Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Debling a chokerate boarding and I'm fair at out
Speaker 1: and nowadays, at least in terms of the Internet, we're
Speaker 1: all pretty used to, maybe even desensitized to the idea
Speaker 1: of the news hoax, those bits of information that are
Speaker 1: passed off as real news. I mean we can probably
Speaker 1: all think of some examples of them. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's always those out there about celebrities who've died when
Speaker 1: really they haven't. And we do one of our own
Speaker 1: every year, don't we. We do. We have an annual
Speaker 1: April fools Day article, which is kind of a staff favorite,
Speaker 1: I would say, picking out what it's going to be,
Speaker 1: somebody gets to write it, and then um, I sit
Speaker 1: next to tech Stuff Jonathan Strickland and he's written a
Speaker 1: few of them before, and usually April Fool's Day, you
Speaker 1: can hear him trying to judge if the articles passed
Speaker 1: off is real anywhere, and which which news sites are
Speaker 1: running it as it as a real story. But it's
Speaker 1: always kind of fun just to help this fake out article.
Speaker 1: It's usually something pretty outlandish like animated tattoos or green
Speaker 1: Air Force one or or something that is a little
Speaker 1: bit plausible, but not so much if you if you
Speaker 1: think about it for a while, especially if example Fools Day,
Speaker 1: so someone might be in danger of falling for one
Speaker 1: of those. But we're usually not in danger of falling
Speaker 1: for these Internet hoaxes because they're not coming from so
Speaker 1: called legitimate news sources. Most of the time. A lot
Speaker 1: of times they're passed along through social media, or you
Speaker 1: get an email that looks like it's made to look
Speaker 1: like a news article that was forwarded to you or
Speaker 1: something like that. But what if these are actually proliferated
Speaker 1: through what we consider to be legitimate media, So you
Speaker 1: read it on a on a newspaper website that you
Speaker 1: respect and read frequently, or or see it on a
Speaker 1: news channel exactly, or hear it on the radio, And
Speaker 1: that's kind of what happened in the situation we're about
Speaker 1: to discuss, though it might not have been intended. As
Speaker 1: to the ninety eight War of the World's broadcast has
Speaker 1: been called the greatest hoaks in the history of broadcasting.
Speaker 1: And you could call it the greatest I guess because
Speaker 1: so many people believed it The broadcast was an original
Speaker 1: play based on H. G. Wells War of the World,
Speaker 1: a science fiction novel about a Martian invasion of the Earth,
Speaker 1: but enough people thought it was real that it caused
Speaker 1: mass panic, and for that reason, the situation has been
Speaker 1: a case study for sociologists and psychologists and for media critics,
Speaker 1: who cite it as an example of the power of
Speaker 1: the media. But what made it so realistic in the
Speaker 1: first place, and why did so many people believe it,
Speaker 1: Especially since the broadcast was labeled upfront as fiction. They
Speaker 1: weren't trying to fool anybody, or at least it seems
Speaker 1: that way. So we're going to go into all of that,
Speaker 1: and we'll also want to take a look at the
Speaker 1: brains behind the broadcast, in particular Orson Wells. He's probably
Speaker 1: best known for his work on Citizen Kane, one of
Speaker 1: the most influential films of all time, but many people
Speaker 1: say that this radio broadcast is what made Hollywood take
Speaker 1: note of him in the first place, how he really
Speaker 1: got his start. So we're going to start with him.
Speaker 1: George Orson Wells was born May sixth, nineteen fifteen, in Kenosha, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: into an upper middle class family. He was the second
Speaker 1: son of Richard Wells, a successful inventor, and Beatrice Wells,
Speaker 1: who was an accomplished pianist. And Orson is said to
Speaker 1: have been pretty precocious while he was growing up, and
Speaker 1: something of a child prodigy too. He was reading and
Speaker 1: writing Shakespeare at age three, and at age five he
Speaker 1: had walk on roles at the Chicago Opera. Pretty impressive,
Speaker 1: but things in his life started to shake up a
Speaker 1: little bit when he was around six years old. That's
Speaker 1: when his parents separated, and when he was nine years old,
Speaker 1: his mother got hepatitis and died, and after that he
Speaker 1: traveled the world with his father a couple of times.
