War of the Worlds Broadcast: Did Orson Welles Panic America?

[00:00:00] Kyle Risi: Tuned in late, all you hear is the music stopping and then a voice. Explosions have been heard on Mars. Then something crashes into a field in New Jersey. A reporter describes a creature climbing out of it, and then that reporter starts to scream and the line goes dead. Aliens were wiping out the entire country.

Gas masks, fleeing families, a woman holding a bottle of poison. All over a radio play. That's the story. But here's the problem, Adam. Almost nobody was listening

Welcome to The Compendium: An Assembly of Fascinating Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:23] Adam Cox: We explore strange true stories from the worlds of true crime, dark history, scandals, mysteries, and remarkable people.

[00:01:31] Kyle Risi: I'm Kyle Reesey, your ringmaster for this week's episode.

[00:01:34] Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, the bearded ladies back hair technician.

[00:01:39] Kyle Risi: Gross. That is so gross.

[00:01:41] Adam Cox: Well, you know, she's got enough front hair

[00:01:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah, she just needs to make sure it's all, like, on the beard.

[00:01:45] Adam Cox: Yeah. Exactly.

[00:01:46] Kyle Risi: Unsimply back hair. Uh-uh. Not becoming of a young lady.

[00:01:49] Adam Cox: Well, she's actually going a bit bald on the, on the front side, so I'm actually doing a hair transplant using her back hair.

[00:01:56] Kyle Risi: That's rank. Do you remember that myth that used to go around that people would be like, um, when they get a hair transplant, that they get it from the bum?

[00:02:03] Adam Cox: No.

[00:02:03] Kyle Risi: I believed that as a kid. Obviously it's not true, because who has bum hair? Not me.

[00:02:08] Adam Cox: Well, well unless that's what you specifically ask for.

[00:02:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Gross. "

[00:02:13] Adam Cox: We'll take it from the back of your head." "No, no, no. My butt."

[00:02:15] Kyle Risi: Where do they get hair that they transplant onto your head?

[00:02:18] Adam Cox: Do they

[00:02:18] Kyle Risi: like-

[00:02:19] Adam Cox: The back, the back of your head ...

[00:02:20] Kyle Risi: oh, it's from the back of the head?

[00:02:21] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:02:21] Kyle Risi: Isn't that, like, different hair, though?

[00:02:23] Adam Cox: Uh, it's close enough.

[00:02:24] Kyle Risi: It's close enough. Guys, don't forget, if you love us and you can't wait to get your teeth into more episodes, then there's good news.

We've got a Patreon packed with exclusive perks, and even as a free member, you get early access to next week's episode a whole seven days before anyone else.

[00:02:41] Adam Cox: And for as little as $5 a month, you can become a fully fledged freak of the show. That unlocks every one of our unreleased episodes, plus the entire back catalog, and very soon we'll be dropping one brand new exclusive episode per month just for our Patreon members.

So yes, an episode you won't be able to get anywhere else, just Patreon.

[00:03:03] Kyle Risi: It's very exciting, and, like, we've got, like, six now, so I dunno which one we are gonna make an exclusive drop.

[00:03:09] Adam Cox: It's, uh, it's gonna be a roulette.

[00:03:11] Kyle Risi: Do you reckon? Do we just randomly select one, yeah?

[00:03:13] Adam Cox: Well, we kinda know what our Patreon members like, so we'll, we'll try and pick something out especially for you.

[00:03:17] Kyle Risi: Yes, for sure. They're very vocal. They like a lot of the history stuff, you know? The history, true crime. We have one member who's really into the whole Protestant Reformation and Henry VIII. So I think we have a few coming up, like Mary, Queen of Scots- Yeah ... that might be perfect-

[00:03:32] Adam Cox: Yeah, this is ed- ...

[00:03:33] Kyle Risi: for

[00:03:33] Adam Cox: Patreons

[00:03:35] Kyle Risi: edutainment Edutainment. I love that. Should we coin that? Trademark. Trademark.

[00:03:39] Adam Cox: I, I don't think I came up with that.

[00:03:40] Kyle Risi: But of course, as we say every week, who cares about extra episodes? Because let's face it, people only sign up as a certified freak and a big top tier member because they want exclusive access to our compendium keychain.

And let me tell you, it's a real crotch dangler, as we always say. It's big, it's bold, it's beautiful. It's far too big to be used as a keychain, because its real purpose, as we all know, is so that it can always be there dangling right there near your crotch.

[00:04:07] Adam Cox: It's a modesty keychain.

[00:04:10] Kyle Risi: Covers up the shame. If it's too big, it'll cover it up.

If it's too small-

[00:04:15] Adam Cox: It will cover

[00:04:15] Kyle Risi: it up ... it'll cover it up.

[00:04:18] Adam Cox: And if none of that's for you, which is totally fine, then please follow us on your favorite podcast app and leave us a cheeky review because it generally helps other people find us, and it keeps these amazing stories coming.

[00:04:30] Kyle Risi: So I think we've done our duty.

I think that's the, the housekeeping out of the way, would you not say, Adam?

[00:04:34] Adam Cox: I would say so.

[00:04:35] Kyle Risi: Should we dive into today's episode?

[00:04:37] Adam Cox: Let's do it.

[00:04:38] Kyle Risi: Adam, today on The Compendium, we are diving into an assembly of clever illusions, missed introductions, and the strange power of a single voice in the dark. Actually, Adam, today's show is about aliens.

[00:04:52] Adam Cox: Finally. I told you for the last three years.

[00:04:56] Kyle Risi: I might not be, but let me paint a picture for you.

[00:04:58] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:04:59] Kyle Risi: On the morning of the 31st of October, 1938, 23-year-old Orson Welles walked in a room filled with reporters. Orson hadn't slept, the cameras were waiting, newsreels were filming, and every journalist in that room wanted an answer to essentially the same question: Had Orson Welles deliberately terrified America?

Because according to the newspapers, the previous evening, the country had descended into absolute chaos. Families had reportedly fled their homes. Police stations had become overwhelmed with frantic calls. People had asked for gas masks, and one man even wanted to volunteer to fight back. Adam, on top of this, there were also reports of people preparing to take their own lives rather than face what was coming.

And Adam, none of this unfolded over several days or several weeks. This all supposedly happened over a span of just a few hours, and apparently, this was all Orson Welles' fault.

[00:05:59] Adam Cox: Do you know what? I think up until, like, maybe the '80s, let's say '70s actually, America seemed really easy to scare.

[00:06:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah, with the whole Satanic panic.

[00:06:07] Adam Cox: The Exorcist. Mm-hmm. Like The Shining, the Psycho. You know, people were like, you know, fainting in the cinemas.

[00:06:14] Kyle Risi: True.

[00:06:15] Adam Cox: So it seems like, you know, it was really easy to get scared back then. So Kyle, what the hell did he do?

[00:06:20] Kyle Risi: Adam, Orson Welles had managed to convince America that an army of aliens were systematically wiping out the United States.

[00:06:30] Adam Cox: He's very persuasive

[00:06:31] Kyle Risi: He, he's totally. Like, which is an incredible accusation to wake up to in the morning, isn't it? Have you heard of the story before?

[00:06:38] Adam Cox: Not this story. I mean, I do know about Orson Welles, 'cause he did, like, the, the soundtrack to War of the Worlds, right?

[00:06:45] Kyle Risi: Uh, not the soundtrack. He did a radio broadcast Oh,

[00:06:48] Adam Cox: the radio broadcast.

I'm sure there's, like, a famous song within that radio broadcast.

[00:06:53] Kyle Risi: Mm, I'm not sure. My da- I didn't listen to the whole broadcast ...

[00:06:55] Adam Cox: my dad's gone on about it, like- ... at least once or twice. So-

[00:06:59] Kyle Risi: Adam, here, listen to this. Listen to this. And you're like, "Oh, God, this is the moment I'm gonna die"

[00:07:03] Adam Cox: But yeah, I have heard, like, it was kind of a big deal, right?

[00:07:06] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Yes, and it ended up causing mass panic across America. Orson Welles, at this moment in time, is already one of those people whose life literally sounds fictional. He was a celebrated actor, he's a writer, he's a director, a theater producer, he's even dabbled in magic, and of course, he was a radio performer.

[00:07:28] Adam Cox: He'd be great at a party

[00:07:29] Kyle Risi: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, 100% he is.

[00:07:31] Adam Cox: Like, he's entertaining- Mm-hmm ... and if his, if conversation gets dull, then just pull out a handkerchief

[00:07:36] Kyle Risi: There's a threshold before someone like this becomes entertaining at a party. There's definitely a, a space in time where you're not entertaining, and we'll go into it-

and I'll explain everything why.

[00:07:47] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:07:47] Kyle Risi: But he's also the man behind Citizen Kane, which is often described as one of the greatest movies ever made.

[00:07:53] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:07:53] Kyle Risi: Now, you did film at university. Have you, have you watched this film? Are you aware of this film?

[00:07:58] Adam Cox: Yes, I'm aware of it. I don't think I've ever watched it.

[00:08:00] Kyle Risi: Mm.

[00:08:01] Adam Cox: And isn't it referenced in Friends?

[00:08:03] Kyle Risi: Oh, possibly '

[00:08:04] Adam Cox: Cause it's such a renowned movie-

[00:08:06] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm ...

[00:08:07] Adam Cox: that I'm pretty sure they were like, "I don't even get it."

[00:08:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And the thing is, though, it's so bizarre, 'cause when I look at pictures of Orson Welles, if you get a moment, just Google him. What he looks like is... 'Cause he's from, like, the 1930s, right?

He was born in the early turn of the century. And when you see pictures of people from back then, they look like they suit the time. He honestly looks like a 2006 drama student who has done a production, and he has gotten some black-and-white photographs of himself, who is wearing a trilby, and he's like, "Oh, I'm gonna take some, like, atmospheric shots of me looking film noir"

[00:08:42] Adam Cox: That's what it looks like.

Feel like you're projecting.

[00:08:43] Kyle Risi: No, I'm not. I'm just ... It's just an observation. Sorry. Can't have opinion now? But Adam, years before Citizen Kane, Orson became famous for something much stranger. Because on the evening of the 30th of October, 1938, Orson and his theater company broadcast a dramatized adaptation of H.G.

Wells' novel, The War of the Worlds. Now, instead of presenting it like a normal radio play, they told the story through a series of weather reports, live interviews, and urgent news bulletins. So if you had joined late, or if you'd missed the introduction where it explicitly said that this was a dramatized version, it could sound less like science fiction and more like a genuine emergency unfolding in real time.

And according to the story, that is exactly what millions of people believed. And so today, Adam, on the compendium, I'm gonna tell you how a radio play that almost everybody behind the scenes thought was going to be shit Became one of the most famous broadcasts in history, but also how there may be more to the story than history would have you believe.

This is a story of how America convinced itself it had been fooled.

[00:09:55] Adam Cox: Ah, I didn't realize that. So I guess there hadn't been anything quite like this before this radio show?

[00:10:01] Kyle Risi: No, it was very much a new format that he wanted to play with, and that's one of the things about Orson Welles. He was definitely a pioneer of, um, manipulating audiences for a particular effect.

