On Halloween 1938 young radio star Orson Welles scared the pants off of America with a fictional news bulletin claiming Martians had landed and were destroying the country. People across the nation ran wild with panic in the streets – or did they?
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Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of five Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there. It's just the two of us batching it up without Jerry. Oh man, I think Jerry's inclusion, we're still batching it up. How do you mean? I mean, does she really ruin the batch scene for us? Sure? She's very maternal and judge, Yeah, you were headed down a kind road for a second. I was with Jerry. That doesn't sound like me. So for all of you who are just tuning into the first time, welcome, this is stuff you should know. To everybody else who's tuning in for the multiple times, Welcome, this is stuff you should know. Yeah, we never do that. Some shows do that what they welcome new listeners, Yeah, and kind of say what they do. And I mean we've literally never done that. That's fine, that's lame. Hi, which who does that? Any friends of ours? Yeah? I mean the guys on the Flop House, they've been podcasting as long as we have. In every single episode they say who they are and what they do. No, okay, well do you want to do that this one time. Well, I'm Chuck Bryant and this is Josh Clark, and uh, this is a podcast where we explain things in a lighthearted and fun and sometimes even funny way. I disagree with all of that. Oh boy, So what we're gonna talk about today, because I think we need to talk about this one in a slightly somber tone. Chuck, it's a blemish in the history of America really if you think about it. Well, yeah, and you know what, I've never actually had listened to it until this week, same here, and it was It's a lot of fun to actually listen to. I would recommend it, Yeah, especially in a dark room, um, where that's all you're concentrating on, not like a second screen kind of thing, like where you're really listening to this radio play. Put yourself there a little bit like what it must have been like and well not And that's when the book came out. Yeah, but in ninety eight, I mean what forty years later, Just in that forty years stretch, I mean, think about the difference between nine eight and not ridiculously different periods. It's exactly. Oh it's gone downhill, um, And don't think they had nothing to do with Reagan's election in nineteen eighty. But the difference between eight and nineteen thirty eight are it's just like two different worlds, man um, two different worlds, common War of the So I guess we should start with the book written by the great H. G. Wells. Um. It was the very first an invasion story to hit the bookshelves, and that's a pretty remarkable thing. It was a serialized thing at first, and magazines and Pearson's in the in the UK, and then Cosmo here in the US, and then they finally slapped all those serialized versions together into a book and it sold pretty well. Yeah, it's never been on a print since that first edition in that's pretty respectable. I expect that as much for our book as well. Yeah, I'm sure it'll be still being published in forty years or a hundred years, a hundred and forty years. Yeah, well let's hope. Um. So in this book, and like you said, first alien invasion story ever published, which is you know, just the fact that this is a completely new premise, new conceit made it, you know, kind of scary. But in the book, um, H. G. Wells describes like this, this alien invasion. Um. And part of the thing that was so scary about it, at least at the time, from what I can gather, is that it was about like the breakdown of society. And we're talking like Victorian era England society, where like rigid social rules and customs and Morey's and and guidance for all behavior at all times was like the norm. So the idea of that breaking down was scary on in and of itself. I think that made the book kind of scary to contemporary readers. Would that be right readers back then? Um? And that was one big theme that Well has explored. Another one that he explored in that at least I think whoever wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica article on it said that the main point of this, the main subtext was um, learning how humans dominion over animals can be, you know, cruel and thoughtless, because all of a sudden, with these alien invaders who were just wiping us off the map, Um, we were the we were like, you know, domesticated animals to them. Yeah, so the shoe was on the other hoof, And uh, sure it caused or at least it was intended to cause people to take kind of a hard look at a pre animal farm to make sort of a social statement about how we treated animals. And so that was if you flash forward to Orson Welles in his Mercury Theater version, he uh, this is you know, like you said, we're right in the middle or we're in the Great Depression and we're headed towards war and it's sort of an uneasy feeling in the United States as a whole. So he thought, perfect time to go in there, put a fresh coat of paint on this thing and scare the bijebas out of the American public by doing really something that they