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

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• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
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• Suggest a Topic: Freaky Register

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