Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of five
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there.
Speaker 1: It's just the two of us batching it up without Jerry.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I think Jerry's inclusion, we're still batching it up.
Speaker 1: How do you mean? I mean, does she really ruin
Speaker 1: the batch scene for us? Sure? She's very maternal and judge, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were headed down a kind road for a second.
Speaker 1: I was with Jerry. That doesn't sound like me. So
Speaker 1: for all of you who are just tuning into the
Speaker 1: first time, welcome, this is stuff you should know. To
Speaker 1: everybody else who's tuning in for the multiple times, Welcome,
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know. Yeah, we never do that.
Speaker 1: Some shows do that what they welcome new listeners, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and kind of say what they do. And I mean
Speaker 1: we've literally never done that. That's fine, that's lame. Hi,
Speaker 1: which who does that? Any friends of ours? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean the guys on the Flop House, they've been podcasting
Speaker 1: as long as we have. In every single episode they
Speaker 1: say who they are and what they do. No, okay,
Speaker 1: well do you want to do that this one time. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm Chuck Bryant and this is Josh Clark, and uh,
Speaker 1: this is a podcast where we explain things in a
Speaker 1: lighthearted and fun and sometimes even funny way. I disagree
Speaker 1: with all of that. Oh boy, So what we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about today, because I think we need to talk
Speaker 1: about this one in a slightly somber tone. Chuck, it's
Speaker 1: a blemish in the history of America really if you
Speaker 1: think about it. Well, yeah, and you know what, I've
Speaker 1: never actually had listened to it until this week, same here,
Speaker 1: and it was It's a lot of fun to actually
Speaker 1: listen to. I would recommend it, Yeah, especially in a
Speaker 1: dark room, um, where that's all you're concentrating on, not
Speaker 1: like a second screen kind of thing, like where you're
Speaker 1: really listening to this radio play. Put yourself there a
Speaker 1: little bit like what it must have been like and
Speaker 1: well not And that's when the book came out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but in ninety eight, I mean what forty years later,
Speaker 1: Just in that forty years stretch, I mean, think about
Speaker 1: the difference between nine eight and not ridiculously different periods.
Speaker 1: It's exactly. Oh it's gone downhill, um, And don't think
Speaker 1: they had nothing to do with Reagan's election in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: But the difference between eight and nineteen thirty eight are
Speaker 1: it's just like two different worlds, man um, two different worlds,
Speaker 1: common War of the So I guess we should start
Speaker 1: with the book written by the great H. G. Wells. Um.
Speaker 1: It was the very first an invasion story to hit
Speaker 1: the bookshelves, and that's a pretty remarkable thing. It was
Speaker 1: a serialized thing at first, and magazines and Pearson's in
Speaker 1: the in the UK, and then Cosmo here in the US,
Speaker 1: and then they finally slapped all those serialized versions together
Speaker 1: into a book and it sold pretty well. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: never been on a print since that first edition in
Speaker 1: that's pretty respectable. I expect that as much for our
Speaker 1: book as well. Yeah, I'm sure it'll be still being
Speaker 1: published in forty years or a hundred years, a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty years. Yeah, well let's hope. Um. So in
Speaker 1: this book, and like you said, first alien invasion story
Speaker 1: ever published, which is you know, just the fact that
Speaker 1: this is a completely new premise, new conceit made it,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of scary. But in the book, um, H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells describes like this, this alien invasion. Um. And part
Speaker 1: of the thing that was so scary about it, at
Speaker 1: least at the time, from what I can gather, is
Speaker 1: that it was about like the breakdown of society. And
Speaker 1: we're talking like Victorian era England society, where like rigid
Speaker 1: social rules and customs and Morey's and and guidance for
Speaker 1: all behavior at all times was like the norm. So
Speaker 1: the idea of that breaking down was scary on in
Speaker 1: and of itself. I think that made the book kind
Speaker 1: of scary to contemporary readers. Would that be right readers
Speaker 1: back then? Um? And that was one big theme that
Speaker 1: Well has explored. Another one that he explored in that
Speaker 1: at least I think whoever wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica article
Speaker 1: on it said that the main point of this, the
Speaker 1: main subtext was um, learning how humans dominion over animals
Speaker 1: can be, you know, cruel and thoughtless, because all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, with these alien invaders who were just wiping
Speaker 1: us off the map, Um, we were the we were like,
Speaker 1: you know, domesticated animals to them. Yeah, so the shoe
Speaker 1: was on the other hoof, And uh, sure it caused
Speaker 1: or at least it was intended to cause people to
Speaker 1: take kind of a hard look at a pre animal
Speaker 1: farm to make sort of a social statement about how
Speaker 1: we treated animals. And so that was if you flash
Speaker 1: forward to Orson Welles in his Mercury Theater version, he uh,
Speaker 1: this is you know, like you said, we're right in
Speaker 1: the middle or we're in the Great Depression and we're
Speaker 1: headed towards war and it's sort of an uneasy feeling
Speaker 1: in the United States as a whole. So he thought,
Speaker 1: perfect time to go in there, put a fresh coat
Speaker 1: of paint on this thing and scare the bijebas out
Speaker 1: of the American public by doing really something that they
Speaker 1: had never heard before, which was sort of a verite
Speaker 1: style production. Yeah, and I mean it's it's easy to
Speaker 1: overlook today, but radio is still rather new at the
Speaker 1: time in it was like, you know, cutting edge technological
Speaker 1: medium and it was not fully defined. So the idea
Speaker 1: of um creating this I guess hoax broadcast is the
Speaker 1: best you can call it. Um, this fictionalized version that
Speaker 1: was what would you call it? Man, I hate that
Speaker 1: word so much. It's really taken on a bad tang
Speaker 1: here lately. Uh. Yeah, I mean, it's it's verity. It's
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, of a faux documentary style thing
Speaker 1: that no one had ever heard, Like, there's no way
Speaker 1: when people heard this they would think, oh, this is
Speaker 1: you know, I know Christopher Guests, this is sort of
Speaker 1: a scary version. I've seen Blair Witch. I know what's
Speaker 1: going on here. I recognize Lenny from Laverne and Shirley anywhere.
