"ELVIS IS ALIVE AND RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT" The story behind the nonsensical Weekly World News
6/19/202647 min
Peter Hoysted, AKA Jack the Insider is back with a look at the humorous and bizarre stories of the newspaper founded in 1979 by a former CIA officer.
“174 MPH SNEEZE BLOWS OFF WOMAN’S HAIR”, “BABY BORN WITH TATTOO”, “GARDEN OF EDEN FOUND!”
These were some of the fantastical headlines that led the comedic black and white US tabloid, Weekly World News (WWN).
Peter Hoysted, AKA Jack the Insider is a true crime writer and a columnist for The Australian.
He was a fan of the nonsensical reporting during its hard copy days, and even started his own journal along similar lines in Australia.
Peter tells the story of Generoso Pope Jr, the ex-CIA officer who founded WWN in 1979 and entertained readers with fictional news stories, often with a paranormal slant.
Further information
You can read Weekly World News online.
Listen to previous Conversations interviews with Jack the Insider: Chow Hayes, Australia's first gangster (2017), the Fine Cotton affair (2019) and the disgraced former police detective Roger Rogerson (2024).
This episode was produced by Alice Moldovan. The Executive Producer was Eliza Kirsch.
This episode covers aliens, alien love child, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, satirical news, fake news, comedy, giggle, Elvis, newspapers, newsgathering, bigfoot, mermaids, man-fish, CIA, conspiracy theory, David Icke, lizard people.
To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsPeter Hoysted· Guest0:00
ABC Listen: podcasts, radio, news, music, and more There's a moment in the '90s movie Men in Black where Tommy Lee Jones tells Will Smith that if they're going to find the aliens they're looking for, they're gonna have to consult the reputable newspapers.
Richard Fidler· Host0:19
And so they pick up some copies of the scandal rag, The National Enquirer, and its black and white sister paper, The Weekly World News. The Weekly World News is now defunct, but at its peak it sold upwards of 1.2 million copies per issue. It ran important stories with headlines blasted across its front page like, "Termites eat the Eiffel Tower," "174 mile per hour sneeze blows off woman's hair," "Alien in slammer after fist fight with Bill Clinton over Hillary," and my personal favorite, "Man is all thumbs," with a picture of a man who has no fingers, only thumbs. Today, Jack the Insider makes a welcome return to Conversations to make sense of all of this. Jack Hoosted is a true crime writer and a columnist for The Australian, and he's the co-author of The Fine Cotton Fiasco. Today, Jack's here with the story behind these stories, how and why The Weekly World News was founded by a former officer of the CIA, and how in its dying gasp it passed on the baton