Maybe like 'cause something was a bit ingenious or maybe it was different or something they hadn't seen before. He was very much on the cutting edge of like, "What can we do that is different?" And this was one of those instances.

[00:10:23] Adam Cox: And I'm guessing this radio play didn't come with like a trigger warning back then or like-

[00:10:28] Kyle Risi: Oh, it came with a trigger warning.

[00:10:29] Adam Cox: Oh, did it?

[00:10:29] Kyle Risi: People just missed it.

[00:10:30] Adam Cox: Oh, okay.

[00:10:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And by the time the second one came along, they'd already started freaking out- ... and they've left their homes. So yeah, but like I said, there is a little bit more to the story, so I'm not just gonna tell you what history has told us. We are also gonna explore some of the facts.

[00:10:49] Adam Cox: All right. Get to it.

[00:10:50] Kyle Risi: Adam, of course, as we always do, we always start with the man behind the actual story, right? Orson Welles, Adam, was born George Orson Welles in Kenosha, Wisconsin on the 6th of May, 1915, and almost immediately, the adults around him decided Orson was a prodigy.

[00:11:07] Adam Cox: Why is that?

[00:11:08] Kyle Risi: Well, as a child, he played piano, violin, he painted, he drew, he wrote stories.

He performed magic tricks for his parents and their friends and even staged like little productions of Shakespeare. And he wasn't a kid who happened to be good at just one thing. He was annoyingly good at literally everything.

[00:11:23] Adam Cox: Yeah, he sounds annoying.

[00:11:24] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he is. Like, what is the cutoff point to be described as a prodigy?

Like, w- it's important to know because I wanna know if there's still hope for us.

[00:11:32] Adam Cox: I think that ship has sailed a long time ago.

[00:11:36] Kyle Risi: But there might be things, like, we haven't progressed to yet in our age that if we started now, we could become a prodigy of the geriatric generation. Oh

[00:11:45] Adam Cox: my God. A midlife prodigy.

[00:11:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah, like, um, bowls.

[00:11:50] Adam Cox: Uh-

[00:11:51] Kyle Risi: A, a bowls prodigy He's a, he's a, he's a 30-year-old bowls prodigy

[00:11:55] Adam Cox: Oh, and think about Morgan Freeman. He didn't start acting, I swear, until, like, his 40s or 50s.

[00:12:00] Kyle Risi: Oh my God, Morgan Freeman is a prodigy.

[00:12:03] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:12:03] Kyle Risi: He's a geriatric prodigy.

[00:12:04] Adam Cox: He is, so there is hope.

[00:12:06] Kyle Risi: There is hope for us, but we just need to find our niche.

[00:12:08] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:12:09] Kyle Risi: And so much of Orson's creativity does seem to come from his mother, Beatrice. She, in her own right, was a talented pianist, an intellectual who encouraged his music, readings, and performing and things like that. And his father, Richard, he was more of like an inventor, tinkerer type, also a businessman.

He'd also earned a ton of money from inventions connected to bicycle lighting he had invented. Like, during the early turn of the century, there was this boom in popularity for bicycles. However, because of course the Industrial Revolution meant that it was much easier to produce them and manufacture them, and so it just took off all over the world.

However, riding a bicycle at night in the early turn of the century, a little bit hazardous.

[00:12:50] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:12:50] Kyle Risi: You could fall into a coal mine. And so he invented this really ingenious bicycle lamp. It's like a carbide lamp, so there's like a, some, I think, like, calcium or something inside there or some sodium stuff in there, and you drip water on it, and it creates this really bright light.

Oh, right. So it didn't need any batteries. And so he was responsible for inventing that, with a couple other guys. But it makes him very, very rich because at the time, the boom of bicycles was just taking off all over the world.

[00:13:15] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:15] Kyle Risi: And so Adam, it is fair to say that Orson Welles grows up in a very comfortable environment, a cultured home surrounded by artists, actors, and successful people.

As obviously his parents' fame grew, they started surrounding themselves by people higher in society. And of course, whenever those people visited, Orson was always there entertaining them with magic tricks and productions of Shakespeare, which is the fucking worst. Because if your child starts performing Shakespeare at a dinner party...

Please, guys, I know some of you have kids out there. Just understand that your guests are smiling because they love you. Internally, they're thinking, "I fucking hate this kid."

[00:13:51] Adam Cox: I mean, is it just a one-man show? Is he playing literally every character?

[00:13:55] Kyle Risi: Oh, God, can you imagine? Even worse. Him getting all the guests, like, to star in his production I was like, "Oh my God."

[00:14:02] Adam Cox: I imagine it very much like the one-woman show from Friends.

[00:14:05] Kyle Risi: The monologue.

[00:14:05] Adam Cox: The monologue.

[00:14:06] Kyle Risi: My first period. But obviously it wouldn't be that with Orson Welles. It'd be like, "My first paper plane," and how it made him feel.

[00:14:15] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:14:16] Kyle Risi: However, Adam, this does explain something very important because from a very young age, Orson became used to having an audience.

He performed, adults stopped what they were doing, and literally everyone told him that he was just extraordinary, and he clearly was extraordinary. But if every adult you meet spends your childhood telling you that you're brilliant, eventually you are probably gonna believe them, right?

[00:14:36] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:14:37] Kyle Risi: Sadly, however, Adam, that childhood doesn't last because Orson's parents separate when he's around about four years old.

And remember- Yeah ... he's already brilliant. Yes. Well, he's- He's already brilliant before four.

[00:14:46] Adam Cox: No, no, hang on. He's been performing Shakespeare before the age of four?

[00:14:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Doing all sorts of things, magic tricks, like brilliant at painting, brilliant at kind of putting on these little shows, magic tricks, all sorts.

[00:14:56] Adam Cox: At three years old?

[00:14:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:14:58] Adam Cox: Okay, I take it all back. That's pretty impressive.

[00:15:00] Kyle Risi: It is impressive. He's a child prodigy. Like, people don't just throw that around willy-nilly. Mm-hmm. Like, he's pretty impressive. However, his mother ends up dying from hepatitis shortly after his ninth birthday. It also didn't help that during this time his father had also fallen off the rails due to alcoholism.

I think the divorce had had a major impact on him. And of course through that he ended up losing a lot of his fortune that he had earned from his little bicycle invention. And sadly, Adam, Richard also ends up passing away when Orson turns 15. And so, Adam, it's a pretty stark turnaround from, like, the background that he came from, right?

Mm. I mean, it is obvious, and I'm gonna say it, and I will apologize, Orson Welles becomes Orphan Welles.

[00:15:39] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:15:40] Kyle Risi: Sorry, it's low-hanging fruit. What did you expect me to do?

[00:15:43] Adam Cox: Is he alive now?

[00:15:44] Kyle Risi: No. Oh. No. So following the sad death of his parents, a family friend called Maurice Bernstein becomes Orson's legal guardian, and he pretty much does everything he can to ensure that Orson continues to flourish in his education.

By this point, Orson was already attending the Todd School for Boys in Illinois. It's a place that kind of encourages creative, eccentric students that are already kind of brilliant. So already he's in the right place considering the potential that he's shown up to this point as a three-year-old. And here, Orson, he acted in school plays, he even directed them.

He gets involved in set design. Like Adam, again, keep saying it, he is amazing. The school also, however, has a radio studio which Orson enthusiastically gets involved in. His dad had obviously been a tinkerer in life, so he's constantly working on different inventions, trying to solve different problems.

And so for Orson, early radio was exactly the same thing, especially when it came to, like, the sound effects. Like, there's no button marked thunderstorm that you could press. Every sound has to be physically created inside the studio live. So if you needed a sound of footsteps or the weather or the atmosphere, these all had to be built using ordinary objects that you would arrange in front of you ready to go on cue.

[00:16:56] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:56] Kyle Risi: And so, like, if you have, like, an hour of production and you've got, like, 100 different sound effects involving multiple different objects being hit together or rubbed together, whatever, you have to be really organized. Do you know what I mean?

[00:17:08] Adam Cox: Yeah. I, I think I've seen, like, videos of people doing this before.

[00:17:11] Kyle Risi: Yeah, they're called Foley artists.

[00:17:13] Adam Cox: Hmm.

[00:17:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:17:14] Adam Cox: I didn't realize they had to do it live, though. Although I guess back then they would've done. Now they can just probably record a sound and it's, you know, it's in the bank.

[00:17:21] Kyle Risi: Exactly, but I mean, some Foley artists, they still keep true to the old-fashioned way of doing it.

So you see, like, people watching a cartoon and they're kind of creating all the different sound effects as the motion is playing, and you see them, like, hitting a stick or they're, like, squishing jelly or whatever to create the different sound effects, and they're doing that on the fly as the motion picture moves in front of them.

So they're like kind of... It's a conveyor belt of them just like, "Okay, that sound effect's done. Move that out of the way. Move on to the next one." It's pretty impressive.

[00:17:47] Adam Cox: I would like to see that, but it go wrong.

[00:17:50] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:17:51] Adam Cox: That's-

[00:17:51] Kyle Risi: Yes ...

[00:17:52] Adam Cox: that's what I wanna see, like that sound effect doesn't match up.

[00:17:55] Kyle Risi: No, it doesn't.

[00:17:55] Adam Cox: He's, like, tripping over in the background. He, like, breaks the cymbals.

[00:17:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:17:59] Adam Cox: That's what I want. Big

[00:18:00] Kyle Risi: crash.

[00:18:00] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:18:01] Kyle Risi: And there's, like, a death bed scene on the screen.

[00:18:04] Adam Cox: And he, and he's gotta do the wailing.

[00:18:06] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Do you know what I read the other day? And a slight deviation, but, uh, I was listening to No Such Thing As a Fish, and they were talking about, um, Lou Bega.

Do you remember him?

[00:18:14] Adam Cox: No.

[00:18:15] Kyle Risi: From Mambo Number Five.

[00:18:16] Adam Cox: Oh, yeah.

[00:18:16] Kyle Risi: Do you remember that song? Yeah. Classic song. Apparently, uh, Stephen King was obsessed with the song to the point that his wife was like, "You listen to that one more time, I'm gonna divorce you." But someone done some research and they looked into, uh, one of Stephen King's novels, most famous novels, and I think it was Carrie, and I think it's like one or two, and they found the, the names of every single one of the girls that Lou Bega sings-

[00:18:37] Adam Cox: Oh, really?

[00:18:37] Kyle Risi: Yeah, in that song inside Carrie, but this is decades before Lou Bega. was even on the radar.

[00:18:44] Adam Cox: Oh,

[00:18:44] Kyle Risi: so- So it's a bit of a coincidence that he was so obsessed with the song, and yet people found evidence of all those names inside one of Stephen King's most popular novels. So

[00:18:52] Adam Cox: who ... Are we saying that Lou Bega was influenced by Carrie?

[00:18:55] Kyle Risi: Who knows? But the point is, is that Lou Bega, unfortunately before he became Bega, I think like in '99, his father was dying on his death bed, and he went to the hospital, and he played him this latest song, Lou Bega, Mamba No. 5, while his dad was essentially dying. And his dad's only comments were, um, "This will make you big.