Speaker 1: I know it's not real. So they were they weren't
Speaker 1: prepared for this in when orson well, as he was
Speaker 1: already a big name in radio as the voice of
Speaker 1: the Shadow, which was big hit, and his Mercury Theater
Speaker 1: was pretty pretty well respected at the time. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a live stage theater. So they'd only had
Speaker 1: this show for a few months by the time October
Speaker 1: rolled around. UM. But their whole jam was they were
Speaker 1: on CBS, and CBS had them do our long radio
Speaker 1: adaptations of classic UM like novels like Treasure Island they
Speaker 1: did around the world in eighty days. And so since
Speaker 1: it was October, they wanted to do something spooky around
Speaker 1: Halloween something, so they decided yeah. So so they were like, well,
Speaker 1: what's the most boring scary book there is? And they said,
Speaker 1: h G wells wore the world, so they decided to
Speaker 1: adapt it. Yeah, so they got together, they're rehearsing. We'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that in a sec.
Speaker 1: But there wasn't a strong feeling among the cast and
Speaker 1: crew and the production group that I thought it was
Speaker 1: gonna be awesome because I think probably because they had
Speaker 1: never done anything like this. They had never heard anything
Speaker 1: like this, and they thought, is this even gonna be
Speaker 1: any good? And a couple of different sources in the
Speaker 1: production went to a radio critic ahead of time, it's like,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, and they said, by the way, this
Speaker 1: is going to be a real stinker, they said, Apparently
Speaker 1: two different people in the in the production said that
Speaker 1: this will put everyone to sleep. And I don't I
Speaker 1: don't have the impression that it's strictly because they didn't
Speaker 1: have any frame of reference to judge it against, because
Speaker 1: no one had done this before. From what I can gather,
Speaker 1: the originally it was going to be really bad and
Speaker 1: really terrible, and the production and the cast and crew
Speaker 1: knew this. They knew that they were marching towards embarrassment.
Speaker 1: Um with the the early versions of the of the script. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so orson he's sort of distracted. He's got a stage
Speaker 1: production going on. He's got his partner in his group,
Speaker 1: John the Great John Houseman, Uh you all know from
Speaker 1: the Paper Chase, kind of a legendary actor. He was
Speaker 1: his one of his original partners, and he got together
Speaker 1: with Howard Is it catch? I never know if it's
Speaker 1: going to be a colt or a coke, doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: all right, koc h and he was the writer who
Speaker 1: was adapting the novel, and they were like, we gotta
Speaker 1: make this thing better. And one thing I think we
Speaker 1: can do. This was Houseman talking, I'm not gonna do
Speaker 1: a John Houseman, but everyone knows how he sounds. Right.
Speaker 1: When I came across John Houseman being involved, was like,
Speaker 1: I can't wait. I don't even remember. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was just very serious and sort of all I can
Speaker 1: think of his Paper Chase. And what was the TV
Speaker 1: commercial was it? I want to say it was like
Speaker 1: Schwaberry Lynch. I think it might have been Merrill Lynch
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know. But one of those finance firms
Speaker 1: he did he voiced for, well, yeah. He was very
Speaker 1: famous for having a very high pitched, squeaky falsetto voice,
Speaker 1: and he talked very very fast, and actually I know
Speaker 1: who it was. It was FedEx and Duncan Donuts. He
Speaker 1: was well known for it, right, he was the time
Speaker 1: to make the donuts guy right with the must so
Speaker 1: houseman and uh, Cotch Coke went in there and he said,
Speaker 1: one of the things we should do, probably to make
Speaker 1: this a little more scary and a little more believable
Speaker 1: that it's an actual broadcast is you know, time passes
Speaker 1: in the book and we can't do that here, so
Speaker 1: let's just get rid of all that stuff so it
Speaker 1: gives the appearance that it's going down right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was enormously a huge change. Um. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if he did that too to help the pacing
Speaker 1: move a little faster or what, um, but that was
Speaker 1: that would pan out to be a really important difference
Speaker 1: in the original script that um Howard Kay turned in
Speaker 1: uh and the one that they ended up doing. And
Speaker 1: then even beyond that, some of the other changes came
Speaker 1: just hours before broadcast, because apparently, if you worked with
Speaker 1: Wars and Wells, you should be on the lookout for
Speaker 1: him to come in at the last minute and be
Speaker 1: like all the stuff we've been practicing for a week
Speaker 1: or two, forget all of that. We're we're doing this instead.
Speaker 1: And part of that, from what I can tell, is
Speaker 1: that he was trying to shake up the act or
Speaker 1: shake them out of whatever complacency they'd worked themselves into
Speaker 1: with rehearsal and to get this raw, more terrified performance.