Speaker 1: He went to Africa and Europe and Asia, but in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty his father passed away too and that left him.
Speaker 1: That left Orson Wells and orphan at age fifteen, so
Speaker 1: he studied at the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois,
Speaker 1: where he was pretty mediocre student in general, even though
Speaker 1: he showed great interest in studying drama, so he graduated
Speaker 1: at sixteen. He wanted to go to work in theater,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't really break in right away, so instead
Speaker 1: he studied at the Art Institute in Chicago for a
Speaker 1: while and even worked as a reporter briefly, which seems
Speaker 1: to be everybody's job when they a lot of reporter
Speaker 1: openings back then another aren't now. In nine thirty one, though,
Speaker 1: he kind of went off on a different path. He
Speaker 1: went to Ireland and that fall he found theater work
Speaker 1: in Dublin with the Gate Theater. He remained there for
Speaker 1: about a year and then did a tour of Spain
Speaker 1: and Morocco before finally heading back to Chicago. And when
Speaker 1: he got back there, he joined Catherine Cornell's company, Theater
Speaker 1: Company in nineteen thirty three and stayed with her until
Speaker 1: about nineteen thirty four. Then he finally made it to
Speaker 1: New York, which is where he wanted to go, and
Speaker 1: he made his Broadway debut in nineteen thirty four in
Speaker 1: Romeo and Juliet. But while he was getting the supporting
Speaker 1: roles on stage, Orson sought out radio work to make
Speaker 1: ends meet. Yeah, and soon he really made a name
Speaker 1: for himself doing these dramatic radio performances, and he narrated
Speaker 1: a new series called The March of Time for two years,
Speaker 1: and in ninety seven he became famous as the voice
Speaker 1: of a mysterious crime fighter on the radio show The
Speaker 1: Shadow and Evil. He knows what evil lurks in the
Speaker 1: heart of men. Yeah, I mean or some Wells. He
Speaker 1: has a great voice. But as a result of the Depression,
Speaker 1: Wells had also become involved in the Federal Theater Project,
Speaker 1: which was part of the New Deal's Works Progress administration,
Speaker 1: and through that he started working with a guy named
Speaker 1: John Houseman, and together they worked on a couple of
Speaker 1: avant garde productions, including a production of Macbeth with an
Speaker 1: all African American cast and um. Their partnership continued and
Speaker 1: developed into a pretty interesting one. Yeah. Nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: Wells and Houseman formed the Mercury Theater with only a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in capital to start with. They had a
Speaker 1: few stage hits, and then in the summer of eight
Speaker 1: they made a deal with CBS to produce weekly radio
Speaker 1: dramas with the Mercury Theater cast, and they called themselves
Speaker 1: a Mercury Theater on the Air. The program was initially
Speaker 1: called First Person Singular, but I don't think that's stuck.
Speaker 1: Kind like Mercury Theater in the Air. Better, definitely more dramatic,
Speaker 1: but they were originally slated to run nine to ten weeks,
Speaker 1: and the Mercury Theater broadcasts included adaptations of Dracula, a
Speaker 1: Tale of two Cities around the world in eighty days,
Speaker 1: so famous works. And the broadcasts were done in first
Speaker 1: person narrative, and they incorporated things like stream of consciousness,
Speaker 1: diaries and letters, and they also used sound effects and
Speaker 1: music in an innovative way. Despite all that innovation, though,
Speaker 1: the ratings weren't all that great at first, but the
Speaker 1: show scheduled for October thirtieth ninety eight, the Halloween show,
Speaker 1: War of the World was really about to change the
Speaker 1: fate of this radio company entirely so. According to many sources,
Speaker 1: including Richard Cavendish in History Today, Howard Kotch, who was
Speaker 1: the primary on the script of this adaptation of War
Speaker 1: of the World's privately thought that H. G. Wells book,
Speaker 1: which was published back in was pretty dated and pretty
Speaker 1: boring actually, and Orthan, Wells and Houseman and Cotch all
Speaker 1: wanted to figure out how to spice it up a
Speaker 1: little bit, make it compelling for the for the radio
Speaker 1: format especially. Yeah, it's hard to think of a classic
Speaker 1: work like War the World's needing any work but apparently
Speaker 1: it did in this instance, and so Cotch worked on
Speaker 1: a script for this and he banged it out in
Speaker 1: six days. Now, we're going to stop for a second
Speaker 1: here and tell you a little bit about the story
Speaker 1: in case you don't know War of the Worlds, and
Speaker 1: you can see then the differences between the script change
Speaker 1: the original story. Right, So the original story took place
Speaker 1: in England, but Kotch changed the setting to grow Over Mills,
Speaker 1: which is a village in central New Jersey. And this
Speaker 1: the idea behind this was to bring the spookiness of
Speaker 1: the Martian invasion closer to home for the American listening audience.
