August 15, 2011 • 29 mins
In 1938, Orson Welles produced a series of radio dramas, including one based on "War of the Worlds." The broadcast aired the night before Halloween and purportedly caused a mass panic. But why did listeners believe the show was real? (And how much of the panic was hype?) Tune in to find out.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a chalklate boarding, and I'm fair it out.
And nowadays, at least in terms of the Internet, we're
all pretty used to, maybe even desensitized to the idea
(00:22):
of the news hoax, those bits of information that are
passed off as real news. I mean we can probably
all think of some examples of them. I think, you know,
there's always those out there about celebrities who've died when
really they haven't. And we do one of our own
every year, don't we. We do. We have an annual
April fools Day article, which is kind of a staff favorite,
I would say, picking out what it's going to be,
(00:44):
somebody gets to write it, and then um, I sit
next to tech Stuff Jonathan Strickland and he's written a
few of them before, and usually April Fool's Day, you
can hear him trying to judge if the articles passed
off is real anywhere, and which which news sites are
running it as a as a real story. But it's
always kind of fun just to help this fake out article.
(01:04):
It's usually something pretty outlandish like animated tattoos or green
Air Force one or or something that is a little
bit plausible, but not so much if you if you
think about it for a while, especially if it's April
Fool's Day. So someone might be in danger of falling
for one of those. But we're usually not in danger
of falling for these Internet hoaxes because they're not coming
(01:25):
from so called legitimate news sources. Most of the time.
A lot of times they're passed along through social media,
or you get an email that looks like it's made
to look like a news article that was forwarded to
you or something like that. But what if these are
actually proliferated through what we consider to be legitimate media,
So you read it on a on a newspaper website
(01:47):
that you respect and read frequently, or or see it
on a news channel exactly, or hear it on the radio,
And that's kind of what happened in the situation we're
about to discuss, though it might not have been intended
as so to The ninety eight War of the World's
broadcast has been called the greatest hoaks in the history
of broadcasting. And you could call it the greatest I
guess because so many people believed it. The broadcast was
(02:10):
an original play based on H. G. Wells War of
the World's, a science fiction novel about a Martian invasion
of the Earth, but enough people thought it was real
that it caused mass panic, and for that reason, the
situation has been a case study for sociologists and psychologists
and for media critics who cite it as an example
of the power of the media. But what made it
(02:31):
so realistic in the first place, and why did so
many people believe it, Especially since the broadcast was labeled
upfront as fiction. They weren't trying to fool anybody, or
at least it seems that way. So we're going to
go into all of that, and we'll also want to
take a look at the brains behind the broadcast, in
particular Orson Welles. He's probably best known for his work
(02:51):
on Citizen Kane, one of the most influential films of
all time, but many people say that this radio broadcast
is what made Hollywood take note of him in the
first place, how he really got his start. So we're
going to start with him. George Orson Wells was born
May sixth, nineteen fifteen in Kenosha, Wisconsin into an upper
middle class family. He was the second son of Richard Wells,
(03:13):
a successful inventor, and Beatrice Wells, who was an accomplished pianist.
And Orson is said to have been pretty precocious while
he was growing up, and something of a child prodigy too.
He was reading and writing Shakespeare at age three, and
at age five he had walk on roles at the
Chicago Opera. Pretty impressive, but things in his life started
to shake up a little bit when he was around
(03:34):
six years old. That's when his parents separated, and when
he was nine years old, his mother got hepatitis and died.
And after that he traveled the world with his father
a couple of times. He went to Africa and Europe
and Asia, but in nineteen thirty his father passed away
too and that left him. That left Orson Wells an
orphan at age fifteen, so he studied at the Todd
(03:57):
School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, where he was pretty
mediocre student in general, even though he showed great interest
in studying drama, so he graduated at sixteen. He wanted
to go to work in theater, but he couldn't really
break in right away, so instead he studied at the
Art Institute in Chicago for a while and even worked
(04:18):
as a reporter briefly, which seems to be everybody's job
when they a lot of reporter openings back then another
aren't now. In nineteen thirty one, though, he kind of
went off on a different path. He went to Ireland
and that fall he found theater work in Dublin with
the Gate Theater. He remained there for about a year
and then did a tour of Spain and Morocco before
finally heading back to Chicago. And when he got back there,
(04:41):
he joined Catherine Cornell's company, Theater Company in nineteen thirty
three and stayed with her until about nineteen thirty four.
Then he finally made it to New York, which is
where he wanted to go, and he made his Broadway
debut in nineteen thirty four in Romeo and Juliet. But
while he was getting the supporting roles on stage, Orson
sought out radio work to make ends meet. Yeah, and
(05:01):
soon he really made a name for himself doing these
dramatic radio performances, and he narrated a news series called
The March of Time for two years, and in ninety
seven he became famous as the voice of a mysterious
crime fighter and the radio showed the shadow and Eva
who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? Yeah,
I mean he or some Wells. He has a great voice.
(05:22):
But as a result of the Depression, Wells had also
become involved in the Federal Theater Project, which was part
of the New Deal's Works Progress administration, and through that
he started working with a guy named John Houseman, and
together they worked on a couple of avant garde productions,
including a production of Macbeth with an all African American
(05:44):
cast and um. Their partnership continued and developed into a
pretty interesting one. Yeah. Nineteen thirty seven, Wells and Houseman
formed the Mercury Theater with only a hundred dollars in
capital to start with. They had a few stage hits,
and then in the summer of eight they made a
deal with CBS to produce weekly radio dramas with the
(06:05):
Mercury Theater cast, and they called themselves a Mercury Theater
on the air. The program was initially called First Person Singular,
but I don't think that's stuck. Kind of like Mercury
Theater in the Air. Better, definitely more dramatic, but they
were originally slated to run nine to ten weeks, and
the Mercury Theater broadcasts included adaptations of Dracula, a Tale
of two Cities around the world in eighty days, so
(06:26):
famous works. And the broadcasts were done in first person narrative,
and they incorporated things like stream of consciousness, diaries and letters,
and they also used sound effects and music in an
innovative way. Despite all that innovation, though, the ratings weren't
all that great at first. But the show scheduled for
October thirtieth ninety eight, the Halloween show War of the
(06:47):
World was really about to change the fate of this
radio company entirely so. According to many sources, including Richard
Cavendish in History Today, Howard Kotch, who was the primary
or on the script of of this adaptation of War
of the World's privately thought that H. G. Wells book,
which was published back in was pretty dated and pretty
(07:09):
boring actually, and orson Welles and Houseman and Cotch all
wanted to figure out how to spice it up a
little bit, make it compelling for the for the radio
format especially. Yeah, it's hard to think of a classic
work like War the World's needing any work, but apparently
it did in this instance, and so Cotch worked on
a script for this and he banged it out in
(07:30):
six days. Now we're going to stop for a second
here and tell you a little bit about the story
in case you don't know War of the Worlds, and
you can see then the differences between the script change
the original story. Right, So the original story took place
in England, but Cootch changed the setting to grow Over Mills,
which is a village in central New Jersey. And this
the idea behind this was to bring the spookiness of
(07:52):
the Martian invasion closer to home for the American listening audience.
