On the morning of 31 October 1938, a sleepless 23-year-old walked into a room full of reporters who all wanted the same answer: had Orson Welles deliberately terrified America? The night before, his Mercury Theatre on the Air had performed The War of the Worlds as a string of fake news bulletins, and by morning the newspapers claimed the country had come apart. Families fleeing their homes. Switchboards jammed. People begging for gas masks as Martians supposedly wiped out New Jersey.

But the panic might be the biggest illusion of all. Kyle takes Adam through Welles's rise from child prodigy to radio wonder, the frantic last-minute rewrite that almost nobody behind the scenes believed in, and the missing station break that let listeners think it was real. Then comes the twist: the ratings suggesting hardly anyone tuned in, the study that quietly falls apart under scrutiny, and the newspapers with every reason to make radio look dangerous.

This is the strange true story of how a broadcast everyone expected to flop became the most famous in radio history, and how a nation talked itself into believing it had been fooled.

Topics Included
what actually happened during the 1938 war of the worlds broadcast
how orson welles went from child prodigy to radio star
the last-minute rewrite the cast thought would flop
why the missing station break made listeners think it was real
the fake news bulletins and the Grovers Mill landing
the reports of gas masks, fleeing families and jammed switchboards
the ratings and the study that undercut the mass hysteria
how newspapers amplified the panic to attack radio
how the broadcast made Orson Welles more famous, not less

Resources and Further Reading

• The War of the Worlds - Novel by H.G. Wells
• The War of the Worlds (1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast) - Internet Archive -
• 'War of the Worlds' guide: Script, audio and recollections - Wellesnet
• The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic - Article by Jefferson Pooley
• The legend of the War of the Worlds - PBS NewsHour
• Broadcast Hysteria: - by A. Brad Schwartz

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Editor: Giordanno Bottezini
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
• Suggest a Topic: Freaky Register

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An entire colony of 117 men, women and children vanished without leaving behind a single body. There was no blood, no sign of an attack and no ruined settlement. Their homes had been carefully dismantled and taken away. All they left behind was one word carved into a wooden post: CROATOAN.

In 1587, the colonists were stranded on Roanoke Island instead of reaching their intended home in Chesapeake Bay. Governor John White sailed back to England for supplies, leaving behind his daughter Eleanor and newborn granddaughter Virginia Dare. War, privateering and disaster kept him away for three years. By the time he returned, everyone was gone.

What did Croatoan mean and where did the settlers go? Did they move inland, reach the Indigenous communities around Chesapeake, survive through trade and assimilation, or meet a more violent end? From Sir Walter Raleigh’s collapsing colonial scheme and England’s brutal relationship with local communities to hidden map symbols, hammerscale, Jamestown accounts and the infamous Dare Stones, this is the strange history behind one of America’s most enduring unsolved mysteries and the possibility that the colonists were never truly lost at all.

• What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke
• The real meaning of the Croatoan carving
• John White’s three-year delay and return
• Virginia Dare and the 117 settlers
• English conflict with the Roanoac and Croatoan communities
• The planned move to Chesapeake Bay
• Archaeological evidence at Croatoan and Salmon Creek
• Jamestown accounts of surviving colonists
• The Lumbee connection and assimilation theory
• The Dare Stones and the hoax that followed

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Editor: Giordanno Bottezini
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
• Suggest a Topic: Freaky Register

Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

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In 1692, an enslaved woman named Tituba told a Salem courtroom that the Devil had come to her and bid her serve him. Her confession lit the fuse that would become known as the infamous Salem witch trials, the deadliest witch hunt in American history.

Within months, more than a third of Salem Village had been accused, imprisoned and were awaiting trial. Nineteen people were hanged. One man was pressed to death under stones for refusing to plead. And a four-year-old girl sat in custom-made shackles while her accusers watched.
But this is not really a story about witches. It is a story about mass hysteria, and how a Puritan community primed by centuries of European witch hunting, religious paranoia and moral surveillance convinced itself to kill its own neighbours on the strength of spectral evidence: testimony that someone's ghost attacked you in the night.
We trace the strange true story from Cotton Mather's witchcraft playbook to the witch cake, the Devil's book, the confessions that saved lives, and the moment the accusations reached the governor's wife and the whole thing collapsed. Plus the surprising link between Salem and our home town of Norwich.

• what caused the Salem witch trials
• Tituba's confession and why it changed everything
• spectral evidence and why no alibi could save you
• the witch cake ritual and the first three accused
• the arrest of four-year-old Dorothy Good
• Giles Corey's death by pressing and his final strategy
• how the accusations reached the governor's wife and ended the trials
• the 330-year fight to clear every victim's name
• the Norwich connection to Bridget Bishop

• Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions - Cotton Mather, 1689,
• Salem Witch Trials Memorial, Salem, Massachusetts - Memorial site opened 1992
• Salem witch trials - Encyclopaedia Britannica
• The last Salem witch has been exonerated - CNN

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Editor: Giordanno Bottezini
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
• Suggest a Topic: Freaky Register

Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

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