Speaker 1: Pushkin. There's a place in our world where the known
Speaker 1: things go, a corridor of the mind, lined with shelves
Speaker 1: cluttered with proof. Inside that place, behind another darker door,
Speaker 1: is our morgue. Not that kind of morgue. Our morgue
Speaker 1: is a collection of evidence. Detectives used to have morgues
Speaker 1: where they keep files on old cases. Newspapers kept morgues, too,
Speaker 1: were the mainly stored old research needs. The Last Archives
Speaker 1: is where we put stuff we've killed. Stories we liked
Speaker 1: a lot but couldn't use because the facts in the
Speaker 1: check there were lies, fakes, hoaxes. We can use this
Speaker 1: stuff in season one, which is about truth, but in
Speaker 1: this season, season two, all bets are off because this
Speaker 1: season is about doubt. Welcome to the Last Archive, Welcome
Speaker 1: to our vault of fakes. I'm Jillipoor. We've got a
Speaker 1: nifty old radio in here. Letful, Yeah, I can't see
Speaker 1: everybody who's that high and a shadow. Nineteen thirties radio
Speaker 1: is so good, but also so over the top. Turn
Speaker 1: the radio dial to the nineteen thirties and be skeptical,
Speaker 1: Be very very skeptical. Here is the Mandol. Whole life
Speaker 1: of the Countant worldwide, huntful fact. The man who makes
Speaker 1: his living by telling the truth, the man who knows
Speaker 1: the place is making us today. Yes, Bob Ridley has
Speaker 1: been there then, in more than two hundred countries, traveled
Speaker 1: over a half million miles, always seeking, always hunting for facts, facts,
Speaker 1: to foot you right with him on the front row
Speaker 1: seat of world events. Believe It or Not was one
Speaker 1: of the most popular American radio programs of the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: It had two conceits. First, it claimed that no one
Speaker 1: had traveled the world more widely than the host, Bob Ripley,
Speaker 1: and the second conceit Believe it or not, It's true,
Speaker 1: says Bob Ripley, and here he is. It's easy to
Speaker 1: believe what voices tell you on the radio, just like
Speaker 1: it's easy to believe stuff you read on the internet.
Speaker 1: But should you believe it or not? This episode, I'm
Speaker 1: going to play you a lot of radio because this
Speaker 1: episode is about the role of radio in the history
Speaker 1: of doubt. A few episodes this season are about radio.
Speaker 1: Listen to this stuff, but carefully me. I have to
Speaker 1: keep reminding myself because I find Ripley so fun to
Speaker 1: listen to. Don't have too much fun. Don't let your
Speaker 1: guard down. You're a historian, damn it. Still, even the
Speaker 1: ads are fun. Ladies and gentlemen. Believe the evidence of
Speaker 1: your own eyes. Pellmell gives you visible proof of its
Speaker 1: advantage to smokers. Your eye tells why, Your eye tells why.
Speaker 1: Good Lord. One problem was, just by being on the
Speaker 1: radio in the nineteen thirties, things sounded like news, or
Speaker 1: with the right copy and announcer, everything could be made
Speaker 1: to sound like news. After all, most people at the
Speaker 1: time got their news from the radio. Radio sounded so authoritative,
Speaker 1: so easy to believe. That raises for me a big question,
Speaker 1: what's the relationship between belief and doubt and democracy and
Speaker 1: the radio If, as I tried to point out in
Speaker 1: the last episode, there's something of a conflict between majority
Speaker 1: rule and freedom of thought. What if the majority starts
Speaker 1: telling you what to think, then radio is potentially pre
Speaker 1: dangerous because radio is one way you can lose your
Speaker 1: sense of what's true and what's not and be really
Speaker 1: influenced by other people. Luckily, at the time commentators raise
Speaker 1: this very same question. People are asking that question now too,
Speaker 1: just about the internet. So this episode, whenever I say
Speaker 1: the word radio. You can substitute in your head. The
Speaker 1: internet got it. It's sneaky this episode. It's a metaphor.
Speaker 1: When radio started, no technology seemed more exciting. Don't take
Speaker 1: my word for it. Listen to the President of the
Speaker 1: Radio Corporation of America RCA. If the future of our
Speaker 1: democracy depends upon the intelligence and cooperation of its citizens,
Speaker 1: radio may contribute to its success more than any other
Speaker 1: single influence. Early radio stations were often based at universities.
Speaker 1: Remember when the Internet was only at universities. Two. The
Speaker 1: earliest goal with each technolog algy was to educate. Radio
Speaker 1: educated the people, and it also promoted democracy on shows
Speaker 1: like America's Town Meeting of the Air, The program staged
Speaker 1: these crazy, wonderful debates. This one aired in nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 1: Hey CHR, what's the question tonight? Where will the machine
Speaker 1: dominate man? Will the machine dominate man? Machine does dominate man? No,
Speaker 1: the machine has improved living standard. The machine has given
Speaker 1: us leisure right too much, lenchine. Oh, just use it wisely,
Speaker 1: that's the thing to do. Will the machine dominate man?