had never heard before, which was sort of a verite style production. Yeah, and I mean it's it's easy to overlook today, but radio is still rather new at the time in it was like, you know, cutting edge technological medium and it was not fully defined. So the idea of um creating this I guess hoax broadcast is the best you can call it. Um, this fictionalized version that was what would you call it? Man, I hate that word so much. It's really taken on a bad tang here lately. Uh. Yeah, I mean, it's it's verity. It's it's uh, you know, of a faux documentary style thing that no one had ever heard, Like, there's no way when people heard this they would think, oh, this is you know, I know Christopher Guests, this is sort of a scary version. I've seen Blair Witch. I know what's going on here. I recognize Lenny from Laverne and Shirley anywhere. I know it's not real. So they were they weren't prepared for this in when orson well, as he was already a big name in radio as the voice of the Shadow, which was big hit, and his Mercury Theater was pretty pretty well respected at the time. It's yeah, it's like a live stage theater. So they'd only had this show for a few months by the time October rolled around. UM. But their whole jam was they were on CBS, and CBS had them do our long radio adaptations of classic UM like novels like Treasure Island they did around the world in eighty days. And so since it was October, they wanted to do something spooky around Halloween something, so they decided yeah. So so they were like, well, what's the most boring scary book there is? And they said, h G wells wore the world, so they decided to adapt it. Yeah, so they got together, they're rehearsing. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a sec. But there wasn't a strong feeling among the cast and crew and the production group that I thought it was gonna be awesome because I think probably because they had never done anything like this. They had never heard anything like this, and they thought, is this even gonna be any good? And a couple of different sources in the production went to a radio critic ahead of time, it's like, thanks a lot, and they said, by the way, this is going to be a real stinker, they said, Apparently two different people in the in the production said that this will put everyone to sleep. And I don't I don't have the impression that it's strictly because they didn't have any frame of reference to judge it against, because no one had done this before. From what I can gather, the originally it was going to be really bad and really terrible, and the production and the cast and crew knew this. They knew that they were marching towards embarrassment. Um with the the early versions of the of the script. Yeah, so orson he's sort of distracted. He's got a stage production going on. He's got his partner in his group, John the Great John Houseman, Uh you all know from the Paper Chase, kind of a legendary actor. He was his one of his original partners, and he got together with Howard Is it catch? I never know if it's going to be a colt or a coke, doesn't matter, all right, koc h and he was the writer who was adapting the novel, and they were like, we gotta make this thing better. And one thing I think we can do. This was Houseman talking, I'm not gonna do a John Houseman, but everyone knows how he sounds. Right. When I came across John Houseman being involved, was like, I can't wait. I don't even remember. I mean, he was just very serious and sort of all I can think of his Paper Chase. And what was the TV commercial was it? I want to say it was like Schwaberry Lynch. I think it might have been Merrill Lynch maybe I don't know. But one of those finance firms he did he voiced for, well, yeah. He was very famous for having a very high pitched, squeaky falsetto voice, and he talked very very fast, and actually I know who it was. It was FedEx and Duncan Donuts. He was well known for it, right, he was the time to make the donuts guy right with the must so houseman and uh, Cotch Coke went in there and he said, one of the things we should do, probably to make this a little more scary and a little more believable that it's an actual broadcast is you know, time passes in the book and we can't do that here, so let's just get rid of all that stuff so it gives the appearance that it's going down right now. Yeah, that was enormously a huge change. Um. And I don't know if he did that too to help the pacing move a little faster or what, um, but that was that would pan out to be a really important difference in the original script that um Howard Kay turned in uh and the one that they ended up doing. And then even beyond that, some of the other changes came just hours before broadcast, because apparently, if you worked with Wars and Wells, you should be on the lookout for him to come in at the last minute and be like all the stuff we've been practicing for a week or two, forget all of that. We're we're doing this instead. And part of that, from what I can tell, is that he was trying to shake up the act or shake them out of whatever complacency they'd worked themselves into with rehearsal and to get this raw, more terrified performance. And apparently it worked. I mean, I can't imagine I didn't