For a few tense hours in October 2009, the entire world watched as a homemade aircraft purportedly carrying a 6-year-old boy drifted in mid-air on live television. When the balloon landed, there was no boy inside.

Sources: Wife Swap Season 5, Episode 1: “Heene/Martell”
Wife Swap Season 5, Episode 18: “Heene/Silver”

The video that I showed Dana of the YourShakeDown invention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xAX2Y8-g4g

Compilation of news coverage from the time of the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAlwBcvb9RA

Internet Historian video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWhUvm8SunY&t=1s

Richard Heene’s response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axgyj7g5XZY

The gawker essay: https://www.gawkerarchives.com/5383858/exclusive-i-helped-richard-heene-plan-a-balloon-hoax

Transcripts from 911 and CNN: https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/ng/date/2009-10-21/segment/01

The Denver magazine that cracked the case: https://www.5280.com/the-balloon-boy-hoax-solved/

More reporting:

https://people.com/human-interest/10-years-later-balloon-boy-dad-insists-saga-no-hoax/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345497/Four-years-Balloon-Boy-aged-10-finally-set-worlds-youngest-heavy-metal-band-brothers.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/us/19balloon.html

https://nypost.com/2025/02/22/us-news/infamous-balloon-boy-starts-tiny-home-building-business-in-florida/

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Eighty years ago this summer, a young John F. Kennedy took a job as a journalist for Hearst newspapers, filing dispatches in the final days of World War II. Even the most seasoned JFK scholars often overlook this chapter.

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Fred Logevall and legendary director Rob Reiner join Dana Schwartz to explore the forgotten summer that helped shape Kennedy's worldview.

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If you liked this episode, check out the Very Special Episodes feed for more!

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Check out Fred Logevall's excellent book: JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century.

Listen to Who Killed JFK? from Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien wherever you get your podcasts. And go see Spinal Tap II: The End Continues in theaters this September!

And thanks to our JFK voice actor, Tom Antonellis, for nailing another role.

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Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English
Written by Joe Pompeo
Produced by Josh Fisher
Editing and Sound Design by Jonathan Washington and Josh Fisher
Additional Editing by Mary Dooe
Mixing and Mastering by Josh Fisher
Research and Fact-Checking by Joe Pompeo and Austin Thompson
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Executive Producer is Jason English

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In 'A Room of One's Own,' Virginia Woolf writes of Margaret Cavendish's reputation: "Evidentally the crazy Duchess became a bogey to frighten clever girls with." Dismisses as mad in her own time, and untalented later, Cavendish remains something of an enigma, a strange proto-feminist, proto-science fiction writer who remained entirely untamed.

Support Noble Blood:

— Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon
— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'

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