Speaker 1: That's a great question. Every new communications technology, from the
Speaker 1: radio to the internet, up ends both epistemology and politics.
Speaker 1: People thought radio was powerful enough to save democracy because
Speaker 1: it could help people know things for certain. But was
Speaker 1: it also powerful enough to destroy democracy? Did it also
Speaker 1: make people unknown things. One thing radio could do, with
Speaker 1: more sophistication than could ever be done before, was to
Speaker 1: fake stuff. Believe it or not? Believe It or Not
Speaker 1: is the Great Temple of radio truthiness and its host,
Speaker 1: Robert L. Ripley, the High Priest. The first time you
Speaker 1: listen to it, you might think that it was a
Speaker 1: show about evidence, a little like the Last Archive, as
Speaker 1: if Believe It or Not. We're trying to draw a
Speaker 1: line between what you can know and believe and what
Speaker 1: you can't. But the second time you listen to it
Speaker 1: you begin to think, no, it's just mainly a joke.
Speaker 1: Figuring out what it really was requires learning a little
Speaker 1: about its host. Ripley was born in California in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 1: He had terrible teeth, so crooked that it made it
Speaker 1: difficult to talk. Eventually got them fixed, but by then
Speaker 1: he was so famous for his crooked teeth that he
Speaker 1: got them made slightly less crooked. When he was eighteen,
Speaker 1: he got a job with a newspaper in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: drawing cartoons. A few years later he moved to New
Speaker 1: York to work for another paper. One day, stumped for
Speaker 1: sports news, he drew a cartoon illustrating athletic firsts, like
Speaker 1: a guy who ran one hundred yards backwards in fourteen seconds.
Speaker 1: This was just at the end of the Great War.
Speaker 1: Sixteen million people died in that war, and then when
Speaker 1: it was ending, fifty million people died in the Spanish
Speaker 1: flu pandemic of nineteen eighteen. Wars and plagues unsettled knowledge.
Speaker 1: They unsettled everything. In nineteen twenty two, after the war
Speaker 1: and the plague had ended and the world had opened
Speaker 1: up again, Ripley's newspaper decided to send him on the
Speaker 1: road to hunt down more unbelievable facts for a series
Speaker 1: called Ripley's Rambles around the World. He went to Hawaii, Japan,
Speaker 1: the Philippines, and Singapore and cabled back reports about all
Speaker 1: the things he'd seen. He got crazy famous. After all
Speaker 1: that atrocity and devastation and suffering, Ripley showed Americans an
Speaker 1: unthreatening world, reassuring and even a ridiculous world, a very
Speaker 1: silly world. He published a best selling book in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine. In nineteen thirty he started his own radio show.
Speaker 1: He started in short films, Well if he wakes them
Speaker 1: hot news. The fact maybe interesting that icebergs are huh
Speaker 1: not cold? How amazing? Technically this is true. There's some
Speaker 1: thermal energy thing. Not interestingly true, but narrowly true. That's
Speaker 1: the line Ripley most like to walk. Everything he said
Speaker 1: was amazing, Everyone he met was incredible. Here he is
Speaker 1: mister Clayton Bates, better known as Tegley. Ripley says, that's
Speaker 1: a one leg a tap dancer dancing with a wooden leg.
Speaker 1: And it's true. Clayton Bates was a real guy, and
Speaker 1: he did have one leg, and he was a tap dancer.
Speaker 1: But on the radio, how could you know that this
Speaker 1: sound was really Clayton Bates. You couldn't. You just couldn't know.
Speaker 1: Wondering was at least half the fun of it. Ripley
Speaker 1: loved to cultivate doubt. We have thousands of sound effects
Speaker 1: here in the last archive, many of them made by
Speaker 1: a guy named Harry Jeannette Junior. Around the same time
Speaker 1: that Ripley was traveling the world hunting facts, Jeannette was
Speaker 1: traveling the country in an old black Studebaker gathering sounds
Speaker 1: like this one a gentle rainstorm. But does this sound
Speaker 1: like a thunderclap to you? Or could it be a
Speaker 1: shotgun blast? Slowed way down? Radio opened up a whole
Speaker 1: new world and a whole new world of fakery. You
Speaker 1: could fake more than just sound effects on the radio.
Speaker 1: You could fake people. The very first radio show ever
Speaker 1: serialized on American radio made its debut in nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 1: This show is notorious. It's horrible. Campbell Soups. Bring you
Speaker 1: Amos and Andy. Amos and Andy was a minstrel show.
Speaker 1: Amos is Sunday again. Yeah, Sunday is right. And don't
Speaker 1: forget he is on the radio every Sunday, and if arenso.
Speaker 1: Two white guys pretending to be two black guys black face.
Speaker 1: Early radio did this kind of thing all the time.
Speaker 1: Incomparable Charlie Chan, not just black face but also yellow face.
Speaker 1: Charlie Channel humbly gives you greeting and distends warm welcome,
Speaker 1: say Jess said, nature sometimes reveals steepest truth in wildest joke.