hear any rehearsals or anything like that. I would have loved to have compared, you know, the week before too, you know, the actual broadcast. But everyone delivered these really great, um, really great performances, and they really nailed by showtime, um the realism in a lot of ways, not just in the performances, um, but also in just little details like they you know, they were they were doing a a mock radio program, which we'll talk about a little more in detail in a second, but they were they were pretending to have news bulletins breaking, so they were they were doing the things that news bulletins did. And one of the things that stuck out to me was one of the eyewitnesses, so it's an actor, but one of the eyewitnesses is like being interviewed by a news reporter on the scene and they started to talk, and the news reporter goes, can you can you speak loud? Speak more loudly and move into the microphone please, and that the I think the actor actually says, how's that? And the guy repeats himself, and then the actress to repeat himself what he was originally saying. So it has like that veneer of you know, authenticity, just from little details like that that, you know, really it stood out to me when I was listening for him. But if you're if you're not listening for him, you you just it makes you buy into the whole thing that much more. Yeah, And the other big change that Wells brought along was stretching out the first two halves of the thing such that it went past it went forty minutes, and radio at the time, every thirty minutes, like on the half hour, they would check in with the station I D check and listeners, even though radio was new, were well honed to this station break every thirty minute, And so when ten minutes passed, the half hour go by and there ain't and there ain't no station break. That really makes people kind of buy in to what they're listening to is possibly real. Uh. And then you add to the fact that there were no sponsors for this show. Yeah, so they weren't cutting to a Casper or or me, me and these ads all of a sudden, I can remember any sponsor. Can you imagine John Houseman saying made with modal? No, I thought it'd be made with modal. Yeah, that's right, that's a much better Houseman. I had something in my threat. Uh. So, yeah, there were no sponsors. So basically it really came across as something that was super super realistic sounding. Right, So all that is to say that they had really by the time this broadcast aired eight p m. On Sunday, October eight, they they were not going to be the laughing stock and this is not going to be embarrassing. It was going to be pretty awesome. Actually, should we take a break, I think so, Chuck, and then we'll come back and we will reveal the broadcast after this. Okay, so we've reached showtime. Air time a p m. Sunday, October, Mercury Theater on the Air began broadcasting its adaptation of H. G. Wells War of the World, and at the very beginning, it's introduced as much there's an announcer who says that I think this loss is probably to time somewhat because everyone probably thinks that they just tried to trick everyone. But no, they actually introduced it as what they're doing. You know that this is a radio place at one year in the future, right right, And yeah, Orson Welles. So it's introduced by an announcer. Orson Wells comes in does the introductory essay, and then they did something really smart and interesting, especially for the time. They went to a musical program that was supposedly being broadcast from the Murdian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza. So if you were just tuning in right then, you would have no idea that this was Mercury Theater on the air. You would have no idea that this was a teleplay. You would think that you were listening to UM something that was pretty regularly broadcast, which was live music at some like ballroom in a hotel somewhere in New York. UM that they set up like a radio transmitter to transmit out over the radio. That was pretty frequent. But this was part of the show paused. It is right right exactly so, but that was a huge which part of the show because that lilled um listeners into kind of complacency, and listeners who tuned in late and missed that introduction thought that this is what they were listening to. And then the first news bulletin hits, yeah, and that's where things start to get really interesting. They break in, you know, one of these interrupt your previously scheduled programs kind of things, and they come in and with these bulletin's, but they're not super long at first because they treat it kind of how it would be in real life. It's just sort of a breaking story. Something's going together. It was fairly obtuse, and they didn't like, you know, say, Martians are attacking us right now everyone from the get go, I sort of left it up to the listener to kind of piece it together a little by little. They would go back to the Meridian room for a bit, and it wasn't for very long, but because you know, they couldn't waste too much time, but it was long enough. It wasn't for like ten seconds. They did it for like a minute a minute and a half. Right. It made it seem right then, like that was what you were listening to, that