trees. Eventually, somebody had the idea to have the operators at the BBC continue the joke

• 35:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  with gullible callers telling people who wanted their own spaghetti tree to place a sprig of spaghetti into a tomato sauce tin and, quote, "hope for the best."

• 35:25Speaker 05

  If I were a kid and I was told that by an operator at the BBC, I would 100% be doing it.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  This project was so well-produced that even the director general of the BBC, Sir Ian Jacob, was momentarily astounded to learn that spaghetti grew on trees. As the story goes, his wife quickly set him straight on that matter, although they did turn to a reference book, the Encyclopedia Britannica, to settle the matter. It turns out, though, there was no entry for spaghetti at that time.

• 35:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  The segment and viewers' reactions to it really made news around the world. One of the most negative write-ups Holly found appeared in Alberta, Canada's Calgary Herald, under the headline "Frightening Joke." In this column, writer Jack Stepler takes a very alarmist tone, stating, quote, "But what is disturbing is that because Mr. Dimbleby delivered a monstrous hoax, straight-faced, wrapped it up in plausible-sounding discourse about the tribulations of a spaghetti farmer and fortified it with a faked film, a large number of people did take it seriously." He then goes on to say some pretty racist and xenophobic things, basically along the

• 36:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  lines that if Britain's smart and informed public can be fooled by such things, how can the less-educated people in other countries ever discern truth from fiction, especially when it's delivered in such a serious manner? He then goes on to compare this prank to the, quote, "Hitlerian formula of telling a big enough lie and telling it often enough to be believed." Stepler sort of sums it up in a way that's part, "People need to be critical thinkers," and part, "Trusted news people should never give prank news."

• 37:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, it struck me as a little startling that he went right for a Hitler comparison. And I'm like, it wasn't like they aired this over and over to try to convince anybody. It was like two minutes and 40 seconds.

• 37:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right. And look at the date.

• 37:22Speaker 05

  Right, and they did, at the end of it, mention, like, that's the news from April 1st. So you may be wondering how such a project, that ended up being a bit controversial, was hatched at a well-respected news show. Apparently during one of the team's meetings earlier that year, they had noticed that April Fool's Day was going to fall on a Monday. That was the day of the week that Panorama aired. And a contract cameraman from Austria named Charles De Jager had the idea. He later claimed it was based on a teacher who used to tell the class that they were so stupid, they'd believe that spaghetti grows on trees. He was already scheduled to go on a shoot in Switzerland, so he pitched this as something that they could easily do

• 38:05Speaker 05

  on the cheap. And so he was given a budget of 100 pounds by the show's editor, Michael Peacock, and off De Jager went.

• 38:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this fake harvest required 20 pounds of uncooked spaghetti. So you may hear that he used cooked spaghetti. If you have only ever used dry spaghetti in the box from the grocery store, that may be the only thing that makes sense to you. But there was no way for cooked spaghetti to stay off the branches of the trees. It's very slippery. It would just slide off. So they used freshly made but uncooked spaghetti. It was still flexible enough to hang gracefully from the trees, but it had enough surface texture left that it just didn't slide right off of there. But it also meant that it had to be kept just moist enough throughout the shoot. So as they prepped different angles,

• 38:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  they would keep the spaghetti damp between damp cloths.

• 39:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, if you've ever handled like fresh pasta, you know, it's got some bendiness to it.

• 39:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Speaker 05

  But it does pretty quickly start to harden up and not be quite so, so pliable.

• 39:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  So. And it's definitely not like when you try to scoop out your spaghetti that's been cooked and it just slides through your serving utensil.

• 39:20Speaker 05

  Yes. Lake Lugano on the border between Italy and Switzerland was the location for the shoot and locals were asked to harvest the spaghetti. They also got dressed in like Swiss national costume. They carefully draped it into wicker baskets like any other harvested tree fruit might be handled. And then they staged a drying setup where these quote, freshly picked noodles are left in the sun. There is also, of course, a scene at the end of this mini documentary showing the people enjoying their harvest. And that was actually also the cast and crew wrap meal, which they filmed to use in the final production.

• 39:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Once the footage was back at the BBC, producer David Wheeler wrote the script for it. Like Peacock, he credited Richard Dimbleby with being the most valuable asset they had in pulling off this stunt. In 2004, he said, quote, "He had enough gravitas to float an aircraft carrier."

• 40:13Speaker 05

  Although the reaction had been mixed and had perhaps made some of their viewers feel foolish, the people involved have pointed out in several different interviews over the years that this was a time when fresh spaghetti was really only just being introduced to most households in Britain and really kind of pasta in general. Up to that point, canned spaghetti was kind of the most common way a family of the British Isles might encounter it. So maybe they didn't know where it came from.

• 40:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Despite the whole dust up around it, Sir Ian Jacob wrote to De Jager to congratulate him, quote, "The spaghetti harvest was a splendid idea, beautifully shot and organized. This item has caused a great deal of delight one way and another."

• 40:55Speaker 05

  Over the years, the hoax has been revisited by the BBC as one of the earliest examples of television pranking. And often, coverage of it has included interviews with some of the people involved, some of which we've quoted here. In 2004, when he was interviewed about the prank as like a look back, producer David Wheeler said, quote, "We were criticized for doing it, but I had no regrets about it at all. I think it was a good idea for people to be aware they couldn't believe everything they saw on the television and that they ought to adopt a slightly critical attitude to it." And I chose that one because it seemed germane to our lives today.

• 41:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  And having worked on the internet since, what, 2003 or something like that? And having seen the long arc of companies writing fake April Fool's Day articles and making fake April Fool's Day products, I feel like that's fallen off a little bit.

• 41:59Speaker 05

  Right?

• 41:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  In more recent years, people got kind of tired of it. There's still some places that have like their tried and true April Fool's Day events that people seem to still enjoy, but this is an example of that that's a little earlier than, you know, I imagine it from my own time working for a website.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, this is sometimes pointed to you as being like the first televised prank. Not everyone in Great Britain had TVs at the time. The estimate of viewership was in the millions, though, so it was a significant number of people. But yeah, it's, um, at that point, maybe they had not come to that idea that like we should question things that show up on television. And I will say, you can find it online. It's really easy to find this footage. If not for the absurd subject matter, you would 100% believe that it was a documentary. It's filmed so perfectly. Nothing about it reads as campy as at all. It's definitely very much like played as straight as can be.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  So I suppose if you were not familiar with the production of pasta and, uh, you know, maybe had, had only been watching that news program for a bit and trusted it completely, maybe I would be, listen, if there were a spaghetti tree, I'd buy it. Spaghetti squash is good, but not quite as delicious.

• 43:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:20Speaker 05

  I'd be in.

• 43:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 43:50Speaker 02

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• 44:06Speaker 03

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains Trzepatide and should not be used with other Trzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.

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• 45:13Speaker 02

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 45:20Speaker 05

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 45:51Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.