Speaker 1: He also presented H. G. Wells story as a series
Speaker 1: of increasingly alarming news bulletins that start by reporting a
Speaker 1: meteorite landing in New Jersey. Now, the news bulletins is
Speaker 1: kind of like the key to the whole thing of
Speaker 1: definitely why this hoax worked, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: think that it was Orson's idea. We're not sure about that,
Speaker 1: but just putting that out there. The meteorite turns out
Speaker 1: to be this extraterrestrial capsule that opens up to reveal
Speaker 1: terrifying creatures that burned by standards to death with heat rays. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there's another twist that the capsule later reveals
Speaker 1: a giant machine that starts reaking havoc in New Jersey
Speaker 1: and New York. And as the news bulletins report more
Speaker 1: and more Martian landings all over the country, the situation
Speaker 1: quickly escalates into total war. Still though, when the script
Speaker 1: was finished, I mean, it sounds like a pretty pretty
Speaker 1: cool story, and we know the history of it now,
Speaker 1: But when the script was done, everyone involved thought it
Speaker 1: was still pretty silly and dull. Yeah. According to an
Speaker 1: article by James Narramore in the journal Humanities, Orson almost
Speaker 1: withdrew the project at the last minute in favor of
Speaker 1: an adaptation of Laurena doone. But they went on a
Speaker 1: scheduled at eight pm on October and by eight thirty
Speaker 1: members of the Mercury Theater on the air were surprised
Speaker 1: to find out that some people actually thought the story
Speaker 1: was real. So let's look back now and try to
Speaker 1: understand the panic that came from this radio drama. So,
Speaker 1: looking back on some of the more extreme reactions to
Speaker 1: the broadcast that we're going to talk about later, most
Speaker 1: sources describe it as a quote panic or a math hysteria.
Speaker 1: So what really happened here, Well, people basically started acting
Speaker 1: really irrationally. They were trying to flee to their cars.
Speaker 1: They were going to warn neighbors and people in churches
Speaker 1: that the world was ending. So traffic was jammed and
Speaker 1: communication systems were jammed because so many people were trying
Speaker 1: to call the police and the radio stations to find
Speaker 1: out what, what should we do? Where should we go?
Speaker 1: And we have a few examples here of things that
Speaker 1: the New York Times reported the next day, just to
Speaker 1: kind of give you a play by play of things
Speaker 1: that a really happened, or at least were reported to
Speaker 1: have happened. For one thing, at least a score of
Speaker 1: adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: in Newark, a single block at Head and Terriff and
Speaker 1: Hawthorne Avenue, more than twenty families rushed out of their
Speaker 1: homes with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to
Speaker 1: flee from what they thought was a gas raid. And
Speaker 1: some of them even began moving household furniture. I don't
Speaker 1: know if they were trying to save it or blockade
Speaker 1: their houses or just do something. And just to clarify,
Speaker 1: people were worried about a gas raid because of the
Speaker 1: giant machine Sarah mentioned before was supposed to be spring
Speaker 1: poison gas in the story on the radio, so they
Speaker 1: thought that they had to protect themselves. The switchboard of
Speaker 1: the New York Times was overwhelmed by about eight hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five calls. A man who called from Dayton, Ohio, asked, quote,
Speaker 1: what time will it be the end of the world.