that was the program and the bulletin was in fact the bulletin rather than the opposite being true. Yeah. So eventually you start to piece together what's going on, and you have, uh, this attack in New Jersey of all places, and uh, Princeton University they had like a Princeton astronomer on. They have government officials and they kind of dole it out a little by little until about the seventeen minutes seventeen and a half minute mark, and then that's when it really kind of gets, uh, super scary and people really see the full picture of what's going on. So Chuck, um, I feel like we should read a little bit of the script. There's this one part starting about the seventeen thirty minute market think you said where they um as I like to say, they tore the lid off the sucker. Do you want to be announcer or Phillips? I'll be the announcer, okay, but I want you to do Phillips as Sammy Davis jor. So here's the announcer. Wait, hold on, I'm getting on my tap shoes. Okay you're ready, Canny man, I'm not gonna do it that way. Okay, So let me give you a little bit of background real quick. So these news bulletins up to this point of basically said there's some weird thing that landed they thought was a meteorite at first, that landed in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Um. And then later bulletin said that, oh, actually there's some weird tentacle like weird things emerging from this thing we thought was a meteor Right. So now we're back at Grover's Mill. So I'm the announcer. We are bringing you and I witness account of what's happening on the Wilmouth Farm Grover's Mill, New Jersey. And that was kind of like they were breaking in to let you know that. And then they go back to more piano for some reason. And then we now return you to Carl Phillips at Grover's Mill. Lady, ladies and gentlemen. Am I on on, ladies and gentlemen. Here, I am back up a stone wall that adjoins Mr. Willmas Garden. From here I get a sweep of the whole scene. I'll give you every detail as long as I can talk, as long as I can see. More State police have arrived. They're drawing up a cordon in front of the pit, about thirty of them. No need to push the crowd back now they're willing to keep their distance. The captain is conferring with someone we we can't quite see who. Oh, yes, I believe it's a professor Pearson. Yes it is. Now they've parted. The professor moves around one side, studying the object. Well. The captain and two policemen advance with something in their hands. I can see it now. It's a it's a white handkerchief tied to a pole, a flag of truce. If those creatures know what that means, what anything means? Wait, something's happening. You can cut in any time. Who can take a rainbow? Wait? Sorry, hump shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What's that? There's jet there's a jet flame springing from the mirror and at leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on. Good lord, they're turning into flame. Oh god, oh my god. Now the whole field's caught fire, the woods, the barns, the gas tanks, the automobiles, and spreading everywhere. It's coming this way, about twenty yards to my right, very nice and scene that was great, Chuck so Um they they you mentioned, or I should say Phillips. The reporter on the scene mentioned Professor Pearson, and he's this he ends up being the main character and he's uh, he's an interview he's in a Stromer's interviewed earlier on and he's on the scene as it happens. Um, and the the program just keeps going like that, like there's another there's a main announcer. Um, who I played? I thought rather well, Um, thank you, and it seemed to you by the future as a fully artist, if I may say so, thank you very much. I've been practicing. You want to hear my machine gun? I've been doing that one since I was like six. All right, how about walking through the forest? All right now, how about a good punch to the face. Oh wow, that was good, Thank you. Probably punched myself in the thing. I'm dedicated. That's how dedicated to the art of fully so. Um. The announcer just keeps bringing in more and more news as this thing goes on and unfolds of like, now, these things aren't just in New Jersey there in Chicago. They're like out West they're they're starting to invade everywhere, and they're killing people left and right. That you said there was a government official that reads a statement is actually that they say that it's the Secretary of the Interior, which I thought was particularly genius because I mean, probably not that many people were familiar with the Secretary of the Interior, Harold x Um, but they had him sound like FDR so that they would kind of play on everyone's um, I guess unconscious or I'm sure there were people who are like the sounds just like FDR, but at the very least, it would kind of evoke that government authority, the reality of like a government figure, you know. Yeah. So meanwhile, on the other stations, there's one that's running opposite, which is a really really popular radio show at the time, um probably the most popular, Chasing Sandborn Hour, which had the very very famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen in his dummy Charlie McCarthy, and we talked about that on our ventilla Quism