Speaker 1: Inspector Chan Charlie Chan, one of the most famous detectives
Speaker 1: of all time, A Chinese detective created by a white guy.
Speaker 1: A Harvard graduate from Ohio, Earl Dearer Biggers, a friend
Speaker 1: of mine, Unto Huang, a professor of English at the
Speaker 1: University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote an amazing book about
Speaker 1: the Charlie Chan franchise, the novels, the films, all of it.
Speaker 1: I called Huang up in Hong Kong, so maybe we
Speaker 1: could begin. I just wanted to hear a little bit
Speaker 1: about what drew you to Charlie Chan in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: usually too friendly and engallible Americans, I would just say, walk,
Speaker 1: he wasn't my grandfather, and they were usually say, oh really,
Speaker 1: speaking of galliability. And you know, as a kid, Huang
Speaker 1: practiced is English by listening to the radio. I inherited
Speaker 1: a sort of a batter, a transistor radio flowed my
Speaker 1: city who had inherited from my grandfather. And because in
Speaker 1: those years there was no TV, and every Chinese household
Speaker 1: had a chances to radio. And I was playing with it.
Speaker 1: And then one night, you know, I turned the knob,
Speaker 1: you know, the dial up and down, up and down,
Speaker 1: and I came to a frequency. Then a man's voice
Speaker 1: came out. It's like This is a voa the Voice
Speaker 1: of America, broadcasting in special English. Years later in the US,
Speaker 1: while studying for his PhD, one came across Charlie Chan
Speaker 1: the way you might in a mystery story. He picked
Speaker 1: up a book at an estate sale. He was hooked.
Speaker 1: He knew he wasn't supposed to love this stuff. He
Speaker 1: was supposed to be outraged by its racism. But he
Speaker 1: loved the playfulness, the goofiness, and also the truth to
Speaker 1: be found within the fake. He read all the books,
Speaker 1: he watched all the films. He listened to the radio plays.
Speaker 1: After each episode toward the end, you know, they take
Speaker 1: a break music, I guess commercial, and then Charlie Chan
Speaker 1: come back and the host will as you know, mister Chan,
Speaker 1: what do you you know? What kind of Chinese philosopher
Speaker 1: do you have for us? Yes, when we are giving
Speaker 1: up taking it's time to find good nice Thank you.
Speaker 1: Chen has this fortune cookie wisdom aphorisms delivered with lots
Speaker 1: of gongs in films, A lot of the Charlie Chan things,
Speaker 1: most of them were really either cooked up by Earlder
Speaker 1: Biggers himself or you know, invented by young Hollywood screenwriters
Speaker 1: getting high and trying to imagine what Chinese will say, right,
Speaker 1: But the radio plays they contain genuine quotes from Loud
Speaker 1: or Confucius and all that, and that's not like wow,
Speaker 1: that's actually you know, almost like the commercials they will play, right,
Speaker 1: So the Chinese you know, jams, they're they're real kind
Speaker 1: of commercials. Yeah, for of course, for the radio play,
Speaker 1: but for I don't know, for for everything else. Like
Speaker 1: there's sort of like Confucianism as a radio spot, like
Speaker 1: as a series of jingles or something. Yes, yes, And
Speaker 1: there's certainly yeah, there's certain naive a tape by the
Speaker 1: earnestness about it, which doesn't really always exist in in
Speaker 1: the visual medium. Of course, this attempt at authenticity only
Speaker 1: went so far. Charlie Chan's fake Chinese accent is bad enough,
Speaker 1: but his actual Chinese. I listened very carefully. I'll try
Speaker 1: to figure out whether it's Cannonese or Vietnamese or whatever.
Speaker 1: They're not. They just it's not it's not anything. It's
Speaker 1: really made up gibberish. So on American radio in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, you've got Ripley traveling the world for wonders,
Speaker 1: most of which are fake. You've got Amos and Andy
Speaker 1: fake black men, and you've got Charlie Chan, a fake
Speaker 1: Chinese guy. There's a pattern here. Radio wasn't randomly fake.
Speaker 1: Radio was fake in a way that reflected the racial
Speaker 1: and national contortions of the age, which included Jim Crow segregation,
Speaker 1: the restriction of immigration from Asia, and the forest deportation
Speaker 1: of immigrants from Mexico. In nineteen twenty four, Congress had
Speaker 1: passed the National Origins Act, which banned all immigration from
Speaker 1: Asia and restricted immigration from elsewhere through strict quotas. But
Speaker 1: the act created a carve out for non quota immigrants,
Speaker 1: which included Mexicans. Four days after the passage of the
Speaker 1: National Origins Act, Congress established the US Border Patrol had
Speaker 1: set up rules for crossing the southern border yet to
Speaker 1: register and pass literacy test and have proof of work.
Speaker 1: A few years later, new legislation would criminalize crossing the
Speaker 1: border without those documents. Believe it or not, on the radio,
Speaker 1: Mexico became exotic, the romantic land south of the border.
Speaker 1: Ripley went there to excavate its history for listeners back home.