This will be your breakthrough song." But what a song to play for your father when he's on his deathbed.

[00:19:21] Adam Cox: I mean, you've gotta lighten the mood, right?

[00:19:23] Kyle Risi: You have. But what is disturbing is one of the names in there is Sandra, and Sandra is his sister, so that must have been quite strange for his father to go, "Sandra and the son, huh?

Okay."

[00:19:33] Adam Cox: Stay away from your sister.

[00:19:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Yes. It's good advice for everyone. Anyway, back to Orson, Adam, because even though he's getting involved in all these different sound effects as a Foley artist, et cetera, in front of the mic he is also extremely brilliant because one of his defining features as a literal human being is his voice. It was super deep, it's really authoritative and remember, Adam, he's 14 at this point and that voice is already established, so puberty is a blessing to him right now.

And throughout school he is a literal champion in everything that he tries. As well as being academically gifted, he understood how to control the stage, how to create a believable world through sound, and how much authority his brooding, deep voice could physically carry in a performance. Then at 16, Orson graduates.

His brilliance lands him a scholarship at Harvard, but he turns this down because he wanted to instead go traveling around Europe, which is kind of what you do, but remember, this is a scholarship that he's been given, right? So it's not like his parents are paying for this. This is an opportunity that might not come again once you come back from your travels.

[00:20:40] Adam Cox: Yeah, but you, you gotta go on your gap year.

[00:20:42] Kyle Risi: That is true. I don't think he called it gap year.

[00:20:45] Adam Cox: I reckon he did.

[00:20:45] Kyle Risi: Do you reckon? Well, I mean, he is going to Europe now so, I mean, he might pick up on some of the lingo and how we say things. The thing is, though, when he sets out on his travels he sort of overestimates how long he wanted to be away for because very soon he starts yearning for the stage again.

And so when he arrives in Ireland, he decides that he can't wait any longer. He walks into Dublin Gate Theatre and he convinces the director that he was actually an established Broadway actor.

[00:21:10] Adam Cox: Well, I imagine he's got that kind of conviction- Yeah ... that would probably convince them.

[00:21:15] Kyle Risi: Yeah, sure, and of course he wasn't.

The director did later say that he 100% knew that he was bullshitting him, but the fact that he had the balls to walk in off the street and try his luck was enough for them to think, "Yeah, we'll hire you." I guess that's all they want. In fact, the director said that it was his chutzpah.

[00:21:30] Adam Cox: Chutzpah?

[00:21:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's like that Jewish word that a lot of the New York Jews always hear, right?

Like, like gumption or like, like drive- Okay ... or, like, balls and confidence.

[00:21:39] Adam Cox: Ah, I see.

[00:21:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. You don't get too much of chutzpah- No ... in the

[00:21:43] Adam Cox: UK. I, I like that word.

[00:21:44] Kyle Risi: And even if the story is complete bullshit, it takes an extraordinary amount of nerve to walk into a professional theater at 16 years old and announce that you are already successful, and also make people believe that.

[00:21:55] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:21:55] Kyle Risi: And so that's quite impressive in itself. Like, he doesn't seem to be the sort of person who waits for permission to be the person that he wants to be, which I quite like. And so he ends up working for the theater in Ireland for a couple years. People think he's awesome. Naturally, Adam, he starts thinking, "If I can make it in theater in Ireland, maybe I can make it in Broadway or in the West End for real."

However, that reality check quickly catches up to him, 'cause when he goes back to the United States, Broadway is literally like, "Lol, no."

[00:22:24] Adam Cox: Yeah, 'cause I guess in Ireland, he's like, "Ah, this is the American. We need an American to play a character," right?

[00:22:29] Kyle Risi: I think he is actually brilliant. I think he can... He, he's not just typecast as an American.

[00:22:34] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:22:35] Kyle Risi: I think he can do other stuff. He's got range.

[00:22:38] Adam Cox: Oh, yeah, he's a magician as well.

[00:22:39] Kyle Risi: But it's the level, right? So he's walked into this theater in Ireland, which, hey, theaters in Ireland, I love Ireland, it's beautiful. It might not necessarily be Broadway. Do you know what I mean?

[00:22:49] Adam Cox: Yeah, you

[00:22:49] Kyle Risi: know. And so they've set their standards a little bit lower.

They've seen him, they think, yeah, he's brilliant, but in comparison to what they might expect from the standards in Broadway, it's not the same thing.

[00:22:58] Adam Cox: Yeah, Broadway is, like, the pinnacle of live theater, isn't it? And then the West End kind of is on par.

[00:23:05] Kyle Risi: I'd say it's probably better ...

[00:23:07] Adam Cox: possi- yeah, sorry. Yeah, maybe that's- that's true.

They're kinda the same, but I don't know what the next level is.

[00:23:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I don't know. I don't think there... That is the pinnacle, right?

[00:23:16] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:23:16] Kyle Risi: And so naturally, the thing that he decides to do to deal with his, uh, bruised ego is he just goes traveling again. So he's pretty damn wounded. He ends up traveling through Spain and Morocco, where he ends up meeting a few prominent people, including Thornton Wilder, very successful novelist and playwright.

I think he's, like, written The Matchmaker and Our Town. Now, Thornton introduces Orson to a couple of his theater friends, and through them, it's a bit of a chain, but eventually he gets involved in a few productions, and it's through this work that he catches the attention of producer John Houseman. Very important in the story, and he basically wants Orson to get involved in his Federal Theatre project.

At the time, America was still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression, so fewer and fewer people were going to the theater. The Federal Theatre project was established to kinda keep the medium alive throughout the economic downturn while also helping to kind of boost public morale. It was a government-funded kinda project.

Okay. Now, their first project together is where Orson steps up as director in a version of Macbeth. Now, the selling point is that this was going to be an all-Black cast, and it became known as Voodoo Macbeth, which I think sounds incredible.

[00:24:30] Adam Cox: I see. So if it's an all-Black cast, what's he doing in this?

[00:24:33] Kyle Risi: He's the director.

[00:24:34] Adam Cox: Oh, okay. Fine. Yeah,

[00:24:35] Kyle Risi: yeah. And the production was a massive success, Adam. Remember, Orson at this point, he's 20 years old. It does a huge amount to promote African American theater, which this... Remember, this is before the civil rights movement, so it's a massive feat to be able to achieve that. I

[00:24:50] Adam Cox: mean, playing into the whole Voodoo thing, is that the right thing to do?

'Cause it almost feels... I'm not quite sure where that was sort of coming from, Voodoo Macbeth.

[00:24:58] Kyle Risi: I don't think it is anything negative there. I think Voodoo is a thing in the Caribbean and in- in- in Haiti and things like that, so I think it's part of a religion. There's- it's a whole thing. So I don't think there's any negative connotations to it, but I do agree, it straddles the line based on what people perceive Voodoo is versus the reality of it.

[00:25:16] Adam Cox: Yeah, and I was just thinking at that point in time, yeah, I just don't know if that would just make certain people think a certain way.

[00:25:22] Kyle Risi: If you're in the arts, you know I think you'd know. You, you have the intelligence to know- Okay ... is the assumption I'm making. But the point is, is that it's following this that Orson's reputation as one of America's most exciting young directors is firmly in the bag.

Because following the success of Voodoo Macbeth, Orson and John Houseman, they decide that they're gonna team up again a year later to form the Mercury Theatre company. Their first production was Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, except all the actors were not gonna be, like, in togas or anything like that. In fact, it wasn't even gonna be set in Julius's time.

It was all modern dress, and the production was kind of set in the modern-day time of, of the 1930s, where there's loads of, like, fascist overtones. And so this is very different, but also incredibly politically relevant since obviously fascism was now spreading across Europe at the time. And again, Orson was very good at taking classical works, shaping them into something different that still resonated with modern audiences.

Like, it is ... He's such a big deal because he's able to do that really well.

[00:26:27] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:28] Kyle Risi: And so the production's another massive success. And by May 1938, Adam, just three days after his 23rd birthday, he lands a cover on Time Magazine.

[00:26:38] Adam Cox: Wow, he is doing well.

[00:26:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So like most certainly the youngest director ever to appear on the cover of Time Magazine.

[00:26:45] Adam Cox: Yeah, at that point in time. Wow.

[00:26:47] Kyle Risi: But despite, of course, his reputation and the incredible productions he was putting on, he wasn't making amazing money. The elaborate shows he always wanted to create weren't always possible through ticket sales alone. And so remember, like theater is expensive, so to supplement his income and to help fund more elaborate productions, Orson picks up some side work in radio across Manhattan.

And once again, Adam, his voice means that he is absolutely brilliant. Radio physically loves him. Orson becomes particularly well known for playing the title character in The Shadow, which is basically a crime fighter who can somehow cloud people's minds so they can't see him, allowing him to either apprehend them or kind of get away.

And he does really well at this gig. So well in fact that in 1938, CBS give the Mercury Theater Company its own program adapting famous novels into hour long radio dramas. It was initially called First Person Singular, which does bring back connotations of that woman from Friends.

[00:27:42] Adam Cox: Oh yeah.

[00:27:43] Kyle Risi: But, and I think also it's a pretty shit name, but it's because it's, a lot of it is monologues, so that kind of makes sense from that standpoint.

But even then, I think they understood that it was a shit name because they later changed the name to the Mercury Theater on Air, and at the time they weren't really that well known, so it didn't really kind of attract too much sponsorship interest. That meant it was a fairly low budget show, but at the same time they were also just getting started.

Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So like didn't matter. Like people don't go into doing these types of things unless they have a sponsor. They do it in spite of the fact that they don't have a sponsor. Do you know what I mean?

[00:28:18] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:28:18] Kyle Risi: And so every week the actors would stand around the microphones reading from scripts while a small orchestra supplied the music, and a sound effects team created pretty much every door, footstep, gunshot, storm, all inside the audio.

And so remember, there's no editing after this. If someone ever missed a cue, that mistake went directly into literally homes across America. You had to know exactly when your cue was coming. Now the first episode that they do was an adaptation of Dracula, and of course Orson is a perfectionist. At one point they needed to create the sound of a wooden stake being driven through Dracula's heart.

[00:28:52] Adam Cox: Well, how did they know what that was gonna sound like?

[00:28:54] Kyle Risi: Well, what would you think it was gonna sound like?

[00:28:56] Adam Cox: Squelch.

[00:28:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah, there's a squelch. So what kind of materials would you use?

[00:29:00] Adam Cox: Don't know.

[00:29:01] Kyle Risi: Like to me the instinct would be well just emulate that, right?

[00:29:05] Adam Cox: Get some meat.

[00:29:05] Kyle Risi: Get some meat, get an actual stake, draw it through there.

[00:29:08] Adam Cox: But a lot of the times when they have, when you think that would make sense, it doesn't sound good enough or it doesn't sound like convincing enough, so they would use something else. Right?

[00:29:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah, 'cause there's a very important element to that and I'll get onto that in a second, but you're exactly right.

So they would experiment with the obvious, but also at the same time, if you're going through rehearsals over like a week, how many livers do you need? Is that sustainable? No, you probably need something that's gonna be Something that you can repeatedly use. Yeah. You don't want it stabbing through, like, a, a nine-day-old liver.