Speaker 1: With so many of these calls coming into the newspapers,
Speaker 1: a lot of papers found it advisable to follow up
Speaker 1: on them and see if there was any truth to
Speaker 1: reports despite the fantastic content. So finally the Associated Press
Speaker 1: decided to send out the following bulletin at eight forty
Speaker 1: eight pm. And here here it goes note to editors
Speaker 1: queries to newspapers from radio listeners throughout the United States
Speaker 1: tonight regarding reported meteor fall which killed a number of
Speaker 1: New Jersey it its are the result of a studio dramatization.
Speaker 1: The a P and then the police stations also had
Speaker 1: to issue statements so that the officers knew what was
Speaker 1: going on. So here's an example of what the New
Speaker 1: Jersey State Police put out they teletyped the following quote
Speaker 1: note to all receivers w ABC broadcast as drama regarding
Speaker 1: the section being attacked by residents of Mars period imaginary
Speaker 1: affair period end quote. It's it's brief and to the point,
Speaker 1: and I like the addition of the imaginary fair at
Speaker 1: the end. But just to make sure, just to make sure, guys,
Speaker 1: this is not for real. But it's sort of hard
Speaker 1: to tell exactly how many people were part of this
Speaker 1: so called mass panic. The New York Times made reference
Speaker 1: to thousands of people, and a lot of sources make
Speaker 1: a reference to the generic millions. And you'll see estimates
Speaker 1: that about half of the six million people who heard
Speaker 1: the broadcast believed it was true, and about half of
Speaker 1: those people actually panicked. So that leaves us with approximately
Speaker 1: one point two million people. But not everyone thinks the
Speaker 1: numbers were really that high. That's true. Some experts believed
Speaker 1: that these inflated numbers are the result of just a
Speaker 1: lot of hype. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael
Speaker 1: Sucklau wrote that quote, the panic was neither widespread nor
Speaker 1: as serious as many have believed at the time or since.
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody died, nobody was killed or committed suicide,
Speaker 1: so there weren't those results from it. But he says
Speaker 1: that our perception could be the result of a couple
Speaker 1: of things. For one thing, it could be just the
Speaker 1: media loving and really just making a big deal out
Speaker 1: of the story. You know, it was a story that
Speaker 1: a lot of people wanted to read and they put
Speaker 1: it out there. Another possibility is that it was just
Speaker 1: inaccurate reporting on the part of survey respondence. A lot
Speaker 1: of people were surveyed after the fact to kind of
Speaker 1: study the situation and find out what really happened. So
Speaker 1: whatsuckle I was saying here is that people after the
Speaker 1: fact may have claimed that they heard the broadcast when
Speaker 1: they actually didn't. They might have just seen their neighbor
Speaker 1: panicking and done the same yeah, or heard the story
Speaker 1: and decided to pass it along. Um, maybe they just
Speaker 1: wanted to feel part of it. Well, So, regardless of
Speaker 1: how many people did panic, the fact remains that a
Speaker 1: lot of people really did believe that the War of
Speaker 1: the World's broadcast was real. But why did they believe that?
Speaker 1: Why would people believe this story about a Martian invasion
Speaker 1: just because they heard it on the radio. That question
Speaker 1: is especially pertinent since the program started out with a
Speaker 1: very clear introduction, this is how it this is how
Speaker 1: it went orson Wells and the Mercury Theater on Air
Speaker 1: presents the Are of the Worlds by H. G. Wells,
Speaker 1: And to add to that, a couple of times in
Speaker 1: the middle of the broadcast they say you're listening to
Speaker 1: an original dramatization by Mercury Theater on the Air of
Speaker 1: War of the Worlds by H. G. Well So it
Speaker 1: seems like if you caught one of those parts it
Speaker 1: would be pretty clear that it was it was fiction.