Speaker 1: On one of my many interstinct trips I've made through Mexico,
Speaker 1: I discovered a Believe it or not about an ancient
Speaker 1: prophecy that led up to a great historical tragedy believe
Speaker 1: it or not Mexico. But Mexicans didn't need Ripley to
Speaker 1: tell their stories. In the nineteen thirties, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of other voices on the radio and they weren't fake.
Speaker 1: Yea when auna. That's Pedro Gonzalez, who started a radio
Speaker 1: show called Louis Madrugadores the Early Risers in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, the year after Amos and Andy
Speaker 1: debut and the year before Believe It or Not. Gonzalez
Speaker 1: Is local show came on at four in the morning
Speaker 1: when only workers were awake, farm laborers, fruit packing house workers.
Speaker 1: They were up early getting ready for the day, listening
Speaker 1: to the radio into the music in the warmth and
Speaker 1: the humor in Gonzalz's voice in Sa Fernando Especialitas, Joostantovin
Speaker 1: and Limpachi. Second, the tape I'm playing for You is Gonzalz.
Speaker 1: His music and his voice is taken from an oral
Speaker 1: history that he gave in Spanish. I'm playing in in
Speaker 1: Spanish without translation. As a reminder that radio used to
Speaker 1: be really bilingual. For listeners who don't speak Spanish, I'll
Speaker 1: explain most of what he's saying, but hearing him in
Speaker 1: his own voice, in his own language is important, Yes,
Speaker 1: Bank memo. The Pedro Gonzalz was in eighteen ninety five
Speaker 1: in Chihuahua, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution. He'd worked as
Speaker 1: a telegraph operator. He moved to Los Angeles when he
Speaker 1: was in his early thirties. He found his way to
Speaker 1: radio after we read a flyer looking for Spanish speakers
Speaker 1: who could write and sing jingles. Gonzalez got the job
Speaker 1: and then started his own company making Spanish language radio ads.
Speaker 1: Dolores z Cassius, another incredible scholar, at U Sezanna Barbara,
Speaker 1: writes about Gonzalez in her book Sounds of Belonging. When
Speaker 1: radio came on the scene in the United States in general,
Speaker 1: it was seen as this coveted, luxurious radio set to own.
Speaker 1: But as it became cheaper, that's when more working class
Speaker 1: communities of color, immigrant communities gravitated towards it. Early Spanish
Speaker 1: language radio had to be picked up from transmitters across
Speaker 1: the border in Mexico. Sometimes people would broadcast illegally from
Speaker 1: the garages on the West Coast. He could hear anything,
Speaker 1: fortune tellers preach yours, uncensored smart, fake doctors spouting quackery.
Speaker 1: Listeners love Gonzalez is Los Mugs, which is the first
Speaker 1: Spanish language show broadcast in the United States. Once the
Speaker 1: depression hit, it became harder for Mexican workers in California
Speaker 1: to find jobs. On a show, Gonzalz would find out
Speaker 1: where there was work. He announced it on air. Everyone
Speaker 1: would hear it. It was incredibly effective. It got so
Speaker 1: boss is looking for workers would just go to Gonzalez
Speaker 1: and ask him to spread the word. Then manzualis corneus.
Speaker 1: He the vile We're going better. Unlike Ripley, who was
Speaker 1: mostly joshing you, Gonzalez was the real deal. You could
Speaker 1: trust him. It tied listeners together, so they felt that
Speaker 1: they weren't alone. So it gave a sense that it
Speaker 1: wasn't just this Mexican neighborhood or this side of a
Speaker 1: Mexican city. It gave a sense that they were part
Speaker 1: of this larger mass, and it gave a sense of power.
Speaker 1: You feel powerful when you listen to that. Cassia says
Speaker 1: that Gonzalez. His favorite songs were in Charis and Corrido's ballads.
Speaker 1: He wrote them himself and played them on the radio,
Speaker 1: so one of the most popular corridos during that time.
Speaker 1: He did not write this, but it was aired a lot.
Speaker 1: Was called a Laba Blatos, which is the dishwasher, and
Speaker 1: it's a song about a dishwasher Mexican immigrant and how
Speaker 1: he spends his days being a dishwasher. But it was
Speaker 1: a number one song style in the United States. People
Speaker 1: were requesting that, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: will say, well, it's because you know, pobre Mexicanos. They
Speaker 1: missed their patria, they missed their homeland. That's why they
Speaker 1: wanted to remember. But there's a listener letter in his
Speaker 1: files that says, I appreciated that song style because you
Speaker 1: helped us forget. You helped us forget what our existence
Speaker 1: was like here. And I really admire that that he
Speaker 1: did that in the sense of not just romanticizing what
Speaker 1: you left behind, but this realization of what your life
Speaker 1: is like right now. Life right now included the US
Speaker 1: Border Control arresting tens of thousands of people and sending
Speaker 1: them to jail to await trial. Mexicans charged through the
Speaker 1: immigration crimes filled prisons. Their sheer numbers led to a
Speaker 1: massive growth of the prison industry. Then there were their deportations,
Speaker 1: started by President Hoover. In what we're called repatriation drives.