He also presented H. G. Wells story as a series
of increasingly alarmed me news bulletins that start by reporting
a meteorite landing in New Jersey. Now, the news bulletins
is kind of like the key to the whole thing
of definitely why this hoax worked. And a lot of
people think that it was Orson's idea. We're not sure
(08:14):
about that, but just putting that out there. The meteorite
turns out to be this extraterrestrial capsule that opens up
to reveal terrifying creatures that burned by standards to death
with heat rays. Yeah, and then there's another twist that
the capsule later reveals a giant machine that starts reaking
havoc in New Jersey and New York. And as the
news bulletins report more and more Martian landings all over
(08:36):
the country, the situation quickly escalates into total war. Still though,
when the script was finished, I mean, it sounds like
a pretty pretty cool story, and we know the history
of it now, But when the script was done, everyone
involved thought it was still pretty silly and dull. Yeah.
According to an article by James Narramore in the journal Humanities,
(08:57):
Orson almost withdrew the project to the last minute in
favor of an adaptation of Laurena doone. But they went
on a scheduled at eight pm on October thirty, and
by eight thirty members of the Mercury Theater on the
air were surprised to find out that some people actually
thought the story was real. So let's look back now
and try to understand the panic that came from this
(09:18):
radio drama. So, looking back on some of the more
extreme reactions to the broadcast, that we're going to talk
about later. Most sources describe it as a quote panic
or a mass hysteria. So what really happened here, Well,
people basically started acting really irrationally. They were trying to
flee to their cars. They were going to warn neighbors
(09:40):
and people in churches that the world was ending. So
traffic was jammed and communication systems were jammed because so
many people were trying to call the police and the
radio stations to find out what, what should we do?
Where should we go? And we have a few examples
here of things that the New York Times reported the
next day, just to kind of give you a play
by play of things that a really happened, or at
(10:00):
least were reported to have happened. For one thing, at
least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock
and hysteria. Yeah, And in Newark, a single block at
Head and Terriff and Hawthorne Avenue, more than twenty families
rushed out of their homes with wet handkerchiefs and towels
over their faces to flee from what they thought was
a gas raid. And some of them even began moving
(10:23):
household furniture. I don't know if they were trying to
save it, or blockade their houses or just do something.
And just to clarify, people were worried about a gas
raid because of the giant machine Sarah mentioned before was
supposed to be spring poison gas in the story on
the radio, so they thought that they had to protect themselves.
The switchboard of the New York Times was overwhelmed by
(10:44):
about eight hundred and seventy five calls. A man who
called from Dayton, Ohio asked, quote, what time will it
be the end of the world. With so many of
these calls coming into the newspapers, a lot of papers
found it advisable to follow up on them and see
if there was any truth to reports despite the fantastic content.
So finally the Associated Press decided to send out the
(11:08):
following bulletin at eight forty eight pm. And here here
it goes note to editors queries to newspapers from radio
listeners throughout the United States tonight regarding reported meteor fall
which killed a number of New Jersey it its are
the result of a studio dramatization. The a P and
then the police stations also had to issue statements so
(11:30):
that the officers knew what was going on. So here's
an example of what the New Jersey State Police put out.
They teletyped the following quote note to all receivers. W
ABC broadcast as drama regarding the section being attacked by
residents of Mars period imaginary affair period end quote. It's
(11:51):
it's brief and to the point, and I like the
addition of the imaginary fair at the end. But just
to make sure, just to make sure, guys, this is
not for real. But it's sort of hard to tell
exactly how many people were part of this so called
mass panic. The New York Times made reference to thousands
of people, and a lot of sources make a reference
(12:12):
to the generic millions. And you'll see estimates that about
half of the six million people who heard the broadcast
believed it was true, and about half of those people
actually panicked. So that leaves us with approximately one point
two million people. But not everyone thinks the numbers were
really that high. That's true. Some experts believe that these
(12:33):
inflated numbers are the result of just a lot of hype.
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Sucklau wrote that
quote the panic was neither widespread nor as serious as
many have believed at the time or since. I mean,
nobody died, nobody was killed or committed suicide, so there
weren't those results from it. But he says that our
(12:54):
perception could be the result of a couple of things.
For one thing, it could be just the media loving
and really just making a big deal out of the story.
You know, it was a story that a lot of
people wanted to read and they put it out there.
Another possibility is that it was just inaccurate reporting on
the part of survey respondence. A lot of people were
surveyed after the fact to kind of study the situation
and find out what really happened. So what suckle I
(13:16):
was saying here is that people after the fact may
have claimed that they heard the broadcast when they actually didn't.
They might have just seen their neighbor panicking and and
done the same, yeah, or heard the story and decided
to pass it along. Um, maybe they just wanted to
feel part of it. Well. So, regardless of how many
people did panic, the fact remains that a lot of
(13:36):
people really did believe that the War of the World's
broadcast was real. But why did they believe that? Why
would people believe this story about a Martian invasion just
because they heard it on the radio. That question is
especially pertinent since the program started out with a very
clear introduction, this is how it this is how it
went orson Wills and the Mercury Theater on Air presents
(13:59):
the Are of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, And
to add to that, a couple of times in the
middle of the broadcast they say you're listening to an
original dramatization by Mercury Theater on the Air of War
of the World's by H. G. Well So it seems
like if you caught one of those parts, it would
be pretty clear that it was it was fiction. But
(14:20):
there are a few theories as to why people thought
that this was real. The first theory posits that people
just came into the program too late and didn't hear
that opening line. So, as we mentioned, ratings for the
Mercury Theater on the Air weren't that great at the time.