episode. Remember that they started out on radio, which is hysterical. I don't even know why they would even bother with the dummy part. Just do too. You wouldn't even know that's what he did. You wouldn't even have to wear pants around and your spaghetti stained under shirt and yeah, naked from the waist down, maybe some socks, doing a couple of voices. Here's your contract Edgar Bergin, What do you think about that? Charlie Dart get me started, Like that's it. I could be a famous vintiloquist on the radio. You just you just did it. I think I think Hollywood's gonna come with Collin. But the real sort of interesting um factoid here, I think is that people were channel surfing back then when you cut to commercial, just like we used to do when we didn't have pause buttons and fast forward buttons. And what is this pause button? You keep mentioning? I've never heard of this. You've never paused television? No, wow, you you need I don't believe I've ever paused anything in my life. It's funny. We were Emily and I've been watching that German sci fi series Dark, which is very challenging to follow, and uh, there's a lot of rewinding like wait, wait, who was at what did they just say? And we rewind it a bit and do that again, and or you know, of course I got to go the bathroom. Let me depose it. And I was thinking about how, not too long ago, you just if you missed something, you missed it. You just paid the count or you paid yourself on the couch. Yeah, there was no clear like, let me go back and clear this up. It's like, what did he say? I have no idea. I guess we'll never know. There's no internet. I guess I should probably stop watching this show altogether. You go walk up to the VCR in President Jack. But at any rate, back then, let's say Charlie McCarthy goes to break and no word from Mark Banser and they flip it over to war the world's at this point in the broadcast when the s is hitting the fan and it's going to scare the pants off of people in well, yeah, even more than I think that they would have dialed over even before that, so they might have caught like a news bulletin and then maybe some of that music from the Meridian Room. Um, so I really would have caught them. And there were supposedly a substantial number of people who did dial over, and we're like, wait, wait, what what is going on here? And now we come to the reaction the response, because if you picked up the paper the next day in America, um, just about anywhere in any major city, you're going to find huge, blaring headlines like the one that the New York Daily News printed in tall, bold letters. Fake radio war stirs terror through the US. Yeah, stories of of shock and hysteria, stories of people taking their own life, stories of people dying from heart attacks. The ape sat a man in Pittsburgh found his wife with poison in her hand and said, I'm gonna I'd rather die this way than like that. And you know, talking to Wells afterward in the aftermath of this, he apologizes publicly says they didn't intend to do this. Uh, we had we didn't know what was going to cause a panic. And then you know, if you look over the years more interviews, it's sort of seems like Wells is a little more like, you know, we thought it would be pretty fun to scare people, and I didn't know if it was going to cause a panic, but we definitely intended it to have this effect on people, whereas houseman in Cotch, We're like, no, we really didn't mean it. Um. So it was sort of conflicting reports from the production on what they thought was going to be the result, right, Um. And I've read an interview with John Landis, the great director who um worked with Wells on a project that never got made towards the end of wells life, and he didn't say that. Wells admitted to him that he meant to, but he got to know him enough that he was like, yes, if you watched this, this initial press conference where he's apologizing because the whole country was ripped apart in chaos and we're running wild in the streets and like nearly rioted because of his broadcast, he's not at all. He's he's just as happy as a lark that this all happened, even though he's pretending to apologize. And he said that was just this resource And Wells, did you just say apologize. It's a it's a new version I'm testing out. I like it. It's it's good. Kind of yeah, it's it's at least as good as apologize. So this was just a couple of days in the news cycle. It wasn't the biggest deal in the world, even though it was fairly sensational. Uh. Story writing for for a newspapers. UH. And it might have just gone that way had it not been for a Princeton University social psychologist a couple of years later named Hadley Cantrell, and Cantrell released a book on the real effects of this thing and basically said that you know, people were praying, crying, they were frantically trying to escape death from the Martians. Six million people listen to this thing, and at least when six of them were frightened or disturbed, and I have the evidence right here. Yeah, And the evidence that he had was based on a series of interviews with a hundred and thirty five people. Almost all of them were in New Jersey, which remember that's where the crux of the invasion and destruction being