Speaker 1: And apparently it worked. I mean, I can't imagine I
Speaker 1: didn't hear any rehearsals or anything like that. I would
Speaker 1: have loved to have compared, you know, the week before too,
Speaker 1: you know, the actual broadcast. But everyone delivered these really great, um,
Speaker 1: really great performances, and they really nailed by showtime, um
Speaker 1: the realism in a lot of ways, not just in
Speaker 1: the performances, um, but also in just little details like
Speaker 1: they you know, they were they were doing a a
Speaker 1: mock radio program, which we'll talk about a little more
Speaker 1: in detail in a second, but they were they were
Speaker 1: pretending to have news bulletins breaking, so they were they
Speaker 1: were doing the things that news bulletins did. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that stuck out to me was one
Speaker 1: of the eyewitnesses, so it's an actor, but one of
Speaker 1: the eyewitnesses is like being interviewed by a news reporter
Speaker 1: on the scene and they started to talk, and the
Speaker 1: news reporter goes, can you can you speak loud? Speak
Speaker 1: more loudly and move into the microphone please, and that
Speaker 1: the I think the actor actually says, how's that? And
Speaker 1: the guy repeats himself, and then the actress to repeat
Speaker 1: himself what he was originally saying. So it has like
Speaker 1: that veneer of you know, authenticity, just from little details
Speaker 1: like that that, you know, really it stood out to
Speaker 1: me when I was listening for him. But if you're
Speaker 1: if you're not listening for him, you you just it
Speaker 1: makes you buy into the whole thing that much more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the other big change that Wells brought along was
Speaker 1: stretching out the first two halves of the thing such
Speaker 1: that it went past it went forty minutes, and radio
Speaker 1: at the time, every thirty minutes, like on the half hour,
Speaker 1: they would check in with the station I D check
Speaker 1: and listeners, even though radio was new, were well honed
Speaker 1: to this station break every thirty minute, And so when
Speaker 1: ten minutes passed, the half hour go by and there
Speaker 1: ain't and there ain't no station break. That really makes
Speaker 1: people kind of buy in to what they're listening to
Speaker 1: is possibly real. Uh. And then you add to the
Speaker 1: fact that there were no sponsors for this show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they weren't cutting to a Casper or or me,
Speaker 1: me and these ads all of a sudden, I can
Speaker 1: remember any sponsor. Can you imagine John Houseman saying made
Speaker 1: with modal? No, I thought it'd be made with modal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's a much better Houseman. I had something
Speaker 1: in my threat. Uh. So, yeah, there were no sponsors.
Speaker 1: So basically it really came across as something that was
Speaker 1: super super realistic sounding. Right, So all that is to
Speaker 1: say that they had really by the time this broadcast
Speaker 1: aired eight p m. On Sunday, October eight, they they
Speaker 1: were not going to be the laughing stock and this
Speaker 1: is not going to be embarrassing. It was going to
Speaker 1: be pretty awesome. Actually, should we take a break, I
Speaker 1: think so, Chuck, and then we'll come back and we
Speaker 1: will reveal the broadcast after this. Okay, so we've reached showtime.
Speaker 1: Air time a p m. Sunday, October, Mercury Theater on
Speaker 1: the Air began broadcasting its adaptation of H. G. Wells
Speaker 1: War of the World, and at the very beginning, it's
Speaker 1: introduced as much there's an announcer who says that I
Speaker 1: think this loss is probably to time somewhat because everyone
Speaker 1: probably thinks that they just tried to trick everyone. But no,
Speaker 1: they actually introduced it as what they're doing. You know
Speaker 1: that this is a radio place at one year in
Speaker 1: the future, right right, And yeah, Orson Welles. So it's
Speaker 1: introduced by an announcer. Orson Wells comes in does the
Speaker 1: introductory essay, and then they did something really smart and interesting,
Speaker 1: especially for the time. They went to a musical program
Speaker 1: that was supposedly being broadcast from the Murdian Room in
Speaker 1: the Hotel Park Plaza. So if you were just tuning
Speaker 1: in right then, you would have no idea that this
Speaker 1: was Mercury Theater on the air. You would have no
Speaker 1: idea that this was a teleplay. You would think that
Speaker 1: you were listening to UM something that was pretty regularly broadcast,
Speaker 1: which was live music at some like ballroom in a
Speaker 1: hotel somewhere in New York. UM that they set up
Speaker 1: like a radio transmitter to transmit out over the radio.
Speaker 1: That was pretty frequent. But this was part of the
Speaker 1: show paused. It is right right exactly so, but that
Speaker 1: was a huge which part of the show because that
Speaker 1: lilled um listeners into kind of complacency, and listeners who
Speaker 1: tuned in late and missed that introduction thought that this
Speaker 1: is what they were listening to. And then the first
Speaker 1: news bulletin hits, yeah, and that's where things start to
Speaker 1: get really interesting. They break in, you know, one of
Speaker 1: these interrupt your previously scheduled programs kind of things, and
Speaker 1: they come in and with these bulletin's, but they're not
Speaker 1: super long at first because they treat it kind of
Speaker 1: how it would be in real life. It's just sort
Speaker 1: of a breaking story. Something's going together. It was fairly obtuse,
Speaker 1: and they didn't like, you know, say, Martians are attacking
Speaker 1: us right now everyone from the get go, I sort
Speaker 1: of left it up to the listener to kind of
Speaker 1: piece it together a little by little. They would go
Speaker 1: back to the Meridian room for a bit, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't for very long, but because you know, they couldn't
Speaker 1: waste too much time, but it was long enough. It
Speaker 1: wasn't for like ten seconds. They did it for like
Speaker 1: a minute a minute and a half. Right. It made
Speaker 1: it seem right then, like that was what you were
Speaker 1: listening to, that that was the program and the bulletin
Speaker 1: was in fact the bulletin rather than the opposite being true. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So eventually you start to piece together what's going on,
Speaker 1: and you have, uh, this attack in New Jersey of
Speaker 1: all places, and uh, Princeton University they had like a
Speaker 1: Princeton astronomer on. They have government officials and they kind
Speaker 1: of dole it out a little by little until about
Speaker 1: the seventeen minutes seventeen and a half minute mark, and
Speaker 1: then that's when it really kind of gets, uh, super
Speaker 1: scary and people really see the full picture of what's
Speaker 1: going on. So Chuck, um, I feel like we should
Speaker 1: read a little bit of the script. There's this one
Speaker 1: part starting about the seventeen thirty minute market think you
Speaker 1: said where they um as I like to say, they
Speaker 1: tore the lid off the sucker. Do you want to
Speaker 1: be announcer or Phillips? I'll be the announcer, okay, but
Speaker 1: I want you to do Phillips as Sammy Davis jor.