In their time slot, they had to compete with the
more popular Chase and Sandborn Hour on NBC. So after
(14:41):
that opening line of this broadcast, the broadcast shifts to
a weather report that transitions into a music program uh
performance of Raymond Rocquello and his orchestra. So you're listening
to the seemingly normal radio program for a good couple
of minutes before the first news interruption about gas eruptions
on Mars actually occur hers. So the theory is that
(15:01):
this news interruption was timed, perhaps purposely timed perfectly to
the commercial break of the Chase and Sandborn Hour. So
people would have been flipping around during the commercial break
as we often do easy Latin music listening, and decided
to stick around for a minute exactly um and so
when they were switching channels, when they switched to CBS,
(15:22):
they would have just heard this good evening later than
gentlemen from the Meridian Room in the Park claus A
Hotel in New York. Today we bring you the music
of Raymond Ricchello and the Doctors, though the Dutch of
the finish Raymond Rocquello lead with low company, Ladies and gentlemen,
(15:56):
we interrupted our program with dance music to bring you
a special bullet from the intercontinent of a radio on you.
At twenty minutes before a Central time, Professor Farrell at
the Mount Gettings Observatory Chicago, Illinois reports observing several explosions
of incandescent gas occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars.
The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving
(16:16):
towards the Earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pearson of the
Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation and describes the phenomenon
as quote like a jet of blue flame shots m
a gun unquote. We now return you to the music
of Ramon Roquelo playing for you in the Meridean room
of the Park Claza Hotel situated in downtown New York,
(16:45):
so you can see there where where it would have
sounded just like a normal interruption. It does sound like
a real interruption. And the fact that the Mercury Theater
on the air was still unsponsored at that point really
helped because there weren't any commercials breaking in to remind
people that day we're actually just watching a show. Also,
there are a few other effects that took place during
the show that really added to the reality of all
(17:08):
of it. The interviews with real sounding experts like Professor Pearson,
a noted astronomer Lloyd Gray, and natural history museum expert
and also a man on the street. You know, things
that real radio news programs were doing at the time.
On the interviews, they sounded really kind of authentic. I thought,
at least listening to this broadcast with the interviewer asking
(17:31):
people to speak up and things like that, interrupting each other,
it sounds very natural. It doesn't sound like something that
would have been rehearsed and performed. It's not totally perfect,
I guess, and the sound effects of background noise kind
of add to that authenticity. So here's an example of
an interview that would illustrate this point. Would you mind
(17:52):
very much side place back, here's Mr Willmots, owner of
the bond Here you may have some interesting fact to listen, Willment,
would you please tell the radio audience as much as
you remember this rather unusual visitor that dropped in your
back yard a step posted, please, ladies and gentlemen. This
is Mr Willman. I was assisting with the radios and
(18:13):
louder placements starting a louder please post. Yes, I was
listening to the radio and kind of drowsing. A professor
fellow was talking about Mars, so I was half dozen
and half. Yes, yes, this woman, and then what happened? Well,
as I was saying, I was listening to the radio
kind of halfway, yes, this willen, and then you saw something?
(18:34):
Not first off, I heard something? And what did you hear? Hissing?
Sound like this kind of like a fourth of July
rocket asked? Then what? I turned my head out the
window and would have scorn. I was asleep and dreaming. Yes,
I've seen a kind of greenish streak, and then zingo,
something smacked the ground, knocked me clear out of my chair. Well,
(18:55):
where are you frightened? Mr Willman? Well, I quite sure,
I reckon I was kind of role Thank you, mis Willman.
Thank you very much. Best funding. Ladies and gentlemen. You've
just heard Mr Wilmot's owner of the farm where this
thing has fallen. That type of on the spot coverage
was also familiar to people, so the broadcast really took
advantage of that fact. Since the Hindenberg explosion in nine seven,
(19:20):
people were used to the on the spot, guy on
the street kind of news coverage, and some even say
that orson Wells had the actors listened to those older
broadcasts so they knew exactly what they were trying to
replicate kind of studied them. And finally, another theory as
to why people would have believed this hoax is that
(19:40):
listeners were just vulnerable at this time because of what
was going on in the world. And I mean, we
have kind of talked about and going especially through the
New York Times stuff, and it's kind of amusing to
see in some cases, at least the way people reacted
or the way the police department reacted. But some of
the issues that were going on, we're pretty serious. I mean,
for one thing, a lot of people point to anxiety
(20:00):
that may have been latent in the population at this
time after years of economic depression. Also, the Second World
War was looming in Europe, so that had people on edge.
And in fact, the show aired just after the Munich crisis,
which was a war scare, which may have caused some
people to think that the invasion wasn't actually extraterrestrial it
was just a human war, which actually is scary enough.
(20:22):
It is scary. And regardless of exactly why people believed
this radio drama, whether they thought it was an enemy
invasion or an alien invasion, they did believe it and
it led to some not so great publicity for CBS consequently,
and initially for Orson Welles too, so he had given
the final word and the broadcast basically saying that it
was all just a story and CBS's version of a
(20:45):
good Halloween joke essentially, but a lot of people were
angry when they realized it was fiction. That FCC issued
a statement calling the program quote regrettable. Lawsuits were drawn up.
Even H. G. Wells threatened to sue for the misuse
the quote misuse of his novel, and CBS had to
come out and publicly apologize and promised not to create
(21:07):
any quote simulated news broadcast that could cause harm. So
there was a lot of backtracking immediately after after the
show came out. There was an Orson Wells even retreated
from public view for a little while. But actually, once
the death settled, it became very clear that this broadcast
really put him on the map at the young age
of twenty three. The Mercury Theater on the air continued
(21:27):
for a while and even got the sponsorship of the
Campbell Soup Company, So they went from me in the small,
unsponsored show to really having a new name family fund
kind of. Yeah, Well, they got moved to a better
time slot and they were renamed the Campbell Playhouse, so
they had a little backing behind them. Orson Wells also
got a contract with R. Chaos Studios and moved to
Hollywood to write, produce, direct, and act in Citizen Kane.