described took place, because Grover's Mill, New Jersey is actually a real town in Jersey. Um, so he went to Jersey because he was in Princeton. So he went where he was and interviewed a hundred and thirty five people, and he said, were you scared by this broadcast? And the participant would say yes, and he'd say you're in my study. And he'd ask the next one, were you scared? Were you scared by this broadcast? And they'd say no, he'd be like, you're not in the study. And so yeah, he said in the in the methodology that he selected a hundred out of the hundred and thirty five because they had been scared by the broadcast. And so he took this these interviews of people in New Jersey and he extrapola did it to the rest of the country, and he said, yep, this is this is real. This is a really great example of people, um being fooled into into terror and panic. And you know the responses when this happens, like we saw after the World were the World's broadcast, people will run out into the street, they will flee the city, they will um call their friends and neighbors, they will um they may attempt suicide, they may die of a heart attack. Like the New York Times UM reported, uh twenty or so people in New York alone needed to be treated for for shock and hysteria. This is what happens when somebody toys with the public trust and UM yeah, it's pretty nuts. The end That was what That was the end of Hedley's Headley's book, right, Uh, yeah, not the end of this episode. So this is what this specific study is. What if you've ever taken um asked media or communications college class, you've probably studied War of the World's largely because of this study. Basically, it might have just come and gone if it weren't for this um this academic paper that we're put out and all of a sudden, for decades and decades, it's reported on as like a cautionary tale almost of responsibility and media, even fictional media. And you know, as recently as two thousand thirteen, PBS American Experienced documentary said this was the case. Our old pals at Radio Lab in two thousand and eight did an episode about this where that was the case. But there were a few problems with this paper. Beyond the supremely bad methodology behind just getting scared New Jersey people to go in there and and give their report. Was they found up that we they ended up finding real ratings for this thing, and not a ton of people even heard it. It turns out, uh so, so his six million estimate was way off, way way way off. And they did a survey during the program that said two percent of respondents said that they were listening in some markets, like big cities like Boston even preempted this thing for local programming. So it wasn't a ton of people, It wasn't a ton of people being scared and like, uh, just literally losing their minds with fear and panic and things swing so far the other way that it the narrative became, you know what, no one was really scared at all, And what newspapers really did was they put out hit pieces on a competing medium like radio and how you shouldn't trust it anymore. So so what happened over the last within some time within the century, but sometime in the two thousand tens, the the myth that America lost its mind went bonkers and ran wild in the street because they were panicked by the War of the World's broadcast was shown to be a myth that it didn't happen, and that was the new understanding for a little while, um, just a few years, until another guy came along and said, you know what, Um, they're actually both both are right and both are wrong in a lot of ways. Should we take a break and talk about the truth always being somewhere in the middle? Mm hmm, all right, I said, the truth is always somewhere in between. That's not always the case with everything in life obviously, but that's that's a saying for a reason. Uh, And that's definitely seems to be the case. Uh, in this case with a gentleman named a Brad Schwartz, he's a probably the leading War of the World scholar. And he went back and he went and investigated the letters and the cables that that came in. Uh. They were at the University of Michigan Archives, and these are the letters that actually came in two Wells and the Mercury Theater in the days after the broadcast. And what he contends, and I agree, is that this is what you need to be reading, is what people were really thinking at the time, that weren't just cherry picked in the town where that got attacked in New Jersey, who were obviously they were going to be freaked out more than anyone in the country. Right. So one of the things that he points out is, you know, everybody been, you know, since around two thousand ten or maybe a little earlier. Everyone had been wailing on Hadley can't traill Um for his terrible, terrible methodology. Um, but they the revisionists were also kind of doing the same thing. They were making all sorts of suppositions, like the idea that the newspapers had basically conspired to target radio its rival to show how irresponsible it was and how it shouldn't be trusted with the news, that it's really newspapers that should be handling the news. And maybe you can listen to a little or fanny on on the radio, but that's about it. That that was all supposition. That