9: The April Fools Edition: Pranks and Hoaxes Gone Wrong

We’re celebrating April Fools’ Day with some of our favorite pranks and hoaxes. Brandi starts us off by talking about Balloon Boy. This is the story of the six year old boy who floated off in his dad’s flying saucer. Or did he? This story captivated the nation, but if you’re anything like us, you’ll have forgotten like 95% of it. Then Kristin talks about three pranks that ended in lawsuits. There’s the waitress who was promised a Toyota, but given a toy Yoda. Then there’s the civil servant whose co-workers duped him into thinking he had a looming deadline. The poor guy cut his vacation short. He even developed heart palpitations. We end with a woman who spent five days thinking a criminal was stalking her. You’ll never guess who was behind the prank. Seriously. You’ll absolutely never guess. It’s insane. And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: “Office joke backfires, city bans more pranks,” The Globe and Mail “City hall boss on stress leave after prank” London Free Press “Three top city managers named in Howlett prank” London Free Press “Court Approves Lawsuit Against Toyota Over Cyberstalking Ad Stunt,” Wired.com “Toyota Loses a Marketing Lawsuit in Ruling That May Chill Advertiser Pranks,” CBS News “Woman Sues Toyota Over ‘Terrifying’ Prank,” ABC News “Saatchi Sued Over “Terror Marketing Campaign” for Toyota,” CBS News “Former Hooters waitress settles toy Yoda suit,” USA Today In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “The Ballad of Balloon Boy” by Justin Peters, Slate.com “Doubts Came Early in Balloon Incident” by Brian Stelter and Dan Frosch “Heene family says ‘balloon boy’ headlines ‘wasn’t a hoax’” by Elizabeth Murray, Today.com