Speaker 1: So here's the announcer. Wait, hold on, I'm getting on
Speaker 1: my tap shoes. Okay you're ready, Canny man, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna do it that way. Okay, So let me give
Speaker 1: you a little bit of background real quick. So these
Speaker 1: news bulletins up to this point of basically said there's
Speaker 1: some weird thing that landed they thought was a meteorite
Speaker 1: at first, that landed in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Um.
Speaker 1: And then later bulletin said that, oh, actually there's some
Speaker 1: weird tentacle like weird things emerging from this thing we
Speaker 1: thought was a meteor Right. So now we're back at
Speaker 1: Grover's Mill. So I'm the announcer. We are bringing you
Speaker 1: and I witness account of what's happening on the Wilmouth
Speaker 1: Farm Grover's Mill, New Jersey. And that was kind of
Speaker 1: like they were breaking in to let you know that.
Speaker 1: And then they go back to more piano for some reason.
Speaker 1: And then we now return you to Carl Phillips at
Speaker 1: Grover's Mill. Lady, ladies and gentlemen. Am I on on,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. Here, I am back up a stone
Speaker 1: wall that adjoins Mr. Willmas Garden. From here I get
Speaker 1: a sweep of the whole scene. I'll give you every
Speaker 1: detail as long as I can talk, as long as
Speaker 1: I can see. More State police have arrived. They're drawing
Speaker 1: up a cordon in front of the pit, about thirty
Speaker 1: of them. No need to push the crowd back now
Speaker 1: they're willing to keep their distance. The captain is conferring
Speaker 1: with someone we we can't quite see who. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I believe it's a professor Pearson. Yes it is. Now
Speaker 1: they've parted. The professor moves around one side, studying the object. Well.
Speaker 1: The captain and two policemen advance with something in their hands.
Speaker 1: I can see it now. It's a it's a white
Speaker 1: handkerchief tied to a pole, a flag of truce. If
Speaker 1: those creatures know what that means, what anything means? Wait,
Speaker 1: something's happening. You can cut in any time. Who can
Speaker 1: take a rainbow? Wait? Sorry, hump shape is rising out
Speaker 1: of the pit. I can make out a small beam
Speaker 1: of light against a mirror. What's that? There's jet there's
Speaker 1: a jet flame springing from the mirror and at leaps
Speaker 1: right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on.
Speaker 1: Good lord, they're turning into flame. Oh god, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Now the whole field's caught fire, the woods, the barns,
Speaker 1: the gas tanks, the automobiles, and spreading everywhere. It's coming
Speaker 1: this way, about twenty yards to my right, very nice
Speaker 1: and scene that was great, Chuck so Um they they
Speaker 1: you mentioned, or I should say Phillips. The reporter on
Speaker 1: the scene mentioned Professor Pearson, and he's this he ends
Speaker 1: up being the main character and he's uh, he's an
Speaker 1: interview he's in a Stromer's interviewed earlier on and he's
Speaker 1: on the scene as it happens. Um, and the the
Speaker 1: program just keeps going like that, like there's another there's
Speaker 1: a main announcer. Um, who I played? I thought rather well, Um,
Speaker 1: thank you, and it seemed to you by the future
Speaker 1: as a fully artist, if I may say so, thank
Speaker 1: you very much. I've been practicing. You want to hear
Speaker 1: my machine gun? I've been doing that one since I
Speaker 1: was like six. All right, how about walking through the forest?
Speaker 1: All right now, how about a good punch to the face.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that was good, Thank you. Probably punched myself
Speaker 1: in the thing. I'm dedicated. That's how dedicated to the
Speaker 1: art of fully so. Um. The announcer just keeps bringing
Speaker 1: in more and more news as this thing goes on
Speaker 1: and unfolds of like, now, these things aren't just in
Speaker 1: New Jersey there in Chicago. They're like out West they're
Speaker 1: they're starting to invade everywhere, and they're killing people left
Speaker 1: and right. That you said there was a government official
Speaker 1: that reads a statement is actually that they say that
Speaker 1: it's the Secretary of the Interior, which I thought was
Speaker 1: particularly genius because I mean, probably not that many people
Speaker 1: were familiar with the Secretary of the Interior, Harold x Um,
Speaker 1: but they had him sound like FDR so that they
Speaker 1: would kind of play on everyone's um, I guess unconscious
Speaker 1: or I'm sure there were people who are like the
Speaker 1: sounds just like FDR, but at the very least, it
Speaker 1: would kind of evoke that government authority, the reality of
Speaker 1: like a government figure, you know. Yeah. So meanwhile, on
Speaker 1: the other stations, there's one that's running opposite, which is
Speaker 1: a really really popular radio show at the time, um
Speaker 1: probably the most popular, Chasing Sandborn Hour, which had the
Speaker 1: very very famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen in his dummy Charlie McCarthy,
Speaker 1: and we talked about that on our ventilla Quism episode.
Speaker 1: Remember that they started out on radio, which is hysterical.