was as much supposition as um Hadley can trill extrapolated his findings in New Jersey to the rest of the country. UM. And a Brad Schwartz. One of the reasons I think he's doing a good jobs because he's he's saying no where. If you actually sit down and read these letters and these cables that were coming in in the days after, they really probably paint the most accurate picture anyone's ever found to this to this point of how it was actually received. Like you can see almost in real time at the time, Um, what people were saying about this by in their letters to orson wells into the Mercury Theater on the air. Yeah, and and it was a range of feelings. It was everything from people who said, you know what, we knew it wasn't real, but it was really scary and super awesome. I don't know if they said things like super awesome. He said that a number of people wrote in who actually um made fun of the people who fell for it and said that you know, they're they're gullible, their their rubes, and one writer even said they should be sterilized and disenfranchised. Yeah, because they'd shown that in an actual emergency they were undependable. They would just run around like chickens with their heads cut off in the streets. Yeah. And Swartz sort of draws a line between what was going on back then to us today with this whole fake news hoax garbage that we have to listen to day in and day out, and uh basically said, this was the first viral phenomenon in media. Was the World of the World's broadcast, and it was a mixed bag. Some people loved it, some people did think it was real and panicked, but it certainly was not this widespread panic across the country like you were talking about. Yeah, he said, less than a chord of the letters described what he would consider panic, but even most of those weren't actually angry when they were writing the letter. A lot of them were thrilled. But he he did right. But he did say, um that, yes, there are cases that you see in these letters and cables, Um that that described people panicking. So that did happen in some cases. Most of it seems to have been isolated in New Jersey. So if Hadley ken Trill had not extrapolated his findings and had you know, interviewed more people who had different reactions to the broadcast. But if it had just been like an investigation into the reaction in New Jersey, that study or that look would have been much more useful. But the fact is he just screwed the screwed the methodology up so badly that it's it's basically useless. But he wasn't. He didn't make up the panic that he described. Necessarily may have exaggerated it, who knows, but it did. It does seem to have actually happened in some cases, but it was sporadic, few and far between, certainly not organized, and certainly not seen across the rest of the country like it was reported on by the papers the next day. Yeah, which sort of leads us to the story of the poor pulses of Manhattan. This Manhattan couple Um, they did fall for it. They were very scared. Apparently, as the story goes, they got their last six dollars together and got on a train to get the heck out of New York m assuming not going west into New Jersey, they went north towards Connecticut. Um, got as far as they could on what little money they had. Get off the train, and you know, there's a bunch of other passengers that they're telling, you know, they're warning everybody of what's happened. And this one guy there goes over and gets there. And I just pictured this in the movie. It's like, no one's listening to this guy. And he picks up the newspaper basically the TV guide to the Dunkin Donuts. He says, hey, guys, it says right here were the world's broadcast is supposed to be on at that hour. Um, Like, it just says right here in the newspaper. It's a it's a radio play. Everyone no one, everyone, no one, nobody, Okay. And then he just goes and gets on the train and leaves. But they feel bad for them that the other people that were you know, that had gathered together, they loaned them or gave them I guess some money, and she chipped in and got them back to New York City. And then later Estelle Pauls wrote a fifteen page letter the next day to Orson Wells that was very admiring and said how thrilled she was, but he imagine what else I know? Hell of a story, I think, is what which she has kept over and over and over all. Right, So, um so that was one of the letters that Abrad Schwartz turned up in that trove, and like it very clearly describes a couple panicking because they mistook the War of the World's broadcast. But again, um, this was not like across the nation like the papers reported, and Schwartz actually explains to the papers basically, um, as a combination of a couple of things. One is a bias. I can't tell if it's selection bias, volunteer bias, or confirmation bias, but the biases as follows. If you're in a newsroom and all of a sudden, your phone starts ringing off the hook, and you're getting a hundred and fifty percent more calls that night, and all of them are people asking about this Martian invasion and what's going on? And is this real or is this a hoax? Or have you guys heard anything about this? And some of those calls are even from the local police who are also