(21:50):
And of course he made a lot of other films too,
so he was really prolific in that respect. Hard Cotch
also went into film and had a very successful career.
He received an awesome ger in nineteen forty four for
the Casablanca screenplay, and even H. G. Wells finally changed
his tune. The controversy spurred renewed interest in his novel.
(22:11):
I mean, it's one of those any publicity is good
publicity kind of cases, I think, and he came to
realize that. Yeah. So in retrospect it seems like a
genius move because of the publicity it did get for
all these people, and many saw it as such at
the time. I read one take on it that said,
if you weren't fooled by it, you probably thought this
(22:31):
whole thing was genius, especially if you saw your neighbor
running out right, and if you were if you were
the neighbor running out, if you were fooled by it,
then you were probably one of the ones who were outraged.
I thought it was really, really a bad thing to do,
and I think that's probably true of most hoaxes. Yeah,
if you're in on it, it's cool. If not, if
your feelings are hurt, your feelings may be hurt and
you may feel a little bit silly about it. But
(22:54):
I don't know what's a It's an interesting question. Since
we weren't around, then, do you think that you would
have for those hopes? Sarah? Well, hopefully I would have
been a careful listener and I would maybe pick up
on some of the clues that it wasn't real. Um,
if you would have been there exactly at eight pm
to hear the intro, yeah, i'd have my clocks that
I'd be like one of the old fashioned pictures where
(23:16):
the family is sitting in front of the radio waiting
for the show to be on. Um. I don't know, though,
I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I would have done.
What about yourself, Yeah, I'm not sure either. I would
like to think that I wouldn't be fooled, but you'd
be out there with a towel over your head. Maybe
unless I wouldn't be out there, but i'd definitely be
checking things out. I might make a phone call. I
(23:37):
can't be sure. It's interesting to wonder about, and I
am interested to know what our listeners think is a
good one. Um, how would you have reacted if you
heard the War of the World's Radio We may have
to put that one out there, but I think before
we can find that out before we sign off today. Well,
it's worth mentioning that there have been some other more
(23:58):
recent War of the World's panics, including one in nineteen
forty nine involving a broadcast that took place on Radio
Quito in Ecuador. But this one was actually deadly. Thousands
of people rioted in the streets. Some people thought that
monsters were actually invading the country, and some people thought
that it might actually be neighboring Peru invading. So some
similar things going on at the time as far as
(24:19):
what people thought. UM. After discovering that it was all
a hoax, though, mobs attacked and torched the radio station,
killing twenty people, and since then there's been other similar
hoaxes around the world, one in Buffalo, New York in
nineteen sixty eight, one in Providence, Rhode Island in nineteen
seventy four, and one in northern Portugal in nineteen eighty eight.
(24:40):
So these things still happened. I noticed though there hasn't
been one of these radio hoaxes since the Internet became
pretty common. And I wonder now if it would just
be put down pretty pretty quickly, you know, if the
flames would be put out before it got to the
point of people rioting. But I don't know it could
It could accelerate things though, if you think about it,
(25:01):
It's true. I would encourage people to listen to the broadcast.
I listened to the whole thing, and I think Sarah
did too, and um I listened to a couple of times, actually,
and I heard different things both times. It was interesting
to sit there and imagine what it would be like to,
uh have that as your form of entertainment. Yeah, either
either enjoying it as fictional entertainment, knowing it was such,
(25:22):
or trying to imagine what the people who thought it
was a real news report were actually thinking. And you
may recognize little bits and pieces of it here. It's
been sampled in popular culture. For example, if you if
there are any fans of the band pin Back out there.
They sampled parts of this for their song Boo on
one of their albums, so that's just like a plug
for one of my favorite bands there. Yeah, if you
(25:44):
know of any other places in popular culture that this
has been sampled, please write to us at History Podcast
at how staff works dot com. I think that's all
we have today though, on the War of the World's broadcast,
and now we're going to move on to exter mail.
So some of you may have heard our recent podcast
(26:06):
proposal from Jim to Julie on our Victoria and Albert episode,
and we heard from both of them recently. They are
now engaged, So podcast proposal success. We were pretty excited
at our cubes when we got that email or we Yeah,
we were jumping up and down and they sent us.
We put this on Facebook up a great save the
(26:27):
date that's superhero themed. So congratulations to Jim and Julie.
But are we really invited. We don't know, I know,
we don't know, if we don't know, if it's just
sharing the Well, we sent the save the date to
everybody on our Facebook page now though, so I don't
think they probably don't want thousands of people at their weddings.
On that note, we thought we would share this postcard
(26:49):
that we received from David from the Alhambra. Um. Katie
and I did an episode on it back in the fall,
so here's what he wrote. Hi to Blina and Sarah.
After hearing your show, I was inspired to take the
thirty hour flight to visit the Alhambra from Australia. The
place really is too beautiful for words. I sat in
the shadow of the Alcazaba having a Spanish tortilla sandwich,
(27:13):
listening to your Rick on Quista podcast, just to make
sure I didn't miss the thing. I thought life could
not get better. Podcast in headphones, tortilla in hand, and
gorgeous gardens as far as you can see. Until it did.
My partner and I decided to get married then and
there a series of events your podcasts began audio. So
(27:35):
today we're just like the romantic podcast streak going it
seems we do. We we love those stories and we
will admit that it's girly and apologize to anyone who
was offended by our love of love. We just did
a podcast on Like Possible Invading Aliens, so we think
it balances out. It's the best of both worlds, the
War of the World's best of both worlds excellent, So
(27:58):
congratulation David and your partner, and congratulations again to Jim
and Julie. You guys look very happy together. If you
want to email us, that doesn't have to be a
grand dromantic story or an alien story. Yeah, just just whatever.
Any suggestions you have on radio dramas, orson welles old Hollywood,
(28:18):
I know lots of you have all sorts of Hollywood suggestions,
go ahead and send them to us. That history podcast
at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter
at Miston History, and we're on Facebook, as I already mentioned.
And if you would like to learn a little bit
more about the possibility of life on Mars, which is
something sort of indirectly explored in the topic we talked
(28:40):
about tonight, we have an article by our own Sarah
Dowity on our website called is there really water on Mars?
