Welcome to Calm History.

I'm Harris, and this podcast is my quirky mix of education with sedation.

So go ahead, lean back, put up your feet, and allow some calm history to distract and relax your overactive brain squirrels.

This treat is a strange stew of several topics related to prior episodes.

Listen to this. In Archive Episode number 26, I covered some famous hoaxes about the Lochness Monster. In Archive Episode No. 31, I covered

the history of flight in floating balloons.

And in archive episode number 33,

I covered the history of UFOs and flying saucers.

So, what if I mixed together all of these topics

and did an episode about a famous hoax,

which involves a large floating balloon that is shaped like a flying saucer?

Yeah, that'd be total monkey madness. Well, this episode is about a real hoax that involved a little boy and a large floating balloon

shaped like a flying saucer.

Yeah, total monkey madness. Now, this hoax may sound familiar to you for one of two reasons.

You may have heard my whispered version of this true story, which I did in 2022 for my other podcast, Sleep Whispers.

Or, you may know about the new documentary on Netflix, titled, Trainwreck, The Balloon Boy Hoax.

This bizarre hoax story even includes storm chasers, the TV show Wifeswap, Black Hawk Helicopters,

dirty rats, retracted confessions, a nervous fart, vomit, and more vomit.

And I'll finish this episode by explaining an ironic twist about this whole story.

In the near future, I may stitch together this episode with bonus episode number 35 about the Phoenix 5 prank,

so you can relax with a one-hour Silk Plus bonus episode about famous pranks and hoaxes.

But for now, the balloon boy hoax.

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