Speaker 1: I don't even know why they would even bother with
Speaker 1: the dummy part. Just do too. You wouldn't even know
Speaker 1: that's what he did. You wouldn't even have to wear
Speaker 1: pants around and your spaghetti stained under shirt and yeah,
Speaker 1: naked from the waist down, maybe some socks, doing a
Speaker 1: couple of voices. Here's your contract Edgar Bergin, What do
Speaker 1: you think about that? Charlie Dart get me started, Like
Speaker 1: that's it. I could be a famous vintiloquist on the radio.
Speaker 1: You just you just did it. I think I think
Speaker 1: Hollywood's gonna come with Collin. But the real sort of
Speaker 1: interesting um factoid here, I think is that people were
Speaker 1: channel surfing back then when you cut to commercial, just
Speaker 1: like we used to do when we didn't have pause
Speaker 1: buttons and fast forward buttons. And what is this pause button?
Speaker 1: You keep mentioning? I've never heard of this. You've never
Speaker 1: paused television? No, wow, you you need I don't believe
Speaker 1: I've ever paused anything in my life. It's funny. We
Speaker 1: were Emily and I've been watching that German sci fi
Speaker 1: series Dark, which is very challenging to follow, and uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of rewinding like wait, wait, who was
Speaker 1: at what did they just say? And we rewind it
Speaker 1: a bit and do that again, and or you know,
Speaker 1: of course I got to go the bathroom. Let me
Speaker 1: depose it. And I was thinking about how, not too
Speaker 1: long ago, you just if you missed something, you missed it.
Speaker 1: You just paid the count or you paid yourself on
Speaker 1: the couch. Yeah, there was no clear like, let me
Speaker 1: go back and clear this up. It's like, what did
Speaker 1: he say? I have no idea. I guess we'll never know.
Speaker 1: There's no internet. I guess I should probably stop watching
Speaker 1: this show altogether. You go walk up to the VCR
Speaker 1: in President Jack. But at any rate, back then, let's
Speaker 1: say Charlie McCarthy goes to break and no word from
Speaker 1: Mark Banser and they flip it over to war the
Speaker 1: world's at this point in the broadcast when the s
Speaker 1: is hitting the fan and it's going to scare the
Speaker 1: pants off of people in well, yeah, even more than
Speaker 1: I think that they would have dialed over even before that,
Speaker 1: so they might have caught like a news bulletin and
Speaker 1: then maybe some of that music from the Meridian Room. Um,
Speaker 1: so I really would have caught them. And there were
Speaker 1: supposedly a substantial number of people who did dial over,
Speaker 1: and we're like, wait, wait, what what is going on here?
Speaker 1: And now we come to the reaction the response, because
Speaker 1: if you picked up the paper the next day in America, um,
Speaker 1: just about anywhere in any major city, you're going to
Speaker 1: find huge, blaring headlines like the one that the New
Speaker 1: York Daily News printed in tall, bold letters. Fake radio
Speaker 1: war stirs terror through the US. Yeah, stories of of
Speaker 1: shock and hysteria, stories of people taking their own life,
Speaker 1: stories of people dying from heart attacks. The ape sat
Speaker 1: a man in Pittsburgh found his wife with poison in
Speaker 1: her hand and said, I'm gonna I'd rather die this
Speaker 1: way than like that. And you know, talking to Wells
Speaker 1: afterward in the aftermath of this, he apologizes publicly says
Speaker 1: they didn't intend to do this. Uh, we had we
Speaker 1: didn't know what was going to cause a panic. And
Speaker 1: then you know, if you look over the years more interviews,
Speaker 1: it's sort of seems like Wells is a little more like,
Speaker 1: you know, we thought it would be pretty fun to
Speaker 1: scare people, and I didn't know if it was going
Speaker 1: to cause a panic, but we definitely intended it to
Speaker 1: have this effect on people, whereas houseman in Cotch, We're like, no,
Speaker 1: we really didn't mean it. Um. So it was sort
Speaker 1: of conflicting reports from the production on what they thought
Speaker 1: was going to be the result, right, Um. And I've
Speaker 1: read an interview with John Landis, the great director who
Speaker 1: um worked with Wells on a project that never got
Speaker 1: made towards the end of wells life, and he didn't
Speaker 1: say that. Wells admitted to him that he meant to,
Speaker 1: but he got to know him enough that he was like, yes,
Speaker 1: if you watched this, this initial press conference where he's
Speaker 1: apologizing because the whole country was ripped apart in chaos
Speaker 1: and we're running wild in the streets and like nearly
Speaker 1: rioted because of his broadcast, he's not at all. He's
Speaker 1: he's just as happy as a lark that this all happened,
Speaker 1: even though he's pretending to apologize. And he said that
Speaker 1: was just this resource And Wells, did you just say apologize.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a new version I'm testing out. I
Speaker 1: like it. It's it's good. Kind of yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: at least as good as apologize. So this was just
Speaker 1: a couple of days in the news cycle. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the biggest deal in the world, even though it was
Speaker 1: fairly sensational. Uh. Story writing for for a newspapers. UH.
Speaker 1: And it might have just gone that way had it
Speaker 1: not been for a Princeton University social psychologist a couple
Speaker 1: of years later named Hadley Cantrell, and Cantrell released a
Speaker 1: book on the real effects of this thing and basically
Speaker 1: said that you know, people were praying, crying, they were
Speaker 1: frantically trying to escape death from the Martians. Six million
Speaker 1: people listen to this thing, and at least when six
Speaker 1: of them were frightened or disturbed, and I have the
Speaker 1: evidence right here. Yeah, And the evidence that he had
Speaker 1: was based on a series of interviews with a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five people. Almost all of them were in
Speaker 1: New Jersey, which remember that's where the crux of the
Speaker 1: invasion and destruction being described took place, because Grover's Mill,
Speaker 1: New Jersey is actually a real town in Jersey. Um,
Speaker 1: so he went to Jersey because he was in Princeton.