Speaker 1: The US government forcibly deported over a million people of
Speaker 1: Mexican descent, most of them were US citizens. Gonzalez helped
Speaker 1: people organize and resist. He could announce a meeting for
Speaker 1: a union, you know, downtown, and then two hours later
Speaker 1: all these people would show up. He started giving people
Speaker 1: um heads up, like yesterday at this train station, people
Speaker 1: are being deported. The more Gonzalez spoke out against the deportation,
Speaker 1: the more the authorities hassled him. He later said, the
Speaker 1: authorities started asking themselves, what if he insights a revolution here?
Speaker 1: He say, will make it cool? He does which status
Speaker 1: let The LA District Attorney ranted about Gonzalez, said he
Speaker 1: was a madman, said he was conspiring to burn down
Speaker 1: white people's houses, that sort of thing. He's a conflictum.
Speaker 1: Once the DA decided to go after Gonzalez, the authorities
Speaker 1: clearly had him under surveillance. Police arrested him for keeping
Speaker 1: his daughter home from school. Had turned out she was
Speaker 1: taking care of her sick mother. Then they questioned him
Speaker 1: about picking up miners young girls, which he had done,
Speaker 1: but they were friends of his daughter and he picked
Speaker 1: them up to drive all of them to school. Eventually,
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four, police trumped up charges of rape.
Speaker 1: During the trial, Gonzalez calmly smoked a cigar. His fans
Speaker 1: filled the courtroom. He was sure he'd be found innocent. Instead,
Speaker 1: he was found guilty and sentenced to fifty years in prison.
Speaker 1: He was sent to San Quentin. His radio listeners wrote
Speaker 1: him letters year after year he Quentin. They raised money
Speaker 1: for his defense. Years later, his accuser said that she lied,
Speaker 1: that the police had convinced her to accuse him of
Speaker 1: a crime he had never committed. In nineteen forty, after
Speaker 1: serving six years in San Quentin, Gonzalez was released on
Speaker 1: parole to Mexico. He was driven to Union station in
Speaker 1: La to border train to Mexico. He was met by
Speaker 1: a crowd. He stopped and sang one last song. So
Speaker 1: we haven't found any archive broadcasts. Have you ever heard any?
Speaker 1: Or I have not. I kind of liked that you
Speaker 1: can't find it. I have to I'm almost like I mean,
Speaker 1: of course I want to listen to it today, like
Speaker 1: every once in a while in Spanish in which radio
Speaker 1: will hear about an ice sighting, and it's so incredibly
Speaker 1: hard to get that recorded. But that's part of its
Speaker 1: mystique and power. It's that you can't capture it. For
Speaker 1: a long time, radio had afforded that kind of freedom
Speaker 1: and power, creative and unregulated, small local broadcasters like Gonzalez
Speaker 1: engaged in a conversation with their communities as an as
Speaker 1: Cassius reminded me, I mean really reminded me, this kind
Speaker 1: of radio can sometimes save lives for a group of
Speaker 1: people who are so legally vulnerable. Radio becomes so important.
Speaker 1: And I actually just heard and beginning tier because I
Speaker 1: just heard reheard a show. It's amazing, and it's bilingual
Speaker 1: and mistech Mexican indigenous language in Spanish, and you hear
Speaker 1: these immigrants like calling and they're so desperate and they're
Speaker 1: using fake names and they're doing all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: it reminds me like this is why people go to radio,
Speaker 1: Like you are desperate for help, for information, but you
Speaker 1: do not want to be identified. In the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: a lot like today, it felt as if the world
Speaker 1: was collapsing in on itself. Radio could be a lifeboat
Speaker 1: in a swelling sea. But then, in that age of
Speaker 1: immigration restriction, authorities started to puncture to the lifeboat. The
Speaker 1: government of California tried to ban Spanish from the airwaves.
Speaker 1: The federal government stepped in two. In nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: Congress established the Federal Communications Commission. One of its purposes
Speaker 1: was to regulate radio, to keep signals from interfering with
Speaker 1: one another, and also to keep radio from messing with
Speaker 1: the public's mind, not least because psychologists had begun studying
Speaker 1: the effects of radio a little worried about its incredible power.
Speaker 1: By then, there were twice as many radios in the
Speaker 1: United States as telephones, reaching an audience of seventy eight
Speaker 1: million people. Radio is an altogether novel medium of communication,
Speaker 1: pre eminent as a means of social control, and epical
Speaker 1: in its influence upon the mental horizons of men. Voices
Speaker 1: have a way of provoking curiosity, arousing a train of imagination.
Speaker 1: That's a young psychology professor named Hadley Cantrell. He ran
Speaker 1: the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, which aimed to help the
Speaker 1: intelligence citizen detect and anallazed propaganda. Cantrill studied all kinds
Speaker 1: of propaganda, but radio most of all. In his laboratory,
Speaker 1: he and his colleague Gordon Alport conducted experiments with which
Speaker 1: they hoped to be able to determine what radio does
Speaker 1: to your mind. In one experiment, they'd have multiple people
Speaker 1: record a passage and then play that passage over a
Speaker 1: speaker to simulate a radio broadcast. Then the psychologists would
Speaker 1: ask listeners how they pictured the person speaking, how tall
Speaker 1: was that person, how old, what color was their skin.