Speaker 1: But there are a few theories as to why people
Speaker 1: thought that this was real. The first theory posits that
Speaker 1: people just came into the program too late and didn't
Speaker 1: hear that opening line. So, as we mentioned, ratings for
Speaker 1: the Mercury Theater on the Air weren't that great at
Speaker 1: the time. In their time slot, they had to compete
Speaker 1: with the more popular Chase and Sandborn Hour on NBC.
Speaker 1: So after that opening line of this broadcast, the broadcast
Speaker 1: shifts to a weather report that transitions into a music
Speaker 1: program uh performance of Raymond Roquello and his Orchestra, So
Speaker 1: you're listening to the seemingly normal radio program for a
Speaker 1: good couple of minutes before the first news interruption about
Speaker 1: gas eruptions on Mars actually occur. Hers. So the theory
Speaker 1: is that this news interruption was timed, perhaps purposely timed
Speaker 1: perfectly to the commercial break of the Chase and Sandborn Hour.
Speaker 1: So people would have been flipping around during the commercial
Speaker 1: break as we often do easy Latin music listening, and
Speaker 1: decided to stick around for a minute exactly um and
Speaker 1: so when they were switching channels, when they switched to CBS,
Speaker 1: they would have just heard this annything later than gentlemen,
Speaker 1: from the Meridian Room in the Park claus Of Hotel
Speaker 1: in New York, today, we bring you the music of
Speaker 1: Raymond Ricuello and the doctors show the touch of the
Speaker 1: finish Raymond Ricuello leadt with LA company, Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: We interrupt our program of dance music to bring you
Speaker 1: a special bulletoo, from the undercontinent of a radio on you.
Speaker 1: At twenty minutes before a central time, Professor Farrell of
Speaker 1: the Mount Gettings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions
Speaker 1: of incandescent gas occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars.
Speaker 1: The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving
Speaker 1: towards the Earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pearson of the
Speaker 1: Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation and describes the phenomenon
Speaker 1: as quote like a jet of blue flame shots m
Speaker 1: a gun unquote. We now return you to the music
Speaker 1: of Ramon Rocquelo playing for you in the Meridean room
Speaker 1: of the Park Laza Hotel situated in downtown New York,
Speaker 1: so you can see there where where it would have
Speaker 1: sounded just like a normal interruption. It does sound like
Speaker 1: a real interruption. And the fact that Mercury Theater on
Speaker 1: the air was still unsponsored at that point really helped
Speaker 1: because there weren't any commercials breaking in to remind people
Speaker 1: that they were actually just watching a show. Also, there
Speaker 1: are a few other effects that took place during the
Speaker 1: show that really added to the reality of all of it.
Speaker 1: The interviews with real sounding experts like Professor Pearson, a
Speaker 1: noted astronomer, Lloyd Gray and natural history museum expert, and
Speaker 1: also a man on the street. You know things that
Speaker 1: real radio news programs were doing at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the interviews they sounded really kind of authentic. I thought,
Speaker 1: at least listening to this broadcast with the interviewer asking
Speaker 1: people to speak up and things like that, interrupting each other,
Speaker 1: it sounds very natural. It doesn't sound like something that
Speaker 1: would have been rehearsed and performed. It's not totally perfect,
Speaker 1: I guess, and the sound effects of background noise kind
Speaker 1: of add to that authenticity. So here's an example of
Speaker 1: an interview that would illustrate this point. Would you mind
Speaker 1: Benny one side place back? Here's Mr Willmots, owner of
Speaker 1: the bond here. You may have some interesting fact to it.