Yeah. It's gonna sound more scratchy than squelchy.

[00:29:39] Adam Cox: Yeah, anything like, um, this is going back maybe 20, 30 years, like punches and things, they always would sound like-

[00:29:45] Kyle Risi: Yeah ...

[00:29:45] Adam Cox: doesn't sound, like, realistic, and they'd be punching, like, a wheat bag or something like that.

[00:29:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's definitely evolved, isn't it?

Yeah. The sound of what we've come accustomed to, and that's the important thing. And so the Foley team, they experiment with loads of different things, including oranges and organs that they would get from the butcher. But honestly, as we said, like, nothing really sounded right. They do eventually try a cabbage.

So like how is that gonna sound like- Dracula being staked through the heart. Do you know what I mean?

[00:30:12] Adam Cox: I guess it, it's gonna sound more crunchy.

[00:30:13] Kyle Risi: It- leafy. Leafy. Leafy. But what they do is they, I think they hollow out the center of it, they fill it with water, and then they drive through it with, like, a sharpened broomstick to see if they can kind of get that sound.

But even then, it just didn't feel real enough. How Orson knew that was beyond me. Like, how does he know what that's supposed to sound like, unless he's moonlighting as a cross-dressing Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Do you know what I mean?

[00:30:39] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess, I don't know. He, he's g- clearly got a picture or a vision in his mind.

[00:30:43] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Eventually, what they found did work was a watermelon, which they would then smash with a hammer and then rummage it around inside just for a second. So no liver or actual wooden stake, which is so interesting because even though it's not what you would have expected to make that sound, Orson understood what he wanted the audience to feel, and that's exactly what you said at the very beginning.

[00:31:07] Adam Cox: I did.

[00:31:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah, you- ... I remember. Just a few seconds ago. It's been a lot of takes since then. And so because of this perfectionism, it's not uncommon for him to literally reject sounds right up to the minute they're about to go live, and he's like, "No, I'm not happy with that sound. Find something else," or, "Try this," or whatever.

And so Adam, they do this every single week. When they first started airing, they were assigned a slot of Mondays at 9:00 PM, which isn't great, but the network quickly saw the program's potential, and they ended up moving them to a prime time slot of Sundays at 8:00 PM. Mm. That's the big time, right? Even though they still don't even have a sponsor.

Mm-hmm. No one's picked them up. But the network saw potential- Mm-hmm ... in what they were able to achieve. So whatever they were doing, they already had audiences gripped by their storytelling. People liked the format. It was also predictable. They knew what to expect every week. There was always a new adaptation from a novel.

There was the standard introduction, music, narration, dramatic scenes, all that stuff, right? You get to know the format of a show that you're really into.

[00:32:07] Adam Cox: I see, and this, if it's every week, people know that it's a story, it's fictional, right?

[00:32:12] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm, that's right, yes. It behaved basically like a radio play.

[00:32:15] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:16] Kyle Risi: But then Adam, in October 1938, Orson decided that the 17th episode needed to behave differently. He wanted to create an episode that sounded as though it was happening now, like, to give a genuinely immersive feel to it. He had this vision of presenting a story through a series of fake news bulletins.

Like, maybe it could start off with, like, a regular concert happening, which would then be interrupted by a breaking news story beginning to unfold in real time. And so Orson and John Houseman began thinking about what kind of story would suit this style. And eventually they land on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

[00:32:52] Adam Cox: I see.

[00:32:53] Kyle Risi: Do you know the story of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds?

[00:32:56] Adam Cox: Uh, loosely. Like, it's aliens that come to this planet, right? And then are they, like, giant silver machines? I'm trying to think of, like, there's the artwork from the soundtrack.

[00:33:07] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:08] Adam Cox: And then there's the Tom Cruise movie back in, like, the early 2000s.

[00:33:11] Kyle Risi: Yeah, the artwork is very distinctive. It kind of reminds me of, is it the Escher guy? Who's that famous artist? Escher. Done the famous kind of pencil sketch or graphite sketch of the ball with the reflect- of the metal ball reflecting kind of the entire room. Mm-hmm. He's done a lot ... I, I think it might even be him, actually.

In essence, the novel follows a Martian invasion of Britain. The Martians arrive in a giant kind of walking machine equipped with various heat rays and poisonous smoke. They completely overwhelm the British military. But just as humanity, and this is a spoiler, just as humanity is about to be absolutely screwed, the Martians are killed by an earthly bacterium that we're completely immune to but completely deadly to them.

So, like, they're traveling millions of miles, conquering a planet, then they're defeated because Susan from Putney Avenue had a cold.

[00:33:59] Adam Cox: Well, that's on the Martians. They should have really done some planning and health and safety, risk assessment. Just didn't do it.

[00:34:05] Kyle Risi: They, they weren't bureaucratic enough.

Bureaucracy ended their civilization.

[00:34:10] Adam Cox: Exactly.

[00:34:11] Kyle Risi: And it's like a proper old-timey book. It was written, like, in the late 1800s. It was originally serialized in the UK, but also in the United States in Cosmopolitan Magazine, of all things. So Cosmo wasn't always about climaxing your way to better skin. They were actually publishing real stories and articles.

[00:34:31] Adam Cox: Yeah, I can't imagine they were doing that back in the '20s. What,

[00:34:34] Kyle Risi: climaxing themselves to better skin?

[00:34:36] Adam Cox: No. What were they doing? Definitely not. They're talking about how to, I don't know, clean a kettle. I don't know what's been going on.

[00:34:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah, possibly. I mean, it's, the demands change, right? That's- Demands, yeah

[00:34:47] Adam Cox: and, you know, how to not look slutty with your ankles out.

[00:34:51] Kyle Risi: See that slut with her ankles out. But also at the time, the book was used massively to mock the British, with Americans ironically saying, like, this was British imperialism kind of turned against them, 'cause Britain was, of course, one of the most powerful colonizing nations, and then suddenly H.G.

Wells turns the situation around and is asking what would happen if Britain became a country being invaded by a technologically superior force. Do you know what I mean?

[00:35:19] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:19] Kyle Risi: And so in the end they thought that they'd found their story, and it was going to be H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Except, of course, they needed to adapt it to serve an American audience and suit this idea of an unfolding news report happening live.

[00:35:34] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:35] Kyle Risi: So instead of Britain, the entire story was gonna be set in the United States but with the epicenter being in New Jersey. Like, they were aiming for a real-sounding story. If you're listening in nearby New York and you hear Martians are attacking the English countryside, you're not gonna be anxious, are you?

You're gonna be more like, "Oh, poor Brits."

[00:35:51] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's a shame.

[00:35:52] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Oh, well. Oh, well. Back to reducing my hem to reveal those, you know, those ankles.

[00:35:57] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:58] Kyle Risi: And so to get to work, the responsibility of adapting the book into a script fell to a guy called Howard Koch. He'll actually later go on to co-write Casablanca, so he's gonna be big.

I don't think he's that big right now, but there's some serious people in this. The problem was that Howard hates the story. He thinks it's, A, too dated, and B, too childish. He doesn't also think that it's gonna translate well to radio, but he gives it a crack. But after a few days he says to John Houseman that it's crap, basically, and he asks whether or not they could choose something else.

So John tries to contact Orson, but at the time he's in the middle of, like, a 36-hour rehearsal session.

[00:36:35] Adam Cox: Wow, he's committed.

[00:36:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Remember, he's working on other stuff too as well, so he is around surprisingly little. Very often he'll just show up and just raw dog the recording. He's hardcore. And so John, because he can't contact Orson, he just tells Howard, "Yeah, Orson said no."

And then he's like, "He wants you to do-" war of the world. So he's trapped, basically. Mm-hmm. We've all done it, basically. So Howard perseveres, he delivers the first draft. All the actors come together to rehearse, of course, without Orson Welles. Obviously, he's still AWOL. Adam, everybody thinks it is shit. The script was divided into two halves, with the first half being all the fake news bulletins, and the second half was like a series of long, boring speeches from survivors describing the aftermath.

Like, on paper, the format made sense, but in rehearsal it's just really boring and lifeless. It just, it, it was too slow.

[00:37:28] Adam Cox: I guess if, like, they're used to doing a story with a narration or there's kinda like dialogue between characters, yeah, there's probably... This isn't the norm, this isn't... And they haven't heard anything like this before, so they're trying.

Yeah. It, it doesn't make sense.

[00:37:41] Kyle Risi: You also get used to the format that you adopt as well. Mm-hmm. So you know how to control the different strings, but when it's a completely new format, maybe you just haven't become accustomed to the delivery of it yet.

[00:37:52] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:37:52] Kyle Risi: However, the plan was still to run with it, 'cause, like, it's too late in the day to change now, but absolutely nobody at this point has any faith in this episode.

However, when Orson finally shows up and he reads the script, he's like, "We cannot ship this." And so if this was a movie, this is where you would cue that montage of everyone just kinda like rattling around to fix it, like people are running down the stairs, there's Orson with his head in his hands and John and Howard arguing over scenes.

The Foley team are experimenting with different sounds to no avail. It's all going on.

[00:38:23] Adam Cox: So why, why is Orson now saying, "Yeah, this isn't gonna work"? I thought he kinda signed off on this.

[00:38:28] Kyle Risi: He wants the format, he just doesn't think the story works, basically. Orson immediately recognized that the news report section is the strongest part of the production, and so he asked Howard to expand on those scenes and reduce the monologues and reshape the invasion so it felt as though it was accelerating around the user.

[00:38:46] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. '

[00:38:46] Kyle Risi: Cause in the book, the story famously takes place over, like, several days, with references to, like, last night's massacre and other events happening around that time. So Orson wanted to feel as though everything was happening now.

[00:38:58] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:38:58] Kyle Risi: And so he asked Howard to remove all references to time passing.

So that helps with kinda the acceleration, moves things along- Yeah ... makes it pacey.

[00:39:05] Adam Cox: And it sounds like the actors kinda knew. They clearly had an idea this isn't quite working, so.

[00:39:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Oh, yeah, they all did. And so when the rewrite is finally done, they are very close to the wire. There's just n- not a huge amount of time to go through the entire script with, like, a fine-tooth comb.

So inadvertently, they neglect to notice one major flaw, which would be the crucial element that fed into the eventual hysteria that would unfold, and that is that the first half, the fake news section, ended up running over- The scheduled half-hour point where there was supposed to be a break. Normally, listeners would expect a program to pause at this point, usually for, like, sponsor messages.

Of course, as we know, they didn't have any sponsors, but also for the station to identify itself and remind listeners that they were listening to adaptation of a work of fiction, right? Yeah. So this matters because radio audiences, especially those tuning into Orson's show, had already come to expect a break at that particular point.

So you can understand how the shift in the episode's format from its usual, combined with the lack of pause at the expected time, might make anyone wonder whether or not what they were listening to was actually real.

[00:40:12] Adam Cox: Yeah, because even now, when you have, uh, scheduled programming and it cuts to, like, breaking news, everything's just a bit off, right?

So that's what you kind of expect when something's unfolding.

