Radiolab: War Of The Worlds
Friday, October 26, 2012
When Orson Welles decided to make a radio play of the H.G. Well’s classic, "War of the Worlds," he had no idea that he would be branded by the FCC as a "radio terrorist." Could it happen again?
This hour of Radiolab: an examination of the power of mass media to create panic. In our very first live hour, we take a deep dive into one of the most controversial moments in broadcasting history: Orson Welles' 1938 radio play about Martians invading New Jersey. The War of the Worlds is believed to have fooled over a million people when it originally aired, and it's continued to fool people since -- from Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador.