Well, it's April 1st, Venus is the star ascending.

Astrological analysts report that because President Reagan is an Aquarius...

Headless body and topless bar. We'll have a report.

Durand Durand tells us why the proposed value-added tax is a bad idea.

You don't hear a lot of this kind of stuff these days,

but public radio used to prank listeners every year on April 1st

with satirical broadcasts passed off as regular serious programming.

Fake news, but in a fun, if sometimes, cringy way.

Like in 1991, when WBEZ pretended to switch formats.

We're going from Talk, Talk, Talk to Rap, Rap all morning long, starting with the big man,

Kenny D, followed by...

Or this spoof interview with an erotic novelist.

Anyway, I had to edit it a little because I, you know, for a radio audience, but I think it still

retains the beauty, you know, of the scene.

Margot leaned toward him in his mouth found hers.

Her lips parted slowly and blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.

And then his hand moved quietly across blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.

She blank, blank, blank, blank, and he smiled down.

I'm Stephen Jackson, and that is, and he smiled down.

I'm Stephen Jackson, and that is how public radio has celebrated April Fool's Day.

But there's a long history of trickery here in Chicago, and it's not always isolated to a single day of the year.

On the show today, we're going to look closer at that history, because people have asked us a lot of questions about famous and infamous pranks over the years. To guide us through the morass, we have historian and educator Paul Dorica, and he has a longstanding interest in the weird backwaters of Chicago

...