[00:40:23] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:40:23] Adam Cox: And if this is, you've got this live news broadcast, what sounds like that, and you've not got your ad breaks- Mm-hmm ... as you normally would.

[00:40:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so those are, like, the major things, but this is e- especially the case for those who might have tuned in late, Adam, and missed that introduction.

Instead, you tune in, and the first thing you hear are reports of explosions and people freaking out, right? So it sounds absurd when you listen like this, and at the time, it would've been difficult to foresee the impact of this, but all of those things happened. People did tune in late, the story sounded too real, and they didn't hear that expected- Ad break.

And so cue shit hitting the fan, basically.

[00:41:03] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:41:03] Kyle Risi: And again, it sounds silly to us, but consider that only weeks earlier, American stations had repeatably been interrupting normal programs with urgent reports about Hitler and Czechoslovakia with the crisis that was unfolding in Europe ahead of the war, right?

So people were already sensitive to music cutting out while an announcer delivered, like, a serious story.

[00:41:23] Adam Cox: Ah, interesting. So yeah, the setting of the time- Mm ... played a bit of a factor in this as well.

[00:41:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah, people are a little bit on edge. But other details that would also affect how audience receive the report is, for example, one guy, a guy called Frank Reddick, he wanted to capture the same emotion that was heard in that infamous Hindenburg disaster report, which had only happened, like, a couple years earlier, and that was obviously still fresh in people's mind.

So when he was rehearsing his lines, he wanted to channel the energy and tone of Herbert Morrison's cries going, "Oh, the humanity" Yeah. Do you remember that scene? We did that episode. And even on the broadcast, Reddick cried during his delivery, which does nothing to reassure people that this isn't fiction.

[00:42:04] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:42:04] Kyle Risi: So people are just trying too hard.

[00:42:07] Adam Cox: Oh, so the actors actually cried during this.

[00:42:10] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:42:11] Adam Cox: Oh, wow, so he did really go for real.

[00:42:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he proper went for method acting, Adam.

[00:42:15] Adam Cox: Yeah. How did he cry? Onions or-

[00:42:18] Kyle Risi: No, he didn't need the ... I just guess it needs to sound like he was crying. That's the important thing, right?

[00:42:22] Adam Cox: Did he pull a nose hair?

[00:42:23] Kyle Risi: M- No. I'll say it again. He didn't actually need to cry. He didn't need real tears. That's for television.

[00:42:29] Adam Cox: But sometimes it helps, right? Method acting.

[00:42:31] Kyle Risi: Oh, uh, maybe. It could do. Yeah, possibly. But yeah, he does it basically, and it's quite convincing. They also, they also really work on the sound effects as well, which I think is one of the most ingenious aspects of the story because to emulate the giant walking machines that are in War of the Worlds, if you remember that story, you see them walking through the English countryside with giant, huge legs.

Now, to simulate that, what they did is someone had made a homemade hydraulic mechanism with, like, piston sounds.

[00:42:57] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:42:57] Kyle Risi: And they just had that on the desk in front of them, which I just think is so smart.

[00:43:00] Adam Cox: Clever.

[00:43:00] Kyle Risi: Now, the sound of the alien capsule opening, what do you think would create that sound?

[00:43:05] Adam Cox: Using, like, a twisting movement there, so s-

[00:43:07] Kyle Risi: Oh, I gave something away

[00:43:08] Adam Cox: so something that twists open.

[00:43:10] Kyle Risi: They used a jam jar that they opened inside a toilet bowl.

[00:43:14] Adam Cox: Oh, what does that sound

[00:43:15] Kyle Risi: like? I guess it creates a bit of, like, reverbsion or reverb- Mm ... like, a little bit of excitement surround it. But yeah- Yeah ... open a jam jar inside a toilet.

[00:43:24] Adam Cox: I love an exciting jam jar.

[00:43:27] Kyle Risi: Nice. Good.

Noted. Thank you. Now, there are also a lot of rules that broadcasters also had to follow, even back then when radio was relatively new. For one, you weren't allowed to impersonate certain people, like government officials and things like that. For one section of the broadcast, they were due to feature a speech by the Secretary of the Interior, but of course, that wasn't allowed.

So the note given to actor Kenneth Delmar was simple: come across more presidential.

[00:43:54] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:43:55] Kyle Risi: Wink, wink.

[00:43:56] Adam Cox: Okay. So yeah, pretend you're the president.

[00:43:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. Of course, Kenneth understood exactly what Orson meant, so when he went on air, he sounded like President Franklin D. Roosevelt. So technically, they weren't breaking any rules because the instruction wasn't written down as an impersonation.

If anybody thought it sounded presidential, they could argue it was subjective because the actor had never explicitly been instructed to impersonate the president.

[00:44:21] Adam Cox: Right. Okay.

[00:44:23] Kyle Risi: Because act more presidential can be used as a verb, right?

[00:44:26] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:44:27] Kyle Risi: So

[00:44:27] Adam Cox: it sounds like you're, yeah, you're a, a political

[00:44:30] Kyle Risi: figure ... a narrative.

Yeah, exactly. But also, as part of the routine process, CBS would also have lawyers routinely review all the scripts. They did review the scripts. They did make some changes, but it was mostly altering kind of names of real organizations 'cause they didn't wanna get in trouble. But Adam, nobody ever thought that this production would genuinely fool anyone.

They were just simply trying to rescue a show that had appeared rubbish during rehearsals, and in the process, they created basically the perfect storm-

[00:45:00] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm ...

[00:45:00] Kyle Risi: apparently.

[00:45:01] Adam Cox: So you've had Orson, uh, come in. He's kinda rescued the, the script before 'cause it wasn't quite going to plan. They've made it very authentic.

They're really playing into, like, this live news broadcast, emulating political figures. Mm-hmm. And yeah, they're putting a lot of production to making sure that the sound effects sound as real as possible.

[00:45:20] Kyle Risi: Yeah, within obviously their means.

[00:45:21] Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah. So-

[00:45:22] Kyle Risi: Even had lawyers kinda review it as well, so they're taking these things seriously.

[00:45:26] Adam Cox: Yeah. But no one at this point, not... They're just putting on a show. They want it to sound as authentic as possible, but not thinking that people are really gonna believe it.

[00:45:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And at the same time, another element that I find really impressive is this whole late stage preparation is very rushed as well.

[00:45:40] Adam Cox: Yeah, it's like, it sounds like only a few days before the actual show, right?

[00:45:43] Kyle Risi: Mm. Yeah, so, like, the moral of the story is no need for extensive planning. Things will just come together.

[00:45:50] Adam Cox: Just do it on a... I think that's the thing. When you've got a deadline, you have to hit it, right?

[00:45:53] Kyle Risi: Mm. So-

[00:45:53] Adam Cox: So how does the show pan out?

[00:45:56] Kyle Risi: Okay. So Adam, eventually, at 8:00 on Sunday the 30th of October, 1938, the broadcast goes live.

[00:46:03] Adam Cox: And it does have a warning message, or you're now listening to the X show or whatever it's gonna

[00:46:07] Kyle Risi: be. Yes, because the show begins with CBS clearly introducing the program. Announcer tells listeners they're about to hear Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater performing a dramatized adaptation of H.G.

Wells' The War of the Worlds. So anybody listening from the very beginning knew exactly what this was.

[00:46:26] Adam Cox: So if you were listening and you see people, like, running outside panicking, you're like, "What are they doing?"

[00:46:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah. "

[00:46:30] Adam Cox: I just wanna listen to my show."

[00:46:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Not a problem. However, Adam, there is a problem.

Because while Orson was getting started, people over at a rival station, NBC, were listening to the enormously popular comedian Edgar Bergen. They were catching the tail end of his show. So if you intended to tune into Orson's show afterwards, they would have missed that very important beginning. Get this: The Edgar Bergen Show was a radio ventriloquist act

[00:47:04] Adam Cox: How, how does that work?

[00:47:06] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Like, it's the easiest scam in entertainment. You could literally have completely two different men standing on opposite sides of the studio- ... and nobody would know what was going on. It's weird.

[00:47:17] Adam Cox: That man sounds awfully like a woman.

[00:47:20] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he's very good. It's literally his wife.

So that comedy skit ended around 8:00 PM, and then it went to music. People kind of straggled along. I mean, their intro is very, very short, right? A lot of people would have missed it even by just a couple minutes. A bunch of people linger around before tuning into Orson Welles on the hour. But because of the change in format, they weren't listening to anything remotely close to what they'd come to expect from Orson's shows, right?

The broadcast itself began with a weather report. After that, the announcer introduced a musical act and handed over to a hotel ballroom where Ramón Raquello and his orchestra were supposedly performing live. The music plays for a few minutes, and then another announcer interrupts, and they explain that an observatory had detected explosions on Mars.

It was unusual, but it was presented calmly, and listeners were then asked to remain tuned, which I think is a, an interesting term.

[00:48:16] Adam Cox: Remain tuned.

[00:48:17] Kyle Risi: Just remain tuned. Then the music returned, making the bulletin obviously feel very contained. A couple minutes later, the music was interrupted again. This time the announcer, uh, said that a flaming object had crashed into a field on Grovers Mill in New Jersey, and the announcer then handed over to a reporter.

He described how police officers, scientists, curious onlookers had all gathered around this huge metal cylinder that had crashed into this field. Then suddenly, as they're gathered around, the top of the cylinder started to move. So you can kind of jam John the toilet open. In the background you could hear kind of the atmosphere and the sound effects supporting everything that the audience was hearing, right?

Very authentic. The lid of the cylinder then falls away and something begins to emerge, and the reporter starts to describe tentacles, a body glistening like wet leather, black eyes, and a mouth dripping with saliva Emerged from the, the cylinder.

[00:49:17] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:49:17] Kyle Risi: Again, imagine that Morrison report from the Hindenburg disaster and w- what that would have sounded like.

Right. That's how he's describing it. Right. So there's a franticness to it as well. Yeah. I know I've said it very sultry and slow, but yeah, there's a bit of panic there.

[00:49:31] Adam Cox: Sure, and is, is he crying at this point when he sees the alien, or is that later?

[00:49:36] Kyle Risi: I think it comes later. It evolves and the crying comes, right?

And as the reporter described what he was seeing, he hesitated, he struggled to continue, and then he begins breaking down in front of the microphone. And then the creatures started attacking. The heat ray gun that these aliens had started sweeping across the field, killing the people who had gathered around the crash site.

Then you hear the reporter screaming and then the transmission cuts out.

[00:49:59] Adam Cox: So you hear... So actually the actors are going, "Ah."

[00:50:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:50:02] Adam Cox: And then what are they using as the heat ray sound then?

[00:50:05] Kyle Risi: Who knows? Probably ingenious things.

[00:50:07] Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay, so that does sound quite scary.

[00:50:11] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. From this point, the gaps between the bulletins become shorter and shorter.

We then heard reports of more cylinders landing across the country in, like, Chicago and St. Louis. The National Guard was then mobilized with artillery and bombers sent towards New Jersey, and of course are reporting on all of this. But after they arrive and started fighting back The Martians completely annihilate them by flooding the landscape with, like, clouds of poisonous gas.