And you can look it up by entering that topic
into our the search bar on our homepage, which is
at www dot how stuff works dot com. Three sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
(29:03):
Join how stup works staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Step Works
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a chalklate boarding, and I'm fair it out.
And nowadays, at least in terms of the Internet, we're
all pretty used to, maybe even desensitized to the idea
(00:22):
of the news hoax, those bits of information that are
passed off as real news. I mean we can probably
all think of some examples of them. I think, you know,
there's always those out there about celebrities who've died when
really they haven't. And we do one of our own
every year, don't we. We do. We have an annual
April fools Day article, which is kind of a staff favorite,
I would say, picking out what it's going to be,
(00:44):
somebody gets to write it, and then um, I sit
next to tech Stuff Jonathan Strickland and he's written a
few of them before, and usually April Fool's Day, you
can hear him trying to judge if the articles passed
off is real anywhere, and which which news sites are
running it as a as a real story. But it's
always kind of fun just to help this fake out article.
(01:04):
It's usually something pretty outlandish like animated tattoos or green
Air Force one or or something that is a little
bit plausible, but not so much if you if you
think about it for a while, especially if it's April
Fool's Day. So someone might be in danger of falling
for one of those. But we're usually not in danger
of falling for these Internet hoaxes because they're not coming
(01:25):
from so called legitimate news sources. Most of the time.
A lot of times they're passed along through social media,
or you get an email that looks like it's made
to look like a news article that was forwarded to
you or something like that. But what if these are
actually proliferated through what we consider to be legitimate media,
So you read it on a on a newspaper website
(01:47):
that you respect and read frequently, or or see it
on a news channel exactly, or hear it on the radio,
And that's kind of what happened in the situation we're
about to discuss, though it might not have been intended
as so to The ninety eight War of the World's
broadcast has been called the greatest hoaks in the history
of broadcasting. And you could call it the greatest I
guess because so many people believed it. The broadcast was
(02:10):
an original play based on H. G. Wells War of
the World's, a science fiction novel about a Martian invasion
of the Earth, but enough people thought it was real
that it caused mass panic, and for that reason, the
situation has been a case study for sociologists and psychologists
and for media critics who cite it as an example
of the power of the media. But what made it
(02:31):
so realistic in the first place, and why did so
many people believe it, Especially since the broadcast was labeled
upfront as fiction. They weren't trying to fool anybody, or
at least it seems that way. So we're going to
go into all of that, and we'll also want to
take a look at the brains behind the broadcast, in
particular Orson Welles. He's probably best known for his work
(02:51):
on Citizen Kane, one of the most influential films of
all time, but many people say that this radio broadcast
is what made Hollywood take note of him in the
first place, how he really got his start. So we're
going to start with him. George Orson Wells was born
May sixth, nineteen fifteen in Kenosha, Wisconsin into an upper
middle class family. He was the second son of Richard Wells,
(03:13):
a successful inventor, and Beatrice Wells, who was an accomplished pianist.
And Orson is said to have been pretty precocious while
he was growing up, and something of a child prodigy too.
He was reading and writing Shakespeare at age three, and
at age five he had walk on roles at the
Chicago Opera. Pretty impressive, but things in his life started
to shake up a little bit when he was around
(03:34):
six years old. That's when his parents separated, and when
he was nine years old, his mother got hepatitis and died.
And after that he traveled the world with his father
a couple of times. He went to Africa and Europe
and Asia, but in nineteen thirty his father passed away
too and that left him. That left Orson Wells an
orphan at age fifteen, so he studied at the Todd
(03:57):
School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, where he was pretty
mediocre student in general, even though he showed great interest
in studying drama, so he graduated at sixteen. He wanted
to go to work in theater, but he couldn't really
break in right away, so instead he studied at the
Art Institute in Chicago for a while and even worked
(04:18):
as a reporter briefly, which seems to be everybody's job
when they a lot of reporter openings back then another
aren't now. In nineteen thirty one, though, he kind of
went off on a different path. He went to Ireland
and that fall he found theater work in Dublin with
the Gate Theater. He remained there for about a year
and then did a tour of Spain and Morocco before
finally heading back to Chicago. And when he got back there,
(04:41):
he joined Catherine Cornell's company, Theater Company in nineteen thirty
three and stayed with her until about nineteen thirty four.
Then he finally made it to New York, which is
where he wanted to go, and he made his Broadway
debut in nineteen thirty four in Romeo and Juliet. But
while he was getting the supporting roles on stage, Orson
sought out radio work to make ends meet. Yeah, and
(05:01):
soon he really made a name for himself doing these
dramatic radio performances, and he narrated a news series called
The March of Time for two years, and in ninety
seven he became famous as the voice of a mysterious
crime fighter and the radio showed the shadow and Eva
who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? Yeah,
I mean he or some Wells. He has a great voice.
(05:22):
But as a result of the Depression, Wells had also
become involved in the Federal Theater Project, which was part
of the New Deal's Works Progress administration, and through that
he started working with a guy named John Houseman, and
together they worked on a couple of avant garde productions,
including a production of Macbeth with an all African American
(05:44):
cast and um. Their partnership continued and developed into a
pretty interesting one. Yeah. Nineteen thirty seven, Wells and Houseman
formed the Mercury Theater with only a hundred dollars in
capital to start with. They had a few stage hits,
and then in the summer of eight they made a
deal with CBS to produce weekly radio dramas with the
(06:05):
Mercury Theater cast, and they called themselves a Mercury Theater
on the air. The program was initially called First Person Singular,
but I don't think that's stuck. Kind of like Mercury
Theater in the Air. Better, definitely more dramatic, but they
were originally slated to run nine to ten weeks, and
the Mercury Theater broadcasts included adaptations of Dracula, a Tale
of two Cities around the world in eighty days, so
(06:26):
famous works. And the broadcasts were done in first person narrative,
and they incorporated things like stream of consciousness, diaries and letters,
and they also used sound effects and music in an
innovative way. Despite all that innovation, though, the ratings weren't
all that great at first. But the show scheduled for
October thirtieth ninety eight, the Halloween show War of the
(06:47):
World was really about to change the fate of this
radio company entirely so. According to many sources, including Richard
Cavendish in History Today, Howard Kotch, who was the primary
or on the script of of this adaptation of War
of the World's privately thought that H. G. Wells book,
which was published back in was pretty dated and pretty
(07:09):
boring actually, and orson Welles and Houseman and Cotch all
wanted to figure out how to spice it up a
little bit, make it compelling for the for the radio
format especially. Yeah, it's hard to think of a classic
work like War the World's needing any work, but apparently
it did in this instance, and so Cotch worked on
a script for this and he banged it out in
(07:30):
six days. Now we're going to stop for a second
here and tell you a little bit about the story
in case you don't know War of the Worlds, and
you can see then the differences between the script change
the original story. Right, So the original story took place
in England, but Cootch changed the setting to grow Over Mills,
which is a village in central New Jersey. And this
the idea behind this was to bring the spookiness of
(07:52):
the Martian invasion closer to home for the American listening audience.