Speaker 1: Let moment, would you please tell the radio audience as
Speaker 1: much as you remember this rather unusual visitor that dropped
Speaker 1: in your backyard as step posted. Please, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: this is Mr Willman Well, I wass sisting in the
Speaker 1: radio post in louder. Please find me a louder please
Speaker 1: poses Yes, I was listening to the radio and kind
Speaker 1: of drowsing. A professor fellow was talking about Mars. So
Speaker 1: I was half dozen and half yes, yes, this woman,
Speaker 1: and then what happened? Well, as I was saying I
Speaker 1: was listening to the radio kind of halfway. Yes, this
Speaker 1: willen and then you saw something? Not first off, I
Speaker 1: heard something? And what did you hear? Hissing sound like this,
Speaker 1: kind of like a fourth of July rocket? Yes, then
Speaker 1: what I turned my head out the window and would
Speaker 1: have sworn I was to sleep and dreaming. Yes, I've
Speaker 1: seen a kind of greenish streak, and then zingo stopping
Speaker 1: smack the ground knocked me clear out of my chair. Well,
Speaker 1: why are you frightened, Mr Willman, Well, I'm quite sure
Speaker 1: I reckon. I was kind of r Thank you, mister Wilma,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Best fladding ladies and gentlemen. You've
Speaker 1: just heard Mr Wilmot's owner the farm where this thing
Speaker 1: has fallen. That type of on the spot coverage was
Speaker 1: also familiar to people, so the broadcast really took advantage
Speaker 1: of that fact. Since the Hindenburg explosion in n seven,
Speaker 1: people were used to the on the spot, guy on
Speaker 1: the street kind of news coverage, and some even say
Speaker 1: that orson Welles had the actors listened to those older
Speaker 1: broadcasts so they knew exactly what they were trying to replicate,
Speaker 1: kind of studied them and Finally, another theory as to
Speaker 1: why people would have believed this hoax is that listeners
Speaker 1: were just vulnerable at this time because of what was
Speaker 1: going on in the world. And I mean, we have
Speaker 1: kind of talked about and going especially through the New
Speaker 1: York Times stuff, and it's kind of amusing to see
Speaker 1: in some cases, at least the way people reacted or
Speaker 1: the way the police department reacted. But some of the
Speaker 1: issues that were going on, we're pretty serious. I mean,
Speaker 1: for one thing, a lot of people point to anxiety
Speaker 1: that may have been latent in the population at this
Speaker 1: time after years of economic depression. Also, the Second World
Speaker 1: War was looming in Europe, so that had people on edge.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the show aired just after the Munich crisis,
Speaker 1: which was a war scare, which may have caused some
Speaker 1: people to think that the invasion wasn't actually extraterrestrial it
Speaker 1: was just a human war, which actually is scary enough.
Speaker 1: It is scary. And regardless of exactly why people believed
Speaker 1: this radio drama, whether they thought it was an enemy
Speaker 1: invasion or an alien invasion, they did believe it and
Speaker 1: it led to some not so great publicity for CBS. Consequently,
Speaker 1: and initially for Orson Welles too, so he had given
Speaker 1: the final word and the broadcast basically saying that it
Speaker 1: was all just a story and CBS's version of a
Speaker 1: good Halloween joke essentially, but a lot of people were
Speaker 1: angry when they realized it was fiction. That FCC issued
Speaker 1: a statement calling the program quote regrettable. Lawsuits were drawn up,
Speaker 1: even H. G. Wells threatened to sue for them its
Speaker 1: use the quote misuse of his novel, and CBS had
Speaker 1: to come out and publicly apologize and promised not to
Speaker 1: create any quote simulated news broadcast that could cause harm.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of backtracking immediately after after
Speaker 1: the show came out. There was an Orson Wells even
Speaker 1: retreated from public view for a little while. But actually,
Speaker 1: once the desk settled, it became very clear that this
Speaker 1: broadcast really put him on the map at the young
Speaker 1: age of twenty three. The Mercury Theater on the Air
Speaker 1: continued for a while and even got the sponsorship of
Speaker 1: the Campbell Soup Company, so they went from being a small,
Speaker 1: unsponsored show to really having a new name family fund
Speaker 1: kind of. Yeah. Well, they got moved to a better
Speaker 1: time slot and they were renamed The Campbell Playhouse, so
Speaker 1: they had a little backing behind them. Orson Wells also
Speaker 1: got a contract with R. Chaos Studios and moved to
Speaker 1: Hollywood to write, produce, direct, and act in Citizen Kane.