Speaker 1: So he went where he was and interviewed a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five people, and he said, were you scared
Speaker 1: by this broadcast? And the participant would say yes, and
Speaker 1: he'd say you're in my study. And he'd ask the
Speaker 1: next one, were you scared? Were you scared by this broadcast?
Speaker 1: And they'd say no, he'd be like, you're not in
Speaker 1: the study. And so yeah, he said in the in
Speaker 1: the methodology that he selected a hundred out of the
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five because they had been scared by
Speaker 1: the broadcast. And so he took this these interviews of
Speaker 1: people in New Jersey and he extrapola did it to
Speaker 1: the rest of the country, and he said, yep, this
Speaker 1: is this is real. This is a really great example
Speaker 1: of people, um being fooled into into terror and panic.
Speaker 1: And you know the responses when this happens, like we
Speaker 1: saw after the World were the World's broadcast, people will
Speaker 1: run out into the street, they will flee the city,
Speaker 1: they will um call their friends and neighbors, they will
Speaker 1: um they may attempt suicide, they may die of a
Speaker 1: heart attack. Like the New York Times UM reported, uh
Speaker 1: twenty or so people in New York alone needed to
Speaker 1: be treated for for shock and hysteria. This is what
Speaker 1: happens when somebody toys with the public trust and UM yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty nuts. The end That was what That was
Speaker 1: the end of Hedley's Headley's book, right, Uh, yeah, not
Speaker 1: the end of this episode. So this is what this
Speaker 1: specific study is. What if you've ever taken um asked
Speaker 1: media or communications college class, you've probably studied War of
Speaker 1: the World's largely because of this study. Basically, it might
Speaker 1: have just come and gone if it weren't for this
Speaker 1: um this academic paper that we're put out and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, for decades and decades, it's reported on
Speaker 1: as like a cautionary tale almost of responsibility and media,
Speaker 1: even fictional media. And you know, as recently as two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, PBS American Experienced documentary said this was the case.
Speaker 1: Our old pals at Radio Lab in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight did an episode about this where that was the case.
Speaker 1: But there were a few problems with this paper. Beyond
Speaker 1: the supremely bad methodology behind just getting scared New Jersey
Speaker 1: people to go in there and and give their report.
Speaker 1: Was they found up that we they ended up finding
Speaker 1: real ratings for this thing, and not a ton of
Speaker 1: people even heard it. It turns out, uh so, so
Speaker 1: his six million estimate was way off, way way way off.
Speaker 1: And they did a survey during the program that said
Speaker 1: two percent of respondents said that they were listening in
Speaker 1: some markets, like big cities like Boston even preempted this
Speaker 1: thing for local programming. So it wasn't a ton of people,
Speaker 1: It wasn't a ton of people being scared and like, uh,
Speaker 1: just literally losing their minds with fear and panic and
Speaker 1: things swing so far the other way that it the
Speaker 1: narrative became, you know what, no one was really scared
Speaker 1: at all, And what newspapers really did was they put
Speaker 1: out hit pieces on a competing medium like radio and
Speaker 1: how you shouldn't trust it anymore. So so what happened
Speaker 1: over the last within some time within the century, but
Speaker 1: sometime in the two thousand tens, the the myth that
Speaker 1: America lost its mind went bonkers and ran wild in
Speaker 1: the street because they were panicked by the War of
Speaker 1: the World's broadcast was shown to be a myth that
Speaker 1: it didn't happen, and that was the new understanding for
Speaker 1: a little while, um, just a few years, until another
Speaker 1: guy came along and said, you know what, Um, they're
Speaker 1: actually both both are right and both are wrong in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Should we take a break and
Speaker 1: talk about the truth always being somewhere in the middle?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, all right, I said, the truth is always
Speaker 1: somewhere in between. That's not always the case with everything
Speaker 1: in life obviously, but that's that's a saying for a reason. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that's definitely seems to be the case. Uh, in
Speaker 1: this case with a gentleman named a Brad Schwartz, he's
Speaker 1: a probably the leading War of the World scholar. And
Speaker 1: he went back and he went and investigated the letters
Speaker 1: and the cables that that came in. Uh. They were
Speaker 1: at the University of Michigan Archives, and these are the
Speaker 1: letters that actually came in two Wells and the Mercury
Speaker 1: Theater in the days after the broadcast. And what he contends,
Speaker 1: and I agree, is that this is what you need
Speaker 1: to be reading, is what people were really thinking at
Speaker 1: the time, that weren't just cherry picked in the town
Speaker 1: where that got attacked in New Jersey, who were obviously
Speaker 1: they were going to be freaked out more than anyone
Speaker 1: in the country. Right. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: he points out is, you know, everybody been, you know,
Speaker 1: since around two thousand ten or maybe a little earlier.
Speaker 1: Everyone had been wailing on Hadley can't traill Um for
Speaker 1: his terrible, terrible methodology. Um, but they the revisionists were
Speaker 1: also kind of doing the same thing. They were making
Speaker 1: all sorts of suppositions, like the idea that the newspapers
Speaker 1: had basically conspired to target radio its rival to show
Speaker 1: how irresponsible it was and how it shouldn't be trusted
Speaker 1: with the news, that it's really newspapers that should be
Speaker 1: handling the news. And maybe you can listen to a
Speaker 1: little or fanny on on the radio, but that's about it.