Speaker 1: Here's what they found. Radio seemed to expand listeners horizons.
Speaker 1: It could bring the whole world into your kitchen. But then, weirdly,
Speaker 1: it also seemed to reinforce people's prejudices. I think some
Speaker 1: version of that was a consequence of suppressing voices like
Speaker 1: Pedro Gonzalezes. When little local broadcasters got kicked off the
Speaker 1: airwaves and more and more programming came from big networks
Speaker 1: in New York, the world that radio brought into your
Speaker 1: kitchen got smaller. You want to hear from foreigners. You
Speaker 1: could listen to Charlie Chan, But then towards the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteen thirties, it's almost as if you can
Speaker 1: hear this ha ha fakery start to deflate, as if
Speaker 1: someone just punched a big hole right in the middle
Speaker 1: of it. Once again, it's present time, and tonight we
Speaker 1: offer the premiere of a fast moving melodrama, a breathtaking love.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, radio theater just met theater. On the radio,
Speaker 1: you were supposed to imagine that you were there in
Speaker 1: the theater watching a play standing room only. Again, tonight,
Speaker 1: the stage is at and what's more, we're ready for
Speaker 1: that magic moment in the theater curtain time. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like if I said listening to the last archive
Speaker 1: is the same as attending a lecture. That would just
Speaker 1: miss the point. This is not a lecture. Radio isn't
Speaker 1: a play without a stage set or a movie without pictures.
Speaker 1: It's something else. It's its own medium. Orson Welles understood
Speaker 1: that better than anyone. We're starting off tonight with the
Speaker 1: best story of its kind ever written. With the federal
Speaker 1: government regulating radio, big broadcasters wanted to prove that they
Speaker 1: were responsible and didn't need minding, so they began writing
Speaker 1: a new kind of show, a sustaining program, edifying and
Speaker 1: without ads, meant to display their virtuous uses of broadcast licenses.
Speaker 1: Orson Wells started a sustaining program on CBS Who's called
Speaker 1: Mercury Theater on the Air. Well said the point of
Speaker 1: his show wasn't to bring theater to radio, but to
Speaker 1: bring radio to the listener. It was a radio show,
Speaker 1: but it was also a show about radio, especially its
Speaker 1: most famous episode, the War of the Worlds. We know
Speaker 1: now that in the early years of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's.
Speaker 1: You probably know the story, but I bet it sounds
Speaker 1: really different if you listen to it after having tuned
Speaker 1: into all sorts of other stuff on the dial. Ripley's
Speaker 1: Believe It or Not, Emis and Andy, Charlie Chan and
Speaker 1: Pedro Gonzalez. On October thirtieth, nineteen thirty eight, on the
Speaker 1: brink of war in Europe, Orson Welles broadcast an episode
Speaker 1: about an alien invasion. It began as if it were
Speaker 1: any other evenings, entertainment, good evening later than gentlemen from
Speaker 1: the Meridian Room in the Park Clausa Hotel in New York. Today,
Speaker 1: we bring you the music of Raymond Raquela in the
Speaker 1: Chesstra with a touch of the Spanish. Raymond rickelloly Dalt
Speaker 1: with Laura Company. Just another evening of exotic Spanish music
Speaker 1: on the radio. When suddenly that concert gets interrupted by
Speaker 1: news bulletins reporting that a strange object has fallen from
Speaker 1: space at a nearby farm. Listen to what wells can
Speaker 1: do with sound effects? Very thin, gentlemen, the car Phillips again.
Speaker 1: How did the Wilmot's farm Gralvis nail Newchtis. But here's
Speaker 1: mister Willmot's, owner of the farm here. Well, as I
Speaker 1: was saying, I was listening to the radio kind of
Speaker 1: halfway yes, mister Willet, and then you saw something I've
Speaker 1: been a kind of greenish streak, and then zingle something
Speaker 1: smacked the ground, knocked me clear out of my chair. Well,
Speaker 1: where are you frightened, mister Willmott. Well, I'm quite sure
Speaker 1: I reckon. I was kind of ryld Hell. Thank you,
Speaker 1: mister Wellman, thank you very much. You want me to
Speaker 1: tell that's right? All right? That's planning. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: you've our frustrated correspondent has given up on the hopeless
Speaker 1: eye witness one. I don't know it's something happening. I'm
Speaker 1: shapers rising out of the pit, the fact chad of
Speaker 1: flame springing from the merrit at least writing the basting
Speaker 1: men turning the planet rank for the automobiles, writing everywhere
Speaker 1: coming be ladies and gentlemen. You are the circumstances beyond
Speaker 1: our control. We are unable to continue the broadcast from
Speaker 1: Grover's Mill. People fell for it, or at least that's
Speaker 1: the legend, because this production was so genius, those layers
Speaker 1: of voices, announcer, reporter, eyewitness, aliens. Newspapers reported that Americans
Speaker 1: had collectively lost their minds. They are reports of jammed
Speaker 1: switchboards and frantic emergency calls. The Los Angeles Times reported
Speaker 1: two heart attacks and a stroke. All that panic It
Speaker 1: might just have been newspapers trying to sell copies and
Speaker 1: maybe undermine people's faith in radio so they'd start reading
Speaker 1: the news again instead of listening to it. Then too,
Speaker 1: it was a perfect story for psychologists like Hadley Cantrell,
Speaker 1: whose grant money depended on the idea that radio really
Speaker 1: could whip people up into a frenzy. Honestly, though, it's
Speaker 1: impossible to know whether or not there was a panic
Speaker 1: that day, and I think there's not all that much
Speaker 1: difference between a panic and a story about a panic.