Reports begin claiming that more than 7,000 soldiers were now dead. Wow. Yeah. Then Kenneth Delmar, he's the Secretary of the Interior, right, sounding remarkably like President Roosevelt, comes online and he starts kind of telling the country about what's happening and that everyone should remain calm.

They've got it under control. They're trying their best.

[00:50:59] Adam Cox: They have not got it under control.

[00:51:01] Kyle Risi: Exactly, but he's being reassuring, right? But as he says that, the Martians begin , they're advancing towards New York City.

[00:51:09] Adam Cox: Uh-oh.

[00:51:10] Kyle Risi: Another reporter describes people collapsing in the streets. He was really affected by what he was seeing.

You could kind of hear his breathing become strained. He then starts coughing and spluttering because the gas is kind of overwhelming him at this point, and basically what people were hearing was he was dying live on air.

[00:51:26] Adam Cox: Oh, God. Okay.

[00:51:27] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:51:28] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:51:29] Kyle Risi: So you can, you can get a sense of if you believe this is real, this would freak you out.

[00:51:34] Adam Cox: Yeah, if you believe this was a real news bulletin, absolutely.

[00:51:37] Kyle Risi: By now anybody who had joined late had heard scientists, police officers, military commanders, government officials, and eyewitness reports. They had heard that thousands of soldiers had been killed and that New York was now going to be overwhelmed by these aliens.

[00:51:52] Adam Cox: This is like the first Cloverfield.

[00:51:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah. So imagine hearing that, right? If you've missed the beginning and you're wondering what you're listening to, A, the first thing that you would probably do would be to change the channel to see whether or not any other stations were maybe reporting on the same story, right?

[00:52:07] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah. If they weren't, you could reasonably be sure that this was just a TV show- Sure ... or a radio show. But apparently some people didn't do that. To add to this, 30 minutes arrived and the usual scheduled pause at the half hour mark came and went. The expected identification of the show that this was fictional just didn't arrive- Mm-hmm

as people expected. So people who might have suspected this was a show were now suddenly no longer sure, 'cause they were like, "Well, I wasn't sure before. If this was a show, I was expecting a break at half past, and it didn't come, so now I'm freaking out." And so Adam, at 8:32 PM, that's when calls started coming through to the station.

Dozens of calls are flooding CBS from people asking whether or not the reports were actually real or not, and according to John Houseman, he later described CBS supervisor Davidson Taylor starting to panic. He ran out. He orders the production to interrupt the broadcast immediately and announce that the episode was actually a drama.

But here's the problem. By the time that message reaches production, they had literally just two minutes left before the ad break was coming anyway at the, uh, the 40-minute mark.

[00:53:15] Adam Cox: Oh, right. Okay.

[00:53:15] Kyle Risi: They were just like, "We just need to wait for this reporter to finish dying."

[00:53:20] Adam Cox: We don't want to interrupt his dying.

[00:53:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah,

[00:53:21] Adam Cox: exactly. He's, he's practiced real hard.

[00:53:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Being a good sport about it. Eventually he dies, the broadcast fades, and the CBS break eventually arrives. The announcer explains that listeners were hearing a dramatized broadcast of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. And so it was a little late, but it did arrive and probably reassured a bunch of people.

[00:53:41] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:41] Kyle Risi: Reasonable people, right?

[00:53:43] Adam Cox: But what about the rest of the people?

[00:53:45] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Not everyone because by this point, people had apparently fled their homes. They were starting to panic across the country. They weren't just calling CBS now. Others were calling the police and other newspapers, all wanting to know whether or not this was actually happening or not.

There were even reports of people, especially around New York City and New Jersey- Trying to make a run for it, like leave the town Yeah So roads were gridlocked. Of course, CBS didn't know at the time that any of this was supposedly happening. It was responding to the calls that the station was physically receiving themselves, right?

Which, to them, was already serious enough.

[00:54:19] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:20] Kyle Risi: In fact, to quell the concerns, CBS issued further clarifications at 9:00 PM, 10:30 PM, 11:30, and then at midnight. And the announcement said, basically, "For those listening who tuned into Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre on-air broadcast from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM tonight and did not realize the program was merely a modernized adaptation of H.G.

Wells' War of the Worlds, we are repeating the fact, which was made clear four times on the program. And while some American cities' names were used, as in all novels and dramatizations, the entire story and this incident were fictitious." And then they repeated that two more times up until midnight.

[00:55:00] Adam Cox: I love the fact they had to do it multiple times.

Like, "As we said earlier, all right?" Yeah. "Just calm down." Yeah. "It was a dramatization."

[00:55:06] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's it. Now by midnight, Adam, an illuminated headline appeared above the New York Times building in Times Square, and the headline was, "Orson Welles Causes Panic," which actually must be an incredible thing to see written above New York, right?

I mean- Especially if you are Orson Welles ...

[00:55:24] Adam Cox: this is, like, perfect PR, one for the station because they're like, "Okay, we're gonna get a bit of heat- Mm-hmm ... but actually everyone's talking about our show."

[00:55:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:55:32] Adam Cox: And yeah, Orson Welles, well, he's, like, now a controversial filmmaker. No, audio play maker.

[00:55:40] Kyle Risi: Audio play maker or professional-

[00:55:41] Adam Cox: Yeah

[00:55:42] Kyle Risi: artist.

[00:55:42] Adam Cox: Artist.

[00:55:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Artist is better. But, like, at the same time, how-- what's the word? Gratifying or validating is it to spend weeks believing that the program is going to be boring, half the production team literally hate it, you arrive at the last minute, you change everything, like, down to the wire. You go live, you walk outside to discover that actually you've destabilized an entire country

[00:56:08] Adam Cox: That's good That is, yeah.

You can sleep well tonight.

[00:56:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Well, he doesn't, unfortunately. Does

[00:56:11] Adam Cox: he not?

[00:56:12] Kyle Risi: No. Is he- Yeah, 'cause it got a lot of heat on him, right? So of course, the following morning, the story is being reported from literally coast to coast, but it wasn't being reported as a misunderstanding. It was now being positioned as a deliberate attempt to deceive.

Throughout the night, reports had circulated about people frantically calling police and newspapers. The Associated Press reported that one man came home to find, Adam, his wife catatonic, holding a bottle of poison, saying, "I'd rather die this way than like that."

[00:56:40] Adam Cox: I mean, I did wonder if anyone took drastic measures to- Yeah

end their lives or their family's lives.

[00:56:46] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. On the other side of the country, in San Francisco, police received calls from a man who wanted to know what he could do to volunteer to fight back against the Martians. At the epicenter around New York and New Jersey, reports came in that highways were grinding to a halt as people were trying to escape the city.

There were also reports of people showing up at police stations begging for gas masks to protect themselves from poisonous gas. Calls came through to utility companies asking them to turn off the lights so that the Martians wouldn't be able to see cities or towns. Like, there was also a report of a woman in Indianapolis, Adam, who interrupted a Sunday church service and was yelling that New York had been destroyed and that everyone should go home and prepare to die.

Like, Adam, it's pretty big .

[00:57:31] Adam Cox: So how, how long did this go on for then? Because it d- doesn't feel like it ended at 10 o'clock at night or whatever.

[00:57:36] Kyle Risi: It sounds like it just went on for a few hours.

[00:57:38] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah. People almost killed themselves, so it's pretty damn serious. And not everyone was really angry at him.

Like, over the next few days, Orson does receive, like, more than 1,000 letters, I think like 1,400 letters. Many people praised him for how believable the broadcast had been, but there were many letters, like, literally berating him for being really irresponsible. Like, if you were one of those angry people, what, what would you have written to Orson Welles?

[00:58:03] Adam Cox: You made me slap my, my, my, my dog.

I don't know Okay.

[00:58:11] Kyle Risi: You need to calm down.

[00:58:13] Adam Cox: They all need to calm down.

[00:58:14] Kyle Risi: Like, you could have said anything. You could have been like, "Dear Mr. Welles, y- you made me believe that martians were invading New Jersey. W- why would you give me such false hope?" Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Or like, "I ran out of Sunday dinner because of you, and I didn't get to enjoy my pot roast.

I'll now have to wait till next Sunday to enjoy it. I hope you're ashamed of yourself. Yours furiously."

[00:58:37] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:58:37] Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean? Like, it could have been anything.

[00:58:39] Adam Cox: It could have been

[00:58:40] Kyle Risi: anything. But no, he slapped my dog. But I am really amazed by the reaction that all of this caused, right? It's so wild.

[00:58:46] Adam Cox: Yeah. I think, um... I don't know, but I, I don't feel like he was there to deceive anyone really. Like, they had the announcement, "Is this the show?" beforehand. Mm-hmm. Wasn't it not the actual company or the broadcaster's fault for not saying, like, to these timelines they didn't properly check that? So

[00:59:03] Kyle Risi: he- And I don't think it was a hard rule.

I just think it was just like, "Well, this is what we do, and this is what people came to expect." Mm-hmm. And the mixture of everything else, just that , the fact that their half-hour break was delayed- Mm ... just fed into the hysteria.

[00:59:14] Adam Cox: I think it's one of those things. Like, now everyone's quite creative, or they wanna try and make something sound believable.

But obviously we know, you know, it's all film or TV or radio- Yeah ... whatever. But back then, I guess this was pretty new territory.

[00:59:27] Kyle Risi: Very new. Yeah. New medium. That's important. But it seems that as this all unfolded, this had become the biggest news story in the country, and it all happened apparently because 23-year-old actor with a very deep voice and a Foley team crouched around a toilet bowl with a jar of jam literally caused this hysteria.

And so the following morning, CBS arranged a press conference to explain what had happened. Of course, Orson was panicking now too 'cause obviously he hadn't slept all night. He could sense the impending trouble that was coming for him. And when he arrived at the press conference, reporters, angry members of the public, they all demanded to know whether or not he'd intended to deceive them.

He was also, Adam, remember, facing serious questions about whether or not he'd broken some serious and very important broadcasting rules because he came very close to the wire- With a whole President Roosevelt impression, right?

[01:00:16] Adam Cox: I see, yeah.

[01:00:17] Kyle Risi: And remember, he was also a man at the top of his game, so I imagine he must have been really anxious about what was gonna potentially happen because, like, he's got a long way to fall if he gets in trouble for this.

[01:00:26] Adam Cox: Sure.

[01:00:27] Kyle Risi: There was also a moment where he seemed to be prepared to accept that he was now canceled because he told John Houseman, "If I'd planned to wreck my career, I couldn't have done it better," basically. So he, he was genuinely worried. Of course, Orson repeatedly denies everything, but people find it difficult to accept.

To them, he was a man who had built his whole career by manipulating audience expectations, like with Voodoo Macbeth and Fascist Julius Caesar, right? So to them, they honestly believe this is all just a publicity stunt. The question is, was this a stunt? Did he do this deliberately? What do you think?

[01:01:01] Adam Cox: Well, obviously he wanted to make it believable, but I don't think he was-

[01:01:05] Kyle Risi: It's not premeditated with that intention in mind, I don't think.

