It’s April Fools' Day — a day historically associated with pranks. The history of April Fools' dates back at least as far as the 17th century, when scores of Londoners were invited to the Tower of London for a hoax event billed as the annual “Washing of the Lions.”
Those, of course, were simpler times in many ways. And centuries later, in an increasingly virtual society, it’s harder to know who and what information we can trust.
Amanda Kehrberg, who studies digital culture at Arizona State University, joined The Show to discuss, starting with remembering the first time she fell for an April Fool’s prank.
Full conversation
AMANDA KEHRBERG: When I was in middle school, I remember very clearly driving through the cornfields of Indiana with the NPR playing on the radio, and they were doing this whole in-depth report on how it was a new fashion trend among very trendy tweens and teens to get their belly buttons removed.
NPR CLIP: First came belly button rings and tummy tattoos, and now a new trend is showing up on the midsections of America's youth and for some parents, this may really cause their stomachs to turn over. Some kids, mostly young women, according to the mag Teen Buzz, are getting their navels removed. The fad started as so many seem to in Southern California.
KEHRBERG: I was sitting there with my parents and I'm in the backseat just going, “What is going on?” And none of us are questioning this.
SAM DINGMAN: Now, knowing a thing or two about the editorial style of public radio, I have to imagine that these reports were delivered in a very probing, intellectually rigorous sort of style, which must have added to the credulousness.
KEHRBERG: Oh, yes.
NPR CLIP: We decided to find out for ourselves if this procedure is safe. We called Dr. Lucius Stern, a cosmetic surgeon, to find out more about what is officially called a navalectomy. “You know, when I first heard about this procedure, I was really shocked as a physician and as a mother.”
DINGMAN: Something that's interesting to me about that is I feel like that is markedly different than the pranks you were talking about pulling in high school, where it's like, this is obviously a joke, whereas something like this report on NPR is purposely playing with the line of credibility.
KEHRBERG: I think so. Yeah, BBC has done definitely some of the most famous April Fool's pranks. In 1957, they had a fake report, about three minute report, on the harvesting of spaghetti from trees in Switzerland.
BBC CLIP: Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland is not of course carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry. Many of you, I'm sure will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantation.
KEHRBERG: And they had to put out a pretty big retraction because they got hundreds of phone calls asking where people could buy a spaghetti tree.
BBC CLIP: 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 …
KEHRBERG: That balance of sincerity and absurdity is just beautifully managed.
DINGMAN: But, something that to me is encoded in all of these examples is this idea that a broadcast that comes from the official channel, whether we're talking about National Public Radio or the BBC or even with something like “War of the Worlds.” If it is broadcast from an official-seeming outlet, it is true, and our starting point ought to be that this is objective truth. And it seems like that is what allowed these places to clown on people in the way that they did.
KEHRBERG: Absolutely, yeah.
DINGMAN: We don't so much live in that world anymore.
KEHRBERG: We do not.
DINGMAN: Obviously, the Trumpism of fake news has a lot to do with that, but it seems like it started before Trump became kind of the self-appointed arbiter of what is real and what is fake when it comes to the news. When would you say that that began?
KEHRBERG: Well, I mean, as a digital media scholar, I want to be like, “Well, with digital media, of course.” But I was just talking to my students the other day about what a big deal it was when Eisenhower had to come out and say like, “oh yeah, that plane that went down in the Soviet Union that we told you guys was a weather balloon and definitely not a spy plane,” and all of the mainstream media believed him because of course, that was the relationship. That was actually a spy plane.
DWIGHT EISENHOWER: Ever since the beginning of my administration, I have issued directives together in every feasible way the information required to protect the United States and the free world against surprise attacks. And to enable them to make effective preparations for defense.
KEHRBERG: There have been a lot of moments throughout history that even predate digital media or the movement of news into platforms that scholars would say are definitively about entertainment and can't support this more objective, accuracy focused sense of journalism to begin with, whether it's television, moving into social media platforms and other forms of digital media.
But I think certainly throughout the 20th century, getting into the 21st, we've had this increasing devaluation of the expert, and as we get into these more participatory technologies where we're breaking down boundaries, right? So nobody is just a passive audience member anymore. We're all talking and sharing and commenting on what we're seeing, and that is part of the performance as much as the performance itself. But what that means is that we don't have the strict delineation of rules anymore, so there isn't this perfect sense of, well, there's this objective journalist who is not a human being like the rest of us that we should all gather around and listen to, and not push back or question.
DINGMAN: I had this thought, as you were just saying all of that, that it almost seems like what used to be a prank is almost now more of a test.
KEHRBERG: Yes, yeah.
DINGMAN: To see how much you trust the outlet that you're getting your information from. And it's like there's this imperative to do your own research about everything and make sure you're not being taken in by some sort of bias or something like that, or at least that's the world that some in the tech community envision for how we take in information.
KEHRBERG: Yeah, and there's such a paradox to this moment. And I think, speaking of that role of news organizations, like you say, that finding and establishing that credibility because it is so much harder now is so much more vital to the social responsibility theory of the press, to democracy, functioning society, right? I think that really gets to the heart of why speaking of NPR did decide not to do these April Fools’ pranks anymore, that they just didn't hit in the same way anymore. It wasn't kind of the role of these journalistic institutions to play in this way. Now brands are still absolutely playing in that space.
DINGMAN: I was going to say though, case in point, you and I are sitting here on public radio having a very serious minded conversation about pranks rather than pulling a prank.
KEHRBERG: Rather than pulling a prank. Yeah.
DINGMAN: But you were saying about pranks.
KEHRBERG: Yeah, so one of the ones that I looked up, and I was looking at the history of brands doing April Fools’ pranks, was Taco Bell in 1996 ran newspaper ads, saying that they had purchased the Liberty Bell and it was going to now go by the name the “Taco Bell Liberty Bell.” Now that's another one that sounds a little different to our 2025 ears.
DINGMAN: Yeah, could be a matter of time before the Liberty Bell is the “Taco Bell Liberty Bell.”
KEHRBERG: Yeah, yeah.