Speaker 1: There was plenty of that. One senator from Iowa called
Speaker 1: for a bill to prevent a broadcast like War of
Speaker 1: the Worlds from ever happening again. The next day, Wells
Speaker 1: tried to defend himself to the press. You must realize
Speaker 1: that I when I left the broadcast last night, I
Speaker 1: went into a dress rehearsal for play this opening in
Speaker 1: two days, and I had almost no sleep. And I
Speaker 1: know less about this than you do. I haven't read
Speaker 1: He was mobbed by reporters demanding answers. You think there
Speaker 1: ought to be a law. I guess such an accidents
Speaker 1: we had last night, or who thought on that. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the legislation would be. I know that
Speaker 1: almost everybody in radio would do almost anything to avert
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that has happened. It mightself included,
Speaker 1: but I don't know what the legislation would be. We
Speaker 1: simply radio was new, and we are learning about the
Speaker 1: effect it has on people. Over in Princeton, near where
Speaker 1: the Aliens supposedly landed, Kantro was floored by War of
Speaker 1: the World. He couldn't have designed a better experiment if
Speaker 1: he'd wanted to. He thought it'd make a perfect study
Speaker 1: for the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, so he began pitching
Speaker 1: the idea, collecting news stories and data on the supposed panic. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: his colleagues heard a. Hertzog and Hazel goodet. Began to
Speaker 1: do research and interviews for which they don't receive nearly
Speaker 1: enough credit. They measured the size and nature of the thing,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what made people fall for it.
Speaker 1: Here's some of what people said. I believe the broadcast.
Speaker 1: As soon as I heard the professor from Princeton and
Speaker 1: the officials in Washington, I knew it was an awfully
Speaker 1: dangerous situation. When all those military men were there and
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State spoke. If so many of these
Speaker 1: astronomers saw the explosions, that they must have been real,
Speaker 1: they ought, you know. Later, Wells changed his story. He
Speaker 1: said he'd known what he was doing all along, that
Speaker 1: he'd been trying to prove just what Cantrell suspected. People
Speaker 1: would believe anything they heard on the radio. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty terrifying conclusion, especially in the nineteen thirties with totalitarianism
Speaker 1: on the rise around the world. The trick in a
Speaker 1: democracy in an age of mass communications is to find
Speaker 1: a way out of doubt and into a set of
Speaker 1: rules of evidence that allow you to figure out what's
Speaker 1: true and what's not. So Americans got really interested in
Speaker 1: defending themselves against the radio and the way it can
Speaker 1: cultivate doubt, and also in using the radio to get
Speaker 1: Americans to believe in America and in the American Experiment.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty nine, on CBS Radio, one year after
Speaker 1: Orson Wells's infamous broadcast, the celebrated concert artist Paul Robeson
Speaker 1: sang a new song, a new American anthem about belief
Speaker 1: and doubt and the American Creed. I think of it
Speaker 1: as the long forgotten last act of war of the world.
Speaker 1: Nobody who was anybody, everybody who was anybody ain't doning it.
Speaker 1: Nobody had faith, Nobody nobody but Washington, Tom Payne, Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 1: I Am a Solomon, Chris mess Adison Nobody Ballad for
Speaker 1: Americans became Merbison's signature song, an American Creed sung with
Speaker 1: more power and resonance, maybe because it was sung by
Speaker 1: an African American. The performance also made radio history. In
Speaker 1: the studio, the audience applauded for two minutes while the
Speaker 1: show was still on the air live, and then for
Speaker 1: fifteen more minutes after the broadcast moved on. CBS's switchboards
Speaker 1: got jammed with callers wanting to hear it again. It
Speaker 1: was like a bizarro American corrido, all about truth and doubt,
Speaker 1: these truths of the Declaration of Independence, about how nobody
Speaker 1: who was anybody believed it and everybody who was anybody
Speaker 1: doubted it. Then there's the constant questioning by members of
Speaker 1: the chorus asking who is telling the story, the nobody
Speaker 1: who believed in the idea of democracy? Who? Yeah, how
Speaker 1: come all this? Are you an American? Am I an American?
Speaker 1: I'm just Irish? He wrote Youish, Italian, French, Nis, Russian, Chinese, Ponies, Gots, Hungarian,
Speaker 1: bit buck sween, He's finished, Canadian, Greek and Turk and
Speaker 1: check and double check America. It's a knockout, but it's
Speaker 1: also unsettling. How do you believe in something when it
Speaker 1: keeps disappointing you, failing to live up to its own ideals.