[01:01:08] Adam Cox: Yeah. He wanted m- to make people, like, gripped and kind of in fear whilst they're watching it, I guess, in a sense-

[01:01:14] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm ...

[01:01:14] Adam Cox: to, like, you know, yeah, believe it. But I don't think he was waiting for people to, like, drive out of town or, I don't know, run to the police station for gas masks.

[01:01:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. And I mean, this story is become lore, right?

Like, this incredible moment where a radio broadcast caused panic across America. It was all over the newspapers. It was one of the biggest stories, and we're still telling the story 88 years later. It's wild. But that's not what happened.

[01:01:37] Adam Cox: Oh, so it was intended? Nope. Then what?

[01:01:39] Kyle Risi: Wasn't intended, and it didn't cause mass panic.

[01:01:42] Adam Cox: Oh, what? This is a whole lie?

[01:01:44] Kyle Risi: Should we get into it? So honestly, I think it's possible that some people did panic. Uh-huh. And I can see why. The broadcast was hyper-realistic. It went against the grain of what people expected to hear that evening. All of that is true. But there were elements outside of Orson's control that I don't see how he could have foreseen.

So straightaway, I don't think that he would have intended to do this. For one, how could he have known that the ventriloquist act would have overrun, causing people to miss the start of the broadcast? It's out of his control. Sure. So I don't think he would have done this deliberately, because he can't control that, right?

Agreed, it didn't help that the scheduled pause at 8:30 was delayed by 10 minutes. That break could have provided reassurance for some listeners who needed it, but it did arrive 10 minutes later. So we are expected to believe that the moment where you're sure that something might be wrong would be at the half-past mark.

And so between half-past and the 40-minute mark, there's a 10-minute window. Are we expected to believe that this mass hysteria flared up within that 10-minute period? 'Cause that is where a reasonable person would freak out, right? Because they missed the break, like, hang on a minute, I don't think this is a story.

There's been no break. It sounds like a news story. Let's freak out for 10 minutes, and then the break comes. Yeah. All that happens in 10 minutes, and we're talking millions of people.

[01:02:54] Adam Cox: You'd ... They'd have to, like, fled their homes and not continued listening to the radio to go, "Oh, wait.

[01:02:59] Kyle Risi: Hang on." Or talking to anyone.

[01:03:00] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:03:00] Kyle Risi: So I don't buy that, but I do think it could have caused a momentary tizzy. But I think what made the situation far bigger than it needed to be was actually the three announcements that came between 9:00 PM and midnight. Like, people hearing those announcements, including the media, might have thought, "Wow, for them to feel the need to keep reassuring people that this was fictional, this must have caused some serious concern."

The station, in my opinion, should have just completely ignored it. And so off the back of those repeated announcements, the media probably picked up on that as well and went, "Actually, there's probably something there. This probably makes a really decent story." They start reporting on it. Other people started jumping on the bandwagon.

Maybe fictitious stories started coming out. Different kind of accounts got exaggerated. And of course, it probably fed into itself and probably just snowballed from there.

[01:03:47] Adam Cox: Right. So you're saying, like, there was maybe a little bit of hysteria, some calls, a few people contacted the police, some people were leaving the town?

Or d- was that bit true?

[01:03:57] Kyle Risi: Well, let's- we'll go onto that in a minute. Like, the announcements made the confusion seem more serious. That encouraged more calls and reporting, and that growing coverage then made the panic appear much larger than it actually was. Like, consider this, right? Orson Welles is the hottest celebrity alive at the time.

It was bound to make a good story if it was true, or even if you could kind of just bend it in a way. 23-year-old genius fools a nation and causes chaos. That's enough of a fragment to turn into a massive story.

[01:04:25] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:25] Kyle Risi: And we know this because many of the reports being published couldn't actually be backed up later by actual factual evidence.

Like, there were no Confirmed deaths in the story. The rumors of attempted suicides were investigated and found to have either been exaggerated or completely made up. Researchers also canvassed hospitals, but there were no observed increase in patient admissions as a result of this broadcast.

[01:04:51] Adam Cox: Oh, and so and no one was, like, trying to flee town or anything like that?

[01:04:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So, like, you would expect, like, if this had caused panic, there would have been an increase in at least hospital admissions, right?

[01:05:00] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:05:01] Kyle Risi: So while it might have caused some panic, it wasn't all-out hysteria. There is also strong evidence to suggest that many people didn't even listen. Oh. There's a company called C.E.

Hooper Ratings, which would, like, ring households and survey people about what they were listening to on a particular day. That night, the company had called 5,000 households. It turned out, Adam, that only 2% of people were actually listening to CBS that evening. And so when you extrapolate that upwards, those numbers come nowhere near the scale needed for mass hysteria.

And remember, not everyone who had listened to that show would have missed the beginning half. They would have heard the beginning half. Sure. So, so it's- And so yeah, so it's a small amount. Of the 2% of people who listened, even a small amount would have tuned in late. And so the numbers just don't add up for it to be a mass hysteria.

[01:05:50] Adam Cox: So is it the media that's made it a hysteria? Or is it, like, the network that's kind of gone, "Oh, we can play and get, like..." Like I said, this is kind of great PR, right? For people and the show.

[01:06:00] Kyle Risi: It's a perfect storm of all those things. Yeah, I don't think the, the, the network had too much to do with this. I think they were just literally trying to fight fires here.

They had gotten a few angry calls. They put out that statement three times. The media picks up on that, and then they ran with it, and then it snowballed from there. But they do have a vendetta against radio, and I'll explain that in just a second. But that is how we know that it couldn't have been this mass hysteria because This CE Hooper rating company ranked 5,000 households, and only 2% of people were listening that night.

Can you imagine, like, Disney+ calling you up to find out what you were watching?

[01:06:35] Adam Cox: No. They can go to hell.

[01:06:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exa- And also, how many people would actually be honest? Like, how many people would actually admit to, like, watching The Real Housewives of New York City? I'd be like, "I was watching a really hard-hitting documentary about the genocide in Cambodia, actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Real Housewives? Never heard of it. No." Oh, the last time you called I was watching Real Housewives of New York City? No, that was porn. I meant, I meant real sexy housewives of New York City.

[01:07:00] Adam Cox: You'd rather admit to that.

[01:07:01] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a guilty pleasure of mine. I do love the show.

[01:07:04] Adam Cox: Oh.

W- wait. Porn or Desperate Housewives?

[01:07:07] Kyle Risi: Desperate Housewives.

[01:07:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean, also-

[01:07:11] Kyle Risi: They probably also know as well, don't they?

[01:07:13] Adam Cox: Oh, oh, Disney+ knows, yeah.

[01:07:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah. They

[01:07:14] Adam Cox: don't need to call you up- No,

[01:07:15] Kyle Risi: exactly ...

[01:07:16] Adam Cox: time. They know exactly when you stop, when people, like, pause the shows.

[01:07:20] Kyle Risi: When they're not even looking at the TV screen.

[01:07:22] Adam Cox: That's creepy.

[01:07:23] Kyle Risi: That is creepy. It's gonna get that way. There's that TV that's just res- been released. It's, it's free. You buy it, but it's got, like, another LED strip at the very bottom of the TV, quite big, and it just plays adverts. And it knows when you are not looking at the screen, and so it will pause the advert And so you then look back.

[01:07:43] Adam Cox: Really?

[01:07:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah, and it's free. You can get

[01:07:45] Adam Cox: it. A- and this is so you can have a free TV.

[01:07:47] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:07:47] Adam Cox: No, thanks.

[01:07:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah, no. Crazy.

[01:07:49] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:07:49] Kyle Risi: The point is, Adam, if this really caused widespread hysteria, more people would have reported listening to that broadcast. Now, there is a theory that the hysteria was actually manufactured by newspapers to push for tighter censorship on radio because at the time, radio was expanding massively and newspapers were now losing readers as a result.

Newspapers saw radio as a threat, and a couple of years earlier, like, you can see a lot of this kind of peddling on these news stories. In one example, The New York Times wrote an article saying, "Radio is new, but it has adult responsibilities. It has not mastered itself or the material it uses." So newspapers were already actively attacking radio, and the Orson Welles broadcast just presented a new opportunity to do so.

[01:08:36] Adam Cox: If they were gonna be worried about radio, then they had no idea what was coming.

[01:08:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah, with TikTok and Instagram and things like that, right? Mm-hmm. And because many newspapers across the country relied on the same wire service reports to kind of get their news, the same handful of dramatic stories began appearing everywhere.

So it looks as though dozens of newspapers had independently confirmed a nationwide panic when actually many of them were just simply repeating the same anecdotes from the same Associated Press article that was published on the wire. But once the story started happening everywhere, you suddenly had a ton of people who now also wanted to be part of it, and so the whole thing just snowballed.

People were like, "Yes, I also listened to the broadcast and yes, I was freaked out, too. Here's my story."

[01:09:20] Adam Cox: Just people wanna, like, get some column inches and be part of history, I guess.

[01:09:24] Kyle Risi: Exactly. You suddenly have millions of people claiming they'd also tuned in that night. There was also a study conducted by a Princeton psychologist named Hadley Cantril, great name, which the media later used as evidence for pushing this kind of agenda of theirs for tighter controls on radio.

And at the time, the psychologist was studying the power of propaganda- And as part of his work, he decided to pivot in the light of the story, and he interviewed a group of people who'd been affected by the broadcast. His eventual findings, however, suggest that radio could pose a serious threat when it came to shaping public opinion.

And so naturally, the newspapers with already a staunch agenda just ran with that. However, it is now widely recognized that his findings were actually skewed because he only interviewed 135 people around the New Jersey area, so the epicenter of where this all happened, and people who said that they were the most scared.

Nobody who had listened without being affected was actually interviewed, so it's not a proper sample size, right?

[01:10:24] Adam Cox: No, it's biased. You know, you're, you're not taking a fair representation of everyone.

[01:10:28] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Basically, what he's saying is that if it was hysterical here, it was hysterical everywhere.

[01:10:33] Adam Cox: Yeah, yeah.

[01:10:34] Kyle Risi: The interviews also took place, remember, weeks after the story had aired. By then, those people, once become part of the story, right, they had their own anecdotes. They'd heard the story being peddled all over the place, and they were like, suddenly, "Yeah, I also tuned in that night." But as you know, only 2% of people had, and so that doesn't really extrapolate up to mass hysteria involving millions of people.

[01:10:52] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly.

[01:10:53] Kyle Risi: There is one extreme verifiable story that came from all of this, and that involved a couple called John and Estelle Poults, who like many, they missed the very beginning bit of the broadcast. When they heard what was happening, they knew it was likely the cause of Russian people trying to flee, so they decided to get ahead of it, and they tried to leave the city by train and started heading for Hartford in Connecticut.

Now on the train they told two college students what they had heard. This ended up attracting a bit of a crowd around them, and eventually one of those people in that crowd went, "Oh, this sounds like Orson Welles," and that's when the penny drops for Estelle, who realized, "Oh, this must have been one of his productions,

[01:11:32] Adam Cox: right?"

I bet she felt silly.

