Episode 6 of Bunkum & Ballyhoo rounds up a season on World War 2-related bullshit by looking at when lies and propaganda can be used for good, exploring the lives and times of the revolutionary queer surrealist artists Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, and how they stood up to Nazi oppression in occupied Jersey. Selected Sources: Disavowals by Claude Ca…

Episode 5 is a spooktacular Halloween special looking at Orson Welles' infamous Halloween 1938 radio production of War Of The Worlds, and the stories of mass panic and chaos when the American public believed that the Martians really were coming - or did they? Audio Sources: War Of The Worlds by Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre On The Air Charles C. Sh…

Episode 4 of Bunkum & Ballyhoo looks at one of the most notorious hoaxes of the 20th century - the Hitler Diaries; how a clumsy forgery fooled the world's press and one of England's most respected historians, why sometimes a lie only needs a particularly enthusiastic believer to take flight, and how these phony diaries connect to a notorious Holoca…

Episode 3 of Bunkum & Ballyhoo is a look at the magician Jasper Maskelyne, the claims that his magical prowess was employed in the fields of camouflage and espionage in World War 2, and why looking critically at the mythmaking around a dead old magician is still important in 2024. Audio Sources: Jasper Maskelyne for Pathétone - British Pathé The Mi…

Episode 2 of Bunkum and Ballyhoo once again looks at an intersection between professional wrestling and dubious politics, with the stranger than fiction story of how Norfolk professional wrestler Eric "Panther" Pleasants went from wrestling in Jersey to fighting for Hitler. Audio Sources: The Brits Who Fought For Hitler - History Channel Harwich Ne…

In the very first episode of Bunkum & Ballyhoo, professional wrestling historian Patrick W. Reed looks at The Masked Marvel, a South African wrestling superstar whose legacy outside the ring was far grizzlier than any punishment he inflicted inside it.