Speaker 1: The United States is an act of belief. You have
Speaker 1: to believe in its founding ideas. For the thing to
Speaker 1: work somehow, You're supposed to suspend doubt, But then what
Speaker 1: about its failures. Out of the cheating, out of the shouting,
Speaker 1: out of the murders and lynching, out of the wind bags,
Speaker 1: the patriotic spouting, out of uncertainty and doubting. I have
Speaker 1: to say, I'm really moved by thinking about what it
Speaker 1: must have been like to live in the United States
Speaker 1: during the years when the country was preparing to enter
Speaker 1: the war in Europe. Here's one radio kept trying to
Speaker 1: instill a belief in a renewed American creed, not the
Speaker 1: creed of Thomas Jefferson, but a new creed inequality promised,
Speaker 1: if not realized America in the nineteen thirties, breadlines, starving children,
Speaker 1: vigilantes lynching people, and then the everyday humiliations of segregation.
Speaker 1: After performing Ballad for Americans on the radio, Robeson went
Speaker 1: out to eat with friends, but the restaurant refused to
Speaker 1: see them. You can want to believe to believe in America,
Speaker 1: but you can't allow that will to believe to lead
Speaker 1: you to ignore its shortcomings. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: lies and liars and fakers, but not everything is a
Speaker 1: lie or a fake. The feeling that it's hard to
Speaker 1: know anything anymore. That happens every time a new technology
Speaker 1: of communications emerges. But the answer to a mess of
Speaker 1: lies can never be to doubt everything, because doubting at
Speaker 1: all means believing none of it and having nothing left
Speaker 1: to believe in. Paul Robeson sang his American Creed just
Speaker 1: weeks after war broke out in Europe on Germany invaded Poland.
Speaker 1: During this all too reel war of the world, radio
Speaker 1: began broadcasting a new kind of news, live eyewitness reporting
Speaker 1: from the scene of battle, announced by Edward R. Morrow,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest reporters of the twentieth century. Is
Speaker 1: the oldest Square. The noise that you were here at
Speaker 1: the moment is the sound of the air range siren.
Speaker 1: I'm standing here, just on the steps of Saint Patten's
Speaker 1: in the fields. A searchlight burst into action of from
Speaker 1: the distance, then single being slipping the sky above me.
Speaker 1: All that's not sound effects, that's not fake. That's the
Speaker 1: sound of war from the other side of the world.
Speaker 1: The bombing of London. Robert ripped. They tried, briefly, haplessly,
Speaker 1: to talk about the war the real world. Bob this
Speaker 1: week in Europe. They certainly have been making history, haven't they. Yes, fun,
Speaker 1: this has been a week of astounding historical happening. The
Speaker 1: map of Europe is being chased before our eyes. But
Speaker 1: that was no way to talk about atrocity. Ripley's heyday
Speaker 1: came to an end on the radio anyway. Nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: nine marked the rise of a new style of radio,
Speaker 1: with the immediacy and intensity of eyewitness reporting and breaking news,
Speaker 1: a style that elevated a single voice, the voice of authority,
Speaker 1: the on the scene reporter. One of the strangest sounds
Speaker 1: one've been here in London these days, or rather these
Speaker 1: dark nights, just the sound of footsteps walking along the street,
Speaker 1: like most shod with steel shoes. Radio collapsed distances. For
Speaker 1: the first time, voices could come from anywhere and work
Speaker 1: their way through your ears, into your head, to the
Speaker 1: inside of your brain. Almost a century later, much of
Speaker 1: this seems to be happening all over again, the world
Speaker 1: unraveling while the Internet bounces off satellites high above and
Speaker 1: stomps along the corridors of your mind like ghosts shod
Speaker 1: with steel shoes. The last archive is written and hosted
Speaker 1: by me Jillapour. It's produced by Sophie Crane mckibbon and
Speaker 1: Ben nat of Haffrey. Our editor is Julia Barton, and
Speaker 1: our executive producer is Mio Lobell. Martin Gonzalez is our engineer.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Amy Gaines. Original music by Mathis Bossi
Speaker 1: and John Evans Stillwagon Sympinet. Our research assistants are Olivia
Speaker 1: Oldham and all of our riskin cuts. Our full proof
Speaker 1: players are Yoshia mau, Amon Blankenhorne, Matthias Bosse, Dan Epstein,
Speaker 1: Ethan Herschenfeld, Becca A Lewis, Andrew Parella, Robert Roccatta and
Speaker 1: Nick Saxton. The Last Archive is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: At Pushkin Thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fain, John Schnarz,
Speaker 1: Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostick, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Maya Kanig and Daniella Lacan. Many of our sound effects
Speaker 1: are from Harry Janette Junior and the Star Jenette Foundation.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Simon Leake, Oliver Leek and Paul Espinoza.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to rate, share
Speaker 1: and review to find more Pushkin podcasts. Listen on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Lapour.