He also presented H. G. Wells story as a series
of increasingly alarmed me news bulletins that start by reporting
a meteorite landing in New Jersey. Now, the news bulletins
is kind of like the key to the whole thing
of definitely why this hoax worked. And a lot of
people think that it was Orson's idea. We're not sure
(08:14):
about that, but just putting that out there. The meteorite
turns out to be this extraterrestrial capsule that opens up
to reveal terrifying creatures that burned by standards to death
with heat rays. Yeah, and then there's another twist that
the capsule later reveals a giant machine that starts reaking
havoc in New Jersey and New York. And as the
news bulletins report more and more Martian landings all over
(08:36):
the country, the situation quickly escalates into total war. Still though,
when the script was finished, I mean, it sounds like
a pretty pretty cool story, and we know the history
of it now, But when the script was done, everyone
involved thought it was still pretty silly and dull. Yeah.
According to an article by James Narramore in the journal Humanities,
(08:57):
Orson almost withdrew the project to the last minute in
favor of an adaptation of Laurena doone. But they went
on a scheduled at eight pm on October thirty, and
by eight thirty members of the Mercury Theater on the
air were surprised to find out that some people actually
thought the story was real. So let's look back now
and try to understand the panic that came from this
(09:18):
radio drama. So, looking back on some of the more
extreme reactions to the broadcast, that we're going to talk
about later. Most sources describe it as a quote panic
or a mass hysteria. So what really happened here, Well,
people basically started acting really irrationally. They were trying to
flee to their cars. They were going to warn neighbors
(09:40):
and people in churches that the world was ending. So
traffic was jammed and communication systems were jammed because so
many people were trying to call the police and the
radio stations to find out what, what should we do?
Where should we go? And we have a few examples
here of things that the New York Times reported the
next day, just to kind of give you a play
by play of things that a really happened, or at
(10:00):
least were reported to have happened. For one thing, at
least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock
and hysteria. Yeah, And in Newark, a single block at
Head and Terriff and Hawthorne Avenue, more than twenty families
rushed out of their homes with wet handkerchiefs and towels
over their faces to flee from what they thought was
a gas raid. And some of them even began moving
(10:23):
household furniture. I don't know if they were trying to
save it, or blockade their houses or just do something.
And just to clarify, people were worried about a gas
raid because of the giant machine Sarah mentioned before was
supposed to be spring poison gas in the story on
the radio, so they thought that they had to protect themselves.
The switchboard of the New York Times was overwhelmed by
(10:44):
about eight hundred and seventy five calls. A man who
called from Dayton, Ohio asked, quote, what time will it
be the end of the world. With so many of
these calls coming into the newspapers, a lot of papers
found it advisable to follow up on them and see
if there was any truth to reports despite the fantastic content.
So finally the Associated Press decided to send out the
(11:08):
following bulletin at eight forty eight pm. And here here
it goes note to editors queries to newspapers from radio
listeners throughout the United States tonight regarding reported meteor fall
which killed a number of New Jersey it its are
the result of a studio dramatization. The a P and
then the police stations also had to issue statements so
(11:30):
that the officers knew what was going on. So here's
an example of what the New Jersey State Police put out.
They teletyped the following quote note to all receivers. W
ABC broadcast as drama regarding the section being attacked by
residents of Mars period imaginary affair period end quote. It's
(11:51):
it's brief and to the point, and I like the
addition of the imaginary fair at the end. But just
to make sure, just to make sure, guys, this is
not for real. But it's sort of hard to tell
exactly how many people were part of this so called
mass panic. The New York Times made reference to thousands
of people, and a lot of sources make a reference
(12:12):
to the generic millions. And you'll see estimates that about
half of the six million people who heard the broadcast
believed it was true, and about half of those people
actually panicked. So that leaves us with approximately one point
two million people. But not everyone thinks the numbers were
really that high. That's true. Some experts believe that these
(12:33):
inflated numbers are the result of just a lot of hype.
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Sucklau wrote that
quote the panic was neither widespread nor as serious as
many have believed at the time or since. I mean,
nobody died, nobody was killed or committed suicide, so there
weren't those results from it. But he says that our
(12:54):
perception could be the result of a couple of things.
For one thing, it could be just the media loving
and really just making a big deal out of the story.
You know, it was a story that a lot of
people wanted to read and they put it out there.
Another possibility is that it was just inaccurate reporting on
the part of survey respondence. A lot of people were
surveyed after the fact to kind of study the situation
and find out what really happened. So what suckle I
(13:16):
was saying here is that people after the fact may
have claimed that they heard the broadcast when they actually didn't.
They might have just seen their neighbor panicking and and
done the same, yeah, or heard the story and decided
to pass it along. Um, maybe they just wanted to
feel part of it. Well. So, regardless of how many
people did panic, the fact remains that a lot of
(13:36):
people really did believe that the War of the World's
broadcast was real. But why did they believe that? Why
would people believe this story about a Martian invasion just
because they heard it on the radio. That question is
especially pertinent since the program started out with a very
clear introduction, this is how it this is how it
went orson Wills and the Mercury Theater on Air presents
(13:59):
the Are of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, And
to add to that, a couple of times in the
middle of the broadcast they say you're listening to an
original dramatization by Mercury Theater on the Air of War
of the World's by H. G. Well So it seems
like if you caught one of those parts, it would
be pretty clear that it was it was fiction. But
(14:20):
there are a few theories as to why people thought
that this was real. The first theory posits that people
just came into the program too late and didn't hear
that opening line. So, as we mentioned, ratings for the
Mercury Theater on the Air weren't that great at the time.