[01:11:34] Kyle Risi: Sh- exactly. Now she's an extreme case who ended up fleeing before obviously that settled in. But the point is, everyone who knew Orson Welles, and many people did, had come to expect something like this from him. Mm-hmm. It was just unfortunate that she was in a situation where she had missed the beginning and it had obviously run over its regular break slot, and it just so happened that it all sounded very real.

Like-

[01:11:59] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess this is just one of the rare instances where someone did act, but it's just taken out of pr- you know

[01:12:06] Kyle Risi: Exactly. No reasonable person would have believed it was real for long, and certainly not on the mass scale, right?

[01:12:13] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:12:13] Kyle Risi: If we only know that 2% of people tuned in, it's only gonna be a very small subset of those people that genuinely freaked out.

But then also you got to remember, sure, you're hearing something like this for the first time. The first thing you would do is check other stations to see if they were also reporting on it. If they weren't, then it's probably not a major news event, right? Also remember, there were four very clear disclaimers: one at the beginning, one before the break - yes, it came late - one after the break, and then one at the very end, but then also the three announcements leading up to midnight.

And honestly, I believe it was those three announcements that came after the show that caused the press to jump on that bandwagon. Mm. If you were genuinely that concerned, you would have stayed glued to your radio, right? And you would have eventually heard those warnings. The whole event was clearly exaggerated by the press, partly as a way to run a novel story, they saw an opportunity, but also partly an opportunity to attack radio.

[01:13:07] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[01:13:08] Kyle Risi: And so it makes sense through that lens, doesn't it? In the fallout, it's also worth mentioning that the Federal Communications Commission did not introduce any new regulations whatsoever. If it truly had been a national disaster, you'd have expected them to have done something about it, right?

[01:13:25] Adam Cox: Yeah. I would have thought so, but I guess that just kind of shows it wasn't a big deal. Why is everyone like, "Just calm down"?

[01:13:32] Kyle Risi: Exactly. The only thing they did ask was radio networks to agree to not use fictional newsflash formats- Oh, really? ... again in the future. Yeah. But like, it was just like, "Guys, like, i- just in case, right?

The public, they're gonna be a bit, a bit-" Stupid.

[01:13:47] Adam Cox: Yeah. I guess that lasted for so long, but now it's obviously kind of a, a common thing within media.

[01:13:54] Kyle Risi: Exactly. As for Orson Welles, Adam, nothing happened to him. If anything, he just became even more famous. Before the broadcast, the radio program didn't have any sponsors.

Afterwards, listenership skyrocketed, and there was literally a queue of sponsors lining up around the block. Eventually, Campbell Soup came on board, and they ended up renaming the show to The Campbell Playhouse, which-

[01:14:17] Adam Cox: Oh, they even did that back then?

[01:14:19] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah. And so there really is no such thing as bad publicity.

All eyes were on Orson, and he really did turn this into an advantage. Like, it's been 88 years since this all happened, and technically people are still talking about it.

[01:14:33] Adam Cox: Yeah, so for him, like, life carried on, right? Next show the following week, and then what did he go on to do?

[01:14:39] Kyle Risi: Well, I mean, this ends up opening doors for Hollywood.

Like, Hollywood were like, "Do you know what? This guy's done amazing stuff in theater and in radio. Why don't we welcome him to Hollywood?" And I guess when you look at this whole story as a whole, this is kind of one of the earliest examples of a story going viral, not because everybody experienced the original event, but everyone heard the increasing dramatic version of it afterwards.

Mm-hmm. And that's what kind of caused it to snowball. But like I said, he goes to Hollywood, and that is where he goes on to make Citizen Kane. As we said earlier on, this is considered one of the greatest movies- ever made. But on top of that, remember, his first film, he is 26 years old, and he gets final cut privilege, which means no questions.

[01:15:28] Adam Cox: Wait, so this was his first movie and he smashes it out of the park?

[01:15:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah, with one of the greatest films.

[01:15:34] Adam Cox: Wow. And then he has, yeah, he has no studio, like, interfering with, like-

[01:15:40] Kyle Risi: No saying like, "Oh, this, this movie could do with a monkey wearing a hat."

[01:15:43] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. Well, he's kind of like Tarantino in that respect, I guess.

[01:15:46] Kyle Risi: Mm.

[01:15:47] Adam Cox: Very much like he-

[01:15:48] Kyle Risi: People don't question.

[01:15:49] Adam Cox: Yeah, he has control, I think. I'm pretty sure he has, like, pretty much most control over his movies.

[01:15:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I mean, I find that very rare that, for that to be the truth nowadays. I even find it rare for that to be the case back then, 'cause these studios in the studio system- Mm-hmm

back then, they were very strict, right? Very much wanted control over everything.

[01:16:07] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:16:07] Kyle Risi: Very much believing that they knew what was right and what was wrong. And as we saw with the huge pioneers like Marilyn Monroe, who would come in and say, "No, I know better," they don't let her be as the creative that she needs to be.

But when she finally does get that opportunity, she smashed it out of the park and she wins all these awards.

[01:16:22] Adam Cox: Yeah. I guess it is him. He's got this way of storytelling that they're like, "Well, let's just see what he, you know, let him run with it." Exactly. "He could create that for us." Yeah. And he did. And again, he is 26.

Yeah. Overachiever.

[01:16:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:16:32] Adam Cox: And

[01:16:36] Kyle Risi: at the time all of this was happening, H.G. Wells himself, the guy who wrote War of the Worlds, he was still alive. I think he was, like, in his 70s at the time. And when he heard about the broadcast, he thought it was just a little bit tacky, and actually he was a little bit angry by it. And I guess it's because no one likes to know that their work has been kind of adapted from what it, the original intention was.

[01:16:57] Adam Cox: Yeah, people get mad about that.

[01:16:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But a couple years later, almost to the day of the broadcast, the two men were unexpectedly brought together during an impromptu on-air conversation in Texas. And Adam, listening to them together is really something. Because H.G. Wells, his voice is this really light, he's also obviously British, while Orson has got this booming voice that sounds like someone's just opened a door to a cathedral.

And so listening to the contrast between the two men, that really stands out as pretty impressive. But it's during this broadcast that H.G. Wells finally goes- Okay, I get it Ah Like, this guy's pretty incredible So

[01:17:32] Adam Cox: he comes to, like, respect him in that way?

[01:17:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah, in the end of it he starts to lovingly refer to Orson Welles as his little namesake, 'cause of course they have the same name.

[01:17:42] Adam Cox: Yeah, that makes him more, like, famous as well. Probably gets him more, right?

[01:17:46] Kyle Risi: Exactly, yeah. At... I mean, at that point he's 70, probably doesn't care- Um- ... I've become really famous ...

[01:17:51] Adam Cox: does he get any paychecks? Does he get any royalties from this?

[01:17:53] Kyle Risi: Maybe. Maybe. Apparently Orson Welles kept the original director's copy of the script that he used back in 1938, and in 1994 it was auctioned at Christie's in New York and ended up selling, Adam, for 32,000 bucks, which is not bad for 1994 money.

[01:18:09] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:18:10] Kyle Risi: Do you wanna hazard a guess who bought it?

[01:18:12] Adam Cox: Uh, it's gotta be, like, a famous director like S- Spielberg or-

[01:18:15] Kyle Risi: That's correct.

[01:18:16] Adam Cox: Oh, really?

[01:18:16] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Steven Spielberg bought it, and as we know, he went on to create his own adaptation of The War of the Worlds in 2005 starring...

[01:18:25] Adam Cox: Do you remember? Oh, yeah, Tom Cruise.

I didn't realize he was the director.

[01:18:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And I think it was, like, set in Brooklyn, was it? 'Cause I remember the Brooklyn back gardens.

[01:18:33] Adam Cox: Yeah, I remember, like, uh, the little girl Tom Cruise was protecting. His daughter? I don't know. Yeah. Something like that.

[01:18:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it was any good, I can't remember.

[01:18:41] Adam Cox: I think it was all right, it's just not maybe one of the movies that stood the test of time. Yeah. But for the time it was, you know, it was fun.

[01:18:47] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's it. And Adam, that is the story of Orson Welles's 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds.

[01:18:54] Adam Cox: Wow. So I didn't know, yeah, there was this hysteria, and then there wasn't this hysteria.

And then also just Orson Welles, just how... I, I guess just how talented he was. What

[01:19:05] Kyle Risi: a child prodigy he was.

[01:19:07] Adam Cox: Yes, he really was. Mm.

[01:19:09] Kyle Risi: And- Your first movie that you make, and it becomes one of the greatest movies ever made.

[01:19:13] Adam Cox: You can't really... Like, he must've did, like... I don't know. Did he do anything better after this?

[01:19:18] Kyle Risi: Oh, I don't know. I don't know too mu- I... All I know is that he died in '85.

[01:19:21] Adam Cox: He probably did something useful.

[01:19:23] Kyle Risi: Uh, he does win a few awards. There is, like... There's another instance where he pulls, like, a bit of a Marilyn Monroe where he's in a film-

[01:19:30] Adam Cox: With a white dress?

[01:19:32] Kyle Risi: No. I think it's called, like, The Third Man .

I can't be sure, but he's in it for, like, 10 minutes and he completely steals the show, and that's what he kind of, like, becomes renowned for- Mm-hmm ... like, coming in and, like, completely transforming the presence of a film just with very short, like a c- like a cameo.

[01:19:47] Adam Cox: Oh, okay.

[01:19:48] Kyle Risi: Marilyn Monroe famously done something very similar with one of her first films where she just completely stole the show, and she was only in it for, like, 50 seconds.

[01:19:54] Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay. Wow. Yeah. Pretty impressive. Well done, Orson.

[01:19:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:19:59] Adam Cox: You make me feel, like... I feel inspired.

[01:20:02] Kyle Risi: Or inadequate.

[01:20:03] Adam Cox: Both.

[01:20:03] Kyle Risi: It is such a wild story because of how it is remembered after all these years as him causing this panic, but actually it's not what everyone seems. Like, it wasn't, uh, as big of a panic as people thought it was.

Yeah. And it goes to show how the papers can actually shape public opinion 88 years after. People still believed it. 'Cause the reporting is real. The reporting was there, but when you look at the data, when you go and do the research, when you look at the hospitals, when you look at the, uh, the rating data, was it a big panic?

Nah.

[01:20:33] Adam Cox: Ah, let's just sell papers now and we'll worry about that later.

[01:20:37] Kyle Risi: Exactly. I mean, we see that time and time again, don't we? So Adam, do you fancy running the outro for this week?

[01:20:41] Adam Cox: Let's do it.

[01:20:42] Kyle Risi: And so that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things.

We hope you enjoyed the ride as much as we did.

[01:20:51] Adam Cox: And if today's episode has sparked your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app, because it makes a world of difference and helps more people discover the show.

[01:21:00] Kyle Risi: For our dedicated freaks out there, don't forget that next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon, and as always, it is completely free to access.

[01:21:08] Adam Cox: And if you want even more, then you can join our certified freaks tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content, including exclusive episodes, and get a sneak peek at what's coming next.

[01:21:19] Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday, and until then, remember, sometimes the real illusion isn't the broadcast, it's the reaction to it.

We'll see you next

[01:21:27] Adam Cox: time. See ya.