getting similar calls, and now they're calling you to find out. Then it seems like there's a lot of people calling and freaking out about this Martian thing. But if you step back, if you zoom out and look at that number of people that actually called the newsroom, it's just this minute fraction of the population of whatever town it is. Um, So it wasn't a bunch of people freaking out, But to the people answering the phone in the newsroom who are getting swamped with calls, way more calls than usual, it did seem like that. So that, combined with anecdotal reports that no one followed up followed up on from the wire services that people were attempting suicide or having heart attacks or whatever, that just being reported and related as fact, led everybody to believe that this was actually happening out there in the country, that people were running. Well maybe not my town, because I stuck my head outside of the news room and I didn't see anything, but I hear they're going crazy in Chicago, right now or I hear they're really going nuts in Milwaukee or whatever. Um. And that's how it got reported, and that's what everyone thought happened. People who lived through this thought that this happened the next day. Orson Welles thought his career was in jeopardy the next day because he accidentally made America go berserk. And that's how that myth began, and that's how it stood. And and A Brad Schworts basically traced it back to lazy, lazy reporting. So myth busted thanks to A. Brad Schwartz and US and US for sure, I'm glad you included us. So there's an interesting footnote here though, because this actually did kind of play out that way, um eight years later and night was eight years later, Yeah, in Ecuador. So this is in Quito, Ecuador. These broadcasters recreate the Orson Wells radio play, um, and they did a version that went a lot further than his did and got other radio stations to join in and add to their warding, which really pretty brilliant move there to increase like you turned the station and it's happening over there too. And this really did scare people. They really did take to the streets and panic. Uh there was you know, public panic going on. And then the crowd finds out that it's fiction and they get angry and actually turned into an angry mob and burned down the local newspaper building that had the radio station inside of it, killing six people. Yeah, six people died, fifteen people were injured, Like they knew that the staff was in that building, and they set the building on fire to try and kill them. A bunch of people escaped out the back, but a lot of people didn't escape, and the two people who were responsible for the broadcast, including UM, Ecuador's most beloved and trusted presenter, UM, were indicted for it. Like they're more safer basically, yeah, exactly, Um, and they were. They were indicted for their role in this. Like people died because of it. And this actually does seem to have happened in Ecuador. Amazing. Yeah, So there you go. The idea that America fell into chaos and panic after the war the world's broadcast is largely myth. Go forth and spread the gospel everybody, unless you're in Ecuador, and then you're like, no, it's actually happened here. Uh. And since I said that, actually happened here, I think, Chuck is time for the listener mail. So this is uh from Tom in the UK. Did you see this email? I don't think so. It's great. It's one long sentence and I'm gonna try and read it. And how I think Tom speaks as as Tom from the UK, because just the way he wrote it, I think Tom probably talks a little bit like this. This isn't Tom from the UK who was our tour manager when we did our UK tour? Is it now? Well? Shout out to that Tom. This is an engineer and this is what he all right, Sup, Josh and Chuck, Tom engineer from the UK, Stoke on Trent, big fan of the show. Been binging for about two years and got through all of them, all of you lot, even Jerry have got me through a lot these last couple of years, and I put a few people onto your podcast. Wanted to email you lot for a while and finally managed to get round to emailing a load of things to people about stuff that really doesn't matter. Emailed the TV show about one of their actors, a part of a particle physicist about using a light year of lead as a frame of reference. The company super Noodles for the excellent job they've done with their super noodle part, but I'm not much for the pas And I just wanted to say, I know you like the Japanese mayo, but you really need to try the Polish mayo. Spot on all the best Tom boil Boy Tom now is great And Chuck, that was a fantastic stoke on trent accent, the most accurate I've ever heard and the first Tom that was a great email. And you're right, Chuck, I love that email so much. I had so much fun. You were right to choose that one. UM. So thanks Tom, thanks for writing in. Thank you for including us in your list of people you harass via email. Um, and keep listening, okay, and keep writing in. Maybe we'll make this a regular thing, Chuck, I would that yep. So Tom right in again. Uh And if you want to write into we want to hear from you, you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. 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