Speaker 1: That that was all supposition. That was as much supposition
Speaker 1: as um Hadley can trill extrapolated his findings in New
Speaker 1: Jersey to the rest of the country. UM. And a
Speaker 1: Brad Schwartz. One of the reasons I think he's doing
Speaker 1: a good jobs because he's he's saying no where. If
Speaker 1: you actually sit down and read these letters and these
Speaker 1: cables that were coming in in the days after, they
Speaker 1: really probably paint the most accurate picture anyone's ever found
Speaker 1: to this to this point of how it was actually received.
Speaker 1: Like you can see almost in real time at the time, Um,
Speaker 1: what people were saying about this by in their letters
Speaker 1: to orson wells into the Mercury Theater on the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and it was a range of feelings. It was
Speaker 1: everything from people who said, you know what, we knew
Speaker 1: it wasn't real, but it was really scary and super awesome.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they said things like super awesome.
Speaker 1: He said that a number of people wrote in who
Speaker 1: actually um made fun of the people who fell for
Speaker 1: it and said that you know, they're they're gullible, their
Speaker 1: their rubes, and one writer even said they should be
Speaker 1: sterilized and disenfranchised. Yeah, because they'd shown that in an
Speaker 1: actual emergency they were undependable. They would just run around
Speaker 1: like chickens with their heads cut off in the streets. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Swartz sort of draws a line between what was
Speaker 1: going on back then to us today with this whole
Speaker 1: fake news hoax garbage that we have to listen to
Speaker 1: day in and day out, and uh basically said, this
Speaker 1: was the first viral phenomenon in media. Was the World
Speaker 1: of the World's broadcast, and it was a mixed bag.
Speaker 1: Some people loved it, some people did think it was
Speaker 1: real and panicked, but it certainly was not this widespread
Speaker 1: panic across the country like you were talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, less than a chord of the letters described
Speaker 1: what he would consider panic, but even most of those
Speaker 1: weren't actually angry when they were writing the letter. A
Speaker 1: lot of them were thrilled. But he he did right.
Speaker 1: But he did say, um that, yes, there are cases
Speaker 1: that you see in these letters and cables, Um that
Speaker 1: that described people panicking. So that did happen in some cases.
Speaker 1: Most of it seems to have been isolated in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: So if Hadley ken Trill had not extrapolated his findings
Speaker 1: and had you know, interviewed more people who had different
Speaker 1: reactions to the broadcast. But if it had just been
Speaker 1: like an investigation into the reaction in New Jersey, that
Speaker 1: study or that look would have been much more useful.
Speaker 1: But the fact is he just screwed the screwed the
Speaker 1: methodology up so badly that it's it's basically useless. But
Speaker 1: he wasn't. He didn't make up the panic that he described.
Speaker 1: Necessarily may have exaggerated it, who knows, but it did.
Speaker 1: It does seem to have actually happened in some cases,
Speaker 1: but it was sporadic, few and far between, certainly not organized,
Speaker 1: and certainly not seen across the rest of the country
Speaker 1: like it was reported on by the papers the next day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which sort of leads us to the story of the
Speaker 1: poor pulses of Manhattan. This Manhattan couple Um, they did
Speaker 1: fall for it. They were very scared. Apparently, as the
Speaker 1: story goes, they got their last six dollars together and
Speaker 1: got on a train to get the heck out of
Speaker 1: New York m assuming not going west into New Jersey,
Speaker 1: they went north towards Connecticut. Um, got as far as
Speaker 1: they could on what little money they had. Get off
Speaker 1: the train, and you know, there's a bunch of other
Speaker 1: passengers that they're telling, you know, they're warning everybody of
Speaker 1: what's happened. And this one guy there goes over and
Speaker 1: gets there. And I just pictured this in the movie.
Speaker 1: It's like, no one's listening to this guy. And he
Speaker 1: picks up the newspaper basically the TV guide to the
Speaker 1: Dunkin Donuts. He says, hey, guys, it says right here
Speaker 1: were the world's broadcast is supposed to be on at
Speaker 1: that hour. Um, Like, it just says right here in
Speaker 1: the newspaper. It's a it's a radio play. Everyone no one, everyone,
Speaker 1: no one, nobody, Okay. And then he just goes and
Speaker 1: gets on the train and leaves. But they feel bad
Speaker 1: for them that the other people that were you know,
Speaker 1: that had gathered together, they loaned them or gave them
Speaker 1: I guess some money, and she chipped in and got
Speaker 1: them back to New York City. And then later Estelle
Speaker 1: Pauls wrote a fifteen page letter the next day to
Speaker 1: Orson Wells that was very admiring and said how thrilled
Speaker 1: she was, but he imagine what else I know? Hell
Speaker 1: of a story, I think, is what which she has
Speaker 1: kept over and over and over all. Right, So, um
Speaker 1: so that was one of the letters that Abrad Schwartz
Speaker 1: turned up in that trove, and like it very clearly
Speaker 1: describes a couple panicking because they mistook the War of
Speaker 1: the World's broadcast. But again, um, this was not like
Speaker 1: across the nation like the papers reported, and Schwartz actually
Speaker 1: explains to the papers basically, um, as a combination of
Speaker 1: a couple of things. One is a bias. I can't
Speaker 1: tell if it's selection bias, volunteer bias, or confirmation bias,
Speaker 1: but the biases as follows. If you're in a newsroom
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, your phone starts ringing off
Speaker 1: the hook, and you're getting a hundred and fifty percent
Speaker 1: more calls that night, and all of them are people
Speaker 1: asking about this Martian invasion and what's going on? And
Speaker 1: is this real or is this a hoax? Or have
Speaker 1: you guys heard anything about this? And some of those
Speaker 1: calls are even from the local police who are also
Speaker 1: getting similar calls, and now they're calling you to find out.