In their time slot, they had to compete with the
more popular Chase and Sandborn Hour on NBC. So after
(14:41):
that opening line of this broadcast, the broadcast shifts to
a weather report that transitions into a music program uh
performance of Raymond Rocquello and his orchestra. So you're listening
to the seemingly normal radio program for a good couple
of minutes before the first news interruption about gas eruptions
on Mars actually occur hers. So the theory is that
(15:01):
this news interruption was timed, perhaps purposely timed perfectly to
the commercial break of the Chase and Sandborn Hour. So
people would have been flipping around during the commercial break
as we often do easy Latin music listening, and decided
to stick around for a minute exactly um and so
when they were switching channels, when they switched to CBS,
(15:22):
they would have just heard this good evening later than
gentlemen from the Meridian Room in the Park claus A
Hotel in New York. Today we bring you the music
of Raymond Ricchello and the Doctors, though the Dutch of
the finish Raymond Rocquello lead with low company, Ladies and gentlemen,
(15:56):
we interrupted our program with dance music to bring you
a special bullet from the intercontinent of a radio on you.
At twenty minutes before a Central time, Professor Farrell at
the Mount Gettings Observatory Chicago, Illinois reports observing several explosions
of incandescent gas occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars.
The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving
(16:16):
towards the Earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pearson of the
Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation and describes the phenomenon
as quote like a jet of blue flame shots m
a gun unquote. We now return you to the music
of Ramon Roquelo playing for you in the Meridean room
of the Park Claza Hotel situated in downtown New York,
(16:45):
so you can see there where where it would have
sounded just like a normal interruption. It does sound like
a real interruption. And the fact that the Mercury Theater
on the air was still unsponsored at that point really
helped because there weren't any commercials breaking in to remind
people that day we're actually just watching a show. Also,
there are a few other effects that took place during
the show that really added to the reality of all
(17:08):
of it. The interviews with real sounding experts like Professor Pearson,
a noted astronomer Lloyd Gray, and natural history museum expert
and also a man on the street. You know, things
that real radio news programs were doing at the time.
On the interviews, they sounded really kind of authentic. I thought,
at least listening to this broadcast with the interviewer asking
(17:31):
people to speak up and things like that, interrupting each other,
it sounds very natural. It doesn't sound like something that
would have been rehearsed and performed. It's not totally perfect,
I guess, and the sound effects of background noise kind
of add to that authenticity. So here's an example of
an interview that would illustrate this point. Would you mind
(17:52):
very much side place back, here's Mr Willmots, owner of
the bond Here you may have some interesting fact to listen, Willment,
would you please tell the radio audience as much as
you remember this rather unusual visitor that dropped in your
back yard a step posted, please, ladies and gentlemen. This
is Mr Willman. I was assisting with the radios and
(18:13):
louder placements starting a louder please post. Yes, I was
listening to the radio and kind of drowsing. A professor
fellow was talking about Mars, so I was half dozen
and half. Yes, yes, this woman, and then what happened? Well,
as I was saying, I was listening to the radio
kind of halfway, yes, this willen, and then you saw something?
(18:34):
Not first off, I heard something? And what did you hear? Hissing?
Sound like this kind of like a fourth of July
rocket asked? Then what? I turned my head out the
window and would have scorn. I was asleep and dreaming. Yes,
I've seen a kind of greenish streak, and then zingo,
something smacked the ground, knocked me clear out of my chair. Well,
(18:55):
where are you frightened? Mr Willman? Well, I quite sure,
I reckon I was kind of role Thank you, mis Willman.
Thank you very much. Best funding. Ladies and gentlemen. You've
just heard Mr Wilmot's owner of the farm where this
thing has fallen. That type of on the spot coverage
was also familiar to people, so the broadcast really took
advantage of that fact. Since the Hindenberg explosion in nine seven,
(19:20):
people were used to the on the spot, guy on
the street kind of news coverage, and some even say
that orson Wells had the actors listened to those older
broadcasts so they knew exactly what they were trying to
replicate kind of studied them. And finally, another theory as
to why people would have believed this hoax is that
(19:40):
listeners were just vulnerable at this time because of what
was going on in the world. And I mean, we
have kind of talked about and going especially through the
New York Times stuff, and it's kind of amusing to
see in some cases, at least the way people reacted
or the way the police department reacted. But some of
the issues that were going on, we're pretty serious. I mean,
for one thing, a lot of people point to anxiety
(20:00):
that may have been latent in the population at this
time after years of economic depression. Also, the Second World
War was looming in Europe, so that had people on edge.
And in fact, the show aired just after the Munich crisis,
which was a war scare, which may have caused some
people to think that the invasion wasn't actually extraterrestrial it
was just a human war, which actually is scary enough.
(20:22):
It is scary. And regardless of exactly why people believed
this radio drama, whether they thought it was an enemy
invasion or an alien invasion, they did believe it and
it led to some not so great publicity for CBS consequently,
and initially for Orson Welles too, so he had given
the final word and the broadcast basically saying that it
was all just a story and CBS's version of a
(20:45):
good Halloween joke essentially, but a lot of people were
angry when they realized it was fiction. That FCC issued
a statement calling the program quote regrettable. Lawsuits were drawn up.
Even H. G. Wells threatened to sue for the misuse
the quote misuse of his novel, and CBS had to
come out and publicly apologize and promised not to create
(21:07):
any quote simulated news broadcast that could cause harm. So
there was a lot of backtracking immediately after after the
show came out. There was an Orson Wells even retreated
from public view for a little while. But actually, once
the death settled, it became very clear that this broadcast
really put him on the map at the young age
of twenty three. The Mercury Theater on the air continued
(21:27):
for a while and even got the sponsorship of the
Campbell Soup Company, So they went from me in the small,
unsponsored show to really having a new name family fund
kind of. Yeah, Well, they got moved to a better
time slot and they were renamed the Campbell Playhouse, so
they had a little backing behind them. Orson Wells also
got a contract with R. Chaos Studios and moved to
Hollywood to write, produce, direct, and act in Citizen Kane.
(21:50):
And of course he made a lot of other films too,
so he was really prolific in that respect. Hard Cotch
also went into film and had a very successful career.