Speaker 1: And of course he made a lot of other films too,
Speaker 1: so he was really prolific in that respect. Hard Cotch
Speaker 1: also went into film and had a very successful career.
Speaker 1: He received an awesome here in nineteen forty four for
Speaker 1: the Casablanca screenplay, and even H. G. Wells finally changed
Speaker 1: his tune. The controversy spurred renewed interest in his novel.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of those any publicity is good
Speaker 1: publicity kind of cases, I think, and he came to
Speaker 1: realize that. Yeah. So in retrospect it seems like a
Speaker 1: genius move because of the publicity it did get for
Speaker 1: all these people, and many saw it as such at
Speaker 1: the time. I read one take on it that said,
Speaker 1: if you weren't fooled by it, you probably thought this
Speaker 1: whole thing was genius, especially if you saw your neighbor
Speaker 1: running out right, and if you were, if you were
Speaker 1: the neighbor running out, if you were fooled by it,
Speaker 1: then you were probably one of the ones who were
Speaker 1: outraged and thought it was really, really a bad thing
Speaker 1: to do. And I think that's probably true of most hoaxes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're in on it, it's cool. If not, if
Speaker 1: your feelings are hurt, your feelings may be hurt and
Speaker 1: you may feel a little bit silly about it. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a it's an interesting question. Since
Speaker 1: we weren't around then, do you think that you would
Speaker 1: have fallen one for those hoax Sarah? Well, hopefully I
Speaker 1: would have been a careful listener and I would maybe
Speaker 1: pick up on some of the clues that it wasn't real. Um,
Speaker 1: if you would have been there exactly at eight pm
Speaker 1: to hear the intro, yeah, i'd have my clocks that
Speaker 1: I'd be like one of the old fashioned pictures where
Speaker 1: the family is sitting in front of the radio waiting
Speaker 1: for the show to be on. Um. I don't know, though,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I would have done.
Speaker 1: What about yourself, Yeah, I'm not sure either. I would
Speaker 1: like to think that I wouldn't be fooled, but you'd
Speaker 1: be out there with a towel over your head. Maybe,
Speaker 1: Unless I wouldn't be out there but I'd definitely be
Speaker 1: checking things out. I might make a phone call. I
Speaker 1: can't be sure. It's interesting to wonder about, and I
Speaker 1: am interested to know what our listeners think. Is there
Speaker 1: is a good one. Um, how would you have reacted
Speaker 1: if you heard the War of the World's Radio We
Speaker 1: may have to put that one out there, but I
Speaker 1: think before we can find that out before we sign
Speaker 1: off today. Well, it's worth mentioning that there have been
Speaker 1: some other more recent War of the World's Panics, and
Speaker 1: including one in nineteen forty nine involving a broadcast that
Speaker 1: took place on Radio Quito in Ecuador, but this one
Speaker 1: was actually deadly. Thousands of people rioted in the streets.
Speaker 1: Some people thought that monsters were actually invading the country,
Speaker 1: and some people thought that it might actually be neighboring
Speaker 1: Peru invading. So some similar things going on at the
Speaker 1: time as far as what people thought. Um. After discovering
Speaker 1: that it was all a hoax, though, mobs attacked and
Speaker 1: torched the radio station, killing twenty people, and since then
Speaker 1: there's been other similar hoaxes around the world, one in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: New York in nineteen sixty eight, one in Providence, Rhode
Speaker 1: Island in nineteen seventy four and one in northern Portugal
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight, so these things still happened. I
Speaker 1: noticed though, there hasn't been one of these radio hoaxes
Speaker 1: since the Internet became pretty common. And I wonder now
Speaker 1: if it would just be put down pretty pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: you know, if the flames would be put out before
Speaker 1: it got to the point of people rioting. But I
Speaker 1: don't know it could it could accelerate, So if you
Speaker 1: think about it, it's true. I would encourage people to
Speaker 1: listen to the broadcast. I listened to the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and I think Sarah did too, and um I listened
Speaker 1: to a couple of times actually, and I heard different
Speaker 1: things both times. It was interesting to sit there and