Speaker 1: Then it seems like there's a lot of people calling
Speaker 1: and freaking out about this Martian thing. But if you
Speaker 1: step back, if you zoom out and look at that
Speaker 1: number of people that actually called the newsroom, it's just
Speaker 1: this minute fraction of the population of whatever town it is. Um,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't a bunch of people freaking out, But
Speaker 1: to the people answering the phone in the newsroom who
Speaker 1: are getting swamped with calls, way more calls than usual,
Speaker 1: it did seem like that. So that, combined with anecdotal
Speaker 1: reports that no one followed up followed up on from
Speaker 1: the wire services that people were attempting suicide or having
Speaker 1: heart attacks or whatever, that just being reported and related
Speaker 1: as fact, led everybody to believe that this was actually
Speaker 1: happening out there in the country, that people were running.
Speaker 1: Well maybe not my town, because I stuck my head
Speaker 1: outside of the news room and I didn't see anything,
Speaker 1: but I hear they're going crazy in Chicago, right now
Speaker 1: or I hear they're really going nuts in Milwaukee or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's how it got reported, and that's what everyone
Speaker 1: thought happened. People who lived through this thought that this
Speaker 1: happened the next day. Orson Welles thought his career was
Speaker 1: in jeopardy the next day because he accidentally made America
Speaker 1: go berserk. And that's how that myth began, and that's
Speaker 1: how it stood. And and A Brad Schworts basically traced
Speaker 1: it back to lazy, lazy reporting. So myth busted thanks
Speaker 1: to A. Brad Schwartz and US and US for sure,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you included us. So there's an interesting footnote
Speaker 1: here though, because this actually did kind of play out
Speaker 1: that way, um eight years later and night was eight
Speaker 1: years later, Yeah, in Ecuador. So this is in Quito, Ecuador.
Speaker 1: These broadcasters recreate the Orson Wells radio play, um, and
Speaker 1: they did a version that went a lot further than
Speaker 1: his did and got other radio stations to join in
Speaker 1: and add to their warding, which really pretty brilliant move
Speaker 1: there to increase like you turned the station and it's
Speaker 1: happening over there too. And this really did scare people.
Speaker 1: They really did take to the streets and panic. Uh
Speaker 1: there was you know, public panic going on. And then
Speaker 1: the crowd finds out that it's fiction and they get
Speaker 1: angry and actually turned into an angry mob and burned
Speaker 1: down the local newspaper building that had the radio station
Speaker 1: inside of it, killing six people. Yeah, six people died,
Speaker 1: fifteen people were injured, Like they knew that the staff
Speaker 1: was in that building, and they set the building on
Speaker 1: fire to try and kill them. A bunch of people
Speaker 1: escaped out the back, but a lot of people didn't escape,
Speaker 1: and the two people who were responsible for the broadcast,
Speaker 1: including UM, Ecuador's most beloved and trusted presenter, UM, were
Speaker 1: indicted for it. Like they're more safer basically, yeah, exactly, Um,
Speaker 1: and they were. They were indicted for their role in this.
Speaker 1: Like people died because of it. And this actually does
Speaker 1: seem to have happened in Ecuador. Amazing. Yeah, So there
Speaker 1: you go. The idea that America fell into chaos and
Speaker 1: panic after the war the world's broadcast is largely myth.
Speaker 1: Go forth and spread the gospel everybody, unless you're in Ecuador,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, no, it's actually happened here. Uh.
Speaker 1: And since I said that, actually happened here, I think,
Speaker 1: Chuck is time for the listener mail. So this is
Speaker 1: uh from Tom in the UK. Did you see this email?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. It's great. It's one long sentence
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna try and read it. And how I
Speaker 1: think Tom speaks as as Tom from the UK, because
Speaker 1: just the way he wrote it, I think Tom probably
Speaker 1: talks a little bit like this. This isn't Tom from
Speaker 1: the UK who was our tour manager when we did
Speaker 1: our UK tour? Is it now? Well? Shout out to
Speaker 1: that Tom. This is an engineer and this is what
Speaker 1: he all right, Sup, Josh and Chuck, Tom engineer from
Speaker 1: the UK, Stoke on Trent, big fan of the show.
Speaker 1: Been binging for about two years and got through all
Speaker 1: of them, all of you lot, even Jerry have got
Speaker 1: me through a lot these last couple of years, and
Speaker 1: I put a few people onto your podcast. Wanted to
Speaker 1: email you lot for a while and finally managed to
Speaker 1: get round to emailing a load of things to people
Speaker 1: about stuff that really doesn't matter. Emailed the TV show
Speaker 1: about one of their actors, a part of a particle
Speaker 1: physicist about using a light year of lead as a
Speaker 1: frame of reference. The company super Noodles for the excellent
Speaker 1: job they've done with their super noodle part, but I'm
Speaker 1: not much for the pas And I just wanted to say,
Speaker 1: I know you like the Japanese mayo, but you really
Speaker 1: need to try the Polish mayo. Spot on all the
Speaker 1: best Tom boil Boy Tom now is great And Chuck,
Speaker 1: that was a fantastic stoke on trent accent, the most
Speaker 1: accurate I've ever heard and the first Tom that was
Speaker 1: a great email. And you're right, Chuck, I love that
Speaker 1: email so much. I had so much fun. You were
Speaker 1: right to choose that one. UM. So thanks Tom, thanks
Speaker 1: for writing in. Thank you for including us in your
Speaker 1: list of people you harass via email. Um, and keep listening, okay,
Speaker 1: and keep writing in. Maybe we'll make this a regular thing, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I would that yep. So Tom right in again. Uh
Speaker 1: And if you want to write into we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you, you can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
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