He received an awesome ger in nineteen forty four for
the Casablanca screenplay, and even H. G. Wells finally changed
his tune. The controversy spurred renewed interest in his novel.
(22:11):
I mean, it's one of those any publicity is good
publicity kind of cases, I think, and he came to
realize that. Yeah. So in retrospect it seems like a
genius move because of the publicity it did get for
all these people, and many saw it as such at
the time. I read one take on it that said,
if you weren't fooled by it, you probably thought this
(22:31):
whole thing was genius, especially if you saw your neighbor
running out right, and if you were if you were
the neighbor running out, if you were fooled by it,
then you were probably one of the ones who were outraged.
I thought it was really, really a bad thing to do,
and I think that's probably true of most hoaxes. Yeah,
if you're in on it, it's cool. If not, if
your feelings are hurt, your feelings may be hurt and
you may feel a little bit silly about it. But
(22:54):
I don't know what's a It's an interesting question. Since
we weren't around, then, do you think that you would
have for those hopes? Sarah? Well, hopefully I would have
been a careful listener and I would maybe pick up
on some of the clues that it wasn't real. Um,
if you would have been there exactly at eight pm
to hear the intro, yeah, i'd have my clocks that
I'd be like one of the old fashioned pictures where
(23:16):
the family is sitting in front of the radio waiting
for the show to be on. Um. I don't know, though,
I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I would have done.
What about yourself, Yeah, I'm not sure either. I would
like to think that I wouldn't be fooled, but you'd
be out there with a towel over your head. Maybe
unless I wouldn't be out there, but i'd definitely be
checking things out. I might make a phone call. I
(23:37):
can't be sure. It's interesting to wonder about, and I
am interested to know what our listeners think is a
good one. Um, how would you have reacted if you
heard the War of the World's Radio We may have
to put that one out there, but I think before
we can find that out before we sign off today. Well,
it's worth mentioning that there have been some other more
(23:58):
recent War of the World's panics, including one in nineteen
forty nine involving a broadcast that took place on Radio
Quito in Ecuador. But this one was actually deadly. Thousands
of people rioted in the streets. Some people thought that
monsters were actually invading the country, and some people thought
that it might actually be neighboring Peru invading. So some
similar things going on at the time as far as
(24:19):
what people thought. UM. After discovering that it was all
a hoax, though, mobs attacked and torched the radio station,
killing twenty people, and since then there's been other similar
hoaxes around the world, one in Buffalo, New York in
nineteen sixty eight, one in Providence, Rhode Island in nineteen
seventy four, and one in northern Portugal in nineteen eighty eight.
(24:40):
So these things still happened. I noticed though there hasn't
been one of these radio hoaxes since the Internet became
pretty common. And I wonder now if it would just
be put down pretty pretty quickly, you know, if the
flames would be put out before it got to the
point of people rioting. But I don't know it could
It could accelerate things though, if you think about it,
(25:01):
It's true. I would encourage people to listen to the broadcast.
I listened to the whole thing, and I think Sarah
did too, and um I listened to a couple of times, actually,
and I heard different things both times. It was interesting
to sit there and imagine what it would be like to,
uh have that as your form of entertainment. Yeah, either
either enjoying it as fictional entertainment, knowing it was such,
(25:22):
or trying to imagine what the people who thought it
was a real news report were actually thinking. And you
may recognize little bits and pieces of it here. It's
been sampled in popular culture. For example, if you if
there are any fans of the band pin Back out there.
They sampled parts of this for their song Boo on
one of their albums, so that's just like a plug
for one of my favorite bands there. Yeah, if you
(25:44):
know of any other places in popular culture that this
has been sampled, please write to us at History Podcast
at how staff works dot com. I think that's all
we have today though, on the War of the World's broadcast,
and now we're going to move on to exter mail.
So some of you may have heard our recent podcast
(26:06):
proposal from Jim to Julie on our Victoria and Albert episode,
and we heard from both of them recently. They are
now engaged, So podcast proposal success. We were pretty excited
at our cubes when we got that email or we Yeah,
we were jumping up and down and they sent us.
We put this on Facebook up a great save the
(26:27):
date that's superhero themed. So congratulations to Jim and Julie.
But are we really invited. We don't know, I know,
we don't know, if we don't know, if it's just
sharing the Well, we sent the save the date to
everybody on our Facebook page now though, so I don't
think they probably don't want thousands of people at their weddings.
On that note, we thought we would share this postcard
(26:49):
that we received from David from the Alhambra. Um. Katie
and I did an episode on it back in the fall,
so here's what he wrote. Hi to Blina and Sarah.
After hearing your show, I was inspired to take the
thirty hour flight to visit the Alhambra from Australia. The
place really is too beautiful for words. I sat in
the shadow of the Alcazaba having a Spanish tortilla sandwich,
(27:13):
listening to your Rick on Quista podcast, just to make
sure I didn't miss the thing. I thought life could
not get better. Podcast in headphones, tortilla in hand, and
gorgeous gardens as far as you can see. Until it did.
My partner and I decided to get married then and
there a series of events your podcasts began audio. So
(27:35):
today we're just like the romantic podcast streak going it
seems we do. We we love those stories and we
will admit that it's girly and apologize to anyone who
was offended by our love of love. We just did
a podcast on Like Possible Invading Aliens, so we think
it balances out. It's the best of both worlds, the
War of the World's best of both worlds excellent, So
(27:58):
congratulation David and your partner, and congratulations again to Jim
and Julie. You guys look very happy together. If you
want to email us, that doesn't have to be a
grand dromantic story or an alien story. Yeah, just just whatever.
Any suggestions you have on radio dramas, orson welles old Hollywood,
(28:18):
I know lots of you have all sorts of Hollywood suggestions,
go ahead and send them to us. That history podcast
at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter
at Miston History, and we're on Facebook, as I already mentioned.
And if you would like to learn a little bit
more about the possibility of life on Mars, which is
something sort of indirectly explored in the topic we talked
(28:40):
about tonight, we have an article by our own Sarah
Dowity on our website called is there really water on Mars?
And you can look it up by entering that topic
into our the search bar on our homepage, which is
at www dot how stuff works dot com. Three sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
(29:03):
Join how stup works staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Step Works
iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes.
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