Speaker 1: imagine what it would be like to, uh have that
Speaker 1: as your form of entertainment. Yeah, either either enjoying it
Speaker 1: as fictional entertainment, knowing it with such, or trying to
Speaker 1: imagine what the people who thought it was a real
Speaker 1: news report were actually thinking. And you may recognize little
Speaker 1: bits and pieces of it here. It's been sampled in
Speaker 1: popular culture. For example, if you if there are any
Speaker 1: fans of the band Pin Back out there, They sampled
Speaker 1: parts of this for their song Boo on one of
Speaker 1: their albums, so that's just like a plug for one
Speaker 1: of my favorite bands there. If you know of any
Speaker 1: other places in popular culture that this has been sampled,
Speaker 1: please write to us at History Podcast at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. I think that's all we have today though,
Speaker 1: on the War of the World's broadcast, and now we're
Speaker 1: going to move on to snor mail. So some of
Speaker 1: you may have heard our recent podcast proposal from Jim
Speaker 1: to Julie on our Victoria and Albert episode, and we
Speaker 1: heard from both of them recently. They are now engaged,
Speaker 1: So podcast proposal success. We were pretty excited at our
Speaker 1: cubes when we got that email where we yeah, we
Speaker 1: were jumping up and down and they sent us. We
Speaker 1: put this on Facebook up a great save the date
Speaker 1: that's superhero theme. So congratulations to Jim and Julie. But
Speaker 1: are we really invited? You don't know, I know, we
Speaker 1: don't know. If we don't know, if it's just sharing
Speaker 1: the well, we sent the save the date to everybody
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page now though, so I don't think
Speaker 1: they probably don't want thousands of people at their weddings
Speaker 1: on that note, we thought we would share this postcard
Speaker 1: that we received from David from the Alhambra. Um Katie
Speaker 1: and I did an episode on it back in the fall,
Speaker 1: so here's what he wrote. Hi did Lena and Sarah.
Speaker 1: After hearing a show, I was inspired to take the
Speaker 1: thirty hour flight to visit the Alhambra from Australia. The
Speaker 1: place really is too beautiful for words. I sat in
Speaker 1: the shadow of the Alcazaba having a Spanish tortilla sandwich,
Speaker 1: listening to your Rick Lunquista podcast just to make sure
Speaker 1: I didn't miss the thing. I thought life could not
Speaker 1: get better. Podcast in headphones, tortilla in hand, and gorgeous
Speaker 1: gardens as far as you can see. Until it did.
Speaker 1: My partner and I decided to get married then and
Speaker 1: there a series of events your podcasts began audiose, So hekay,
Speaker 1: we're just like the romantic podcast streak going it seems
Speaker 1: we do. We We love those stories and we will
Speaker 1: admit that it's girly and apologize to anyone who was
Speaker 1: offended by our love of love. We just did a
Speaker 1: podcast on Like Possible Invading Aliens, so we think it
Speaker 1: balances out. It's the best of both worlds. The war
Speaker 1: of the world's best of both world is excellent. So
Speaker 1: congratulation David and your partner, and congratulations again to Jim
Speaker 1: and Julie. You guys look very happy together. If you
Speaker 1: want to email us, it doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: grand dromantic story or an alien story. Yeah, just just whatever.
Speaker 1: Any suggestions you have on radio dramas, orson welles old Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I know lots of you have all sorts of Hollywood suggestions,
Speaker 1: go ahead and send them to us. That history podcast
Speaker 1: at past stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Miston History, and we're on Facebook, as I already mentioned.
Speaker 1: And if you would like to learn a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the possibility of life on Mars, which is
Speaker 1: something sort of indirectly explored in the topic we talked
Speaker 1: about tonight, we have an article by our own Sarah
Speaker 1: Doality on our website called is there really water on Mars?
Speaker 1: And you can look it up by entering that topic
Speaker 1: into our the search bar on our homepage, which is
Speaker 1: at www dot how stuff works dot com. Were sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the
Speaker 1: Future Join House to work staff as we explore the
Speaker 1: most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Top
Speaker 1: Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on
Speaker 1: iTunes