Setting the Scene
1938 in the United States was a tense moment. It was nearing the end of the Great Depression and it was also immediately before the start of World War II (which began in 1939). Franklin D. Roosevelt was president and he famously used the radio in a way that helped win his elections as well as communicate with the country through what he called “Fireside Chats.”
…it was Franklin Roosevelt who dominated the airwaves that year as he had reversed the mood of a nation from inertia and despair to confident action. In his fireside chats over the radio, he seemed to be talking to each of us personally and we responded. Hearing his voice, we sensed a gallant, generous-spirited human being, not a party hack or a synthetic product packaged by Madison Avenue. For that brief decade we tasted democracy and the taste was good. The country recovered its health, materially and spiritually. Then came the war and other policies, often masking as his, and the taste turned bitter.
—The Panic Broadcast, Howard Koch (1970), page 157
I think it’s really important to remember that just because the radio is largely out of fashion today, it was pretty new technology then and quite popular. It’s not fair to discount it just because we don’t have a great frame of reference for the radio in our lives currently. But there was a moment in my own life when the radio did to me exactly what it did to people hearing the CBS broadcast in October 1938.
My mom was driving our pick-up truck and we pulled into a driveway, honked the horn and waited for the kids at the house to run out the door for carpool. The radio was on in the truck—we often listened to music through a local station on our way to school. Suddenly, instead of music or advertisements, I heard a voice that drew my attention:
“A plane has crashed into the World Trade Centers in New York City.”
“Is this a joke?” I asked my mom immediately. She was confused and didn’t answer.
It wasn’t a joke, it was the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Maybe you had a similar experience that day or at other times when some calamity has occurred. The interruptions to the expected programming (no matter the venue—TV, radio, etc.) call immediate attention and make us lean in.
Only a month had passed since the Munich Crisis, and listeners were well accustomed to hearing announcers (often from the International News Service) break into programs with the latest flashes and news bulletins.
—Manipulating the Ether: The Power of Broadcast Radio in Thirties America, Robert J Brown, (1998), pages 207-208
…Welles would so brilliantly manipulate the properties and conventions of broadcasting that over one million listeners would believe the United States was actually under attack from marauding armies of Martians. By exploiting the public’s deference to voices of authority, and by playing on their endemic fears of war and disaster, their faith in the familiar, and their views of science, Welles gave the country the greatest Halloween scare it had ever experienced.
—Manipulating the Ether, Brown, page 205
It’s Not About the Aliens
You may have heard about this broadcast before, maybe in a funny side-story in a history class. I have noticed how quick we are to jump to conclusions about how people were “back then,” and dismiss this experience with a demeaning chuckle. That’s certainly how I viewed it until I started researching this more in-depth. This story is helping me realize a deeply embedded fallacy in my logic—a feeling of superiority over those who have come before.
I think technology may be partially responsible for this. At least in my experience, my mastery over electronic trinkets made me feel like I was really smart—exceptionally smart—as though someone fifty or one hundred years ago couldn’t possibly be this smart. They would look at me like a wizard or a god! But did they feel the same way with their technology having lifted them above their predecessors? Did they scoff at telegrams or the Pony Express, thinking of the previous century as a primitive, simple time?
We are not so smart and mighty now with our fancy devices and technological know-how. We are not so different from those who lived in 1938. We are subject to the exact same vulnerabilities when fear and confusion enter. It is with humble empathy that we continue the story.
To many Americans, it seemed their world was disintegrating as they listened. The Northeast had been overrun; it was only a matter of time before the rest of the country met a similar fate. Anyone who is still skeptical was sure to be convinced by the next voice he heard: “We take you now to Washington for a special broadcast on the national emergency…the secretary of the interior.” With this introduction, a man sounding distinctly like President Roosevelt went on the air to address the nation….although introduced as the “secretary of the interior,” there was little doubt in many minds that this was the president of the United States, once again using the airwaves to address the American public during a time of crisis…The voice employed the inspiring language that listeners had heard so often in numerous fireside chats. But this time the voice did not uplift. It was evident that the president, in typically bureaucratic fashion, was trying to underestimate American losses. His admission that the federal government was gravely concerned by the Martian menace, and his invoking the name of God to stave off disaster, struck listeners as particularly troubling. Here Welles was again turning the tables on the American public, for another common radio vehicle that had previously been used to quell fear was now employed to enhance it. After the speech of the “secretary,” Americans had every reason to believe that the end of the world was at hand.
—Manipulating the Ether, Brown, page 214.
This is such an important point of the story. It’s not a story about “those silly people” who were so gullible that they believed in aliens. It’s a story about systems. We can be (and have been) trained to take shortcuts when it comes to things like authority. An average person transforms into someone of authority just by putting on a uniform—it doesn’t even matter what kind! I felt it when I put on my marching band attire, or my simple polo that read “Parking Enforcement Officer” in college.
We have built systems that appear authoritative to us, as if we were seeing someone in uniform, but it can be as subtle as word choice, a title, or a content structure (“we interrupt this program…). Of course reasonable, smart people were scared out of their skins. It didn’t matter that it was “aliens” that were invading. This was not only mimicking authority structures that they were used to, it was also the spark landing in exceptionally dry ground—igniting the deep fears and anxieties held by the public at the time.
The radio was not the first nor is it the last technology to employ these systems of authority, and that means that this is an older issue. This was a wake up call to the U.S. Take this insight from the Daily News, New York, as printed in The Panic Broadcast on page 17. From the paper dated Tuesday, November 1, 1938 (author of the article not shown):
Of course it should never happen again. But we don’t agree with those who are arguing that the Sunday night scare shows a need for strict government censorship of radio programs.
On the contrary, we think it is evidence of how dangerous political control of radio might become. If so many people could be misled unintentionally, when the purpose was merely to entertain, what could designing politicians not do through control of broadcasting stations.
The dictators in Europe use radio to make their people believe falsehoods. We want nothing like that here. Better have American radio remain free to make occasional blunders than start on a course that might, in time, deprive it of freedom to broadcast uncensored truth.
Cyborg
Among the things that can be learned from this event is a warning that rings especially clear to me. Technology has always been vulnerable to exploitation, and that means that we are vulnerable to exploitation for our use and dependence on technology. It is a double-edged blade, because as much as technology can benefit us, it can equally harm us.
As I read Howard Koch’s account of the ordeal in his book, The Panic Broadcast, I found myself disoriented. Koch was making statements that felt timely and applicable to our exact moment in 2025—yet his book was written in 1970 about the lessons he learned from his contributions to the broadcast in 1938.
During World War I Clemenceau made the often quoted remark that war was too serious a business to be left to the generals. Similarly today, politics has become far too serious a matter to be left to the politician. Through mass media he has access to the minds of millions of people; with the assistance of public relations experts he can color facts and recreate history to suit himself. When logic is clearly against a policy he is trying to sell, he can fall back on an emotional appeal to loyalty and patriotism.
—The Panic Broadcast, pages 158-160
That’s when I realized something very important: We’ve been here before.
A lawyer I know said that everyone likes to say new things like AI are “unprecedented,” but that in reality, there is nothing that is truly without precedent. I’m inclined to agree, despite using that phrase frequently, especially with AI in mind. As I put this observation together with the 1938 broadcast, it dawned on me that this is where we make the mistake. We’ve been here before: AI can manipulate at a massive scale, just like the radio could (and did) 87 years ago. Normally, I would be comforted by the idea that we’re still ultimately in the same situation because that means we got through it then, therefore we can probably make it through now. But the dark side opposite of that view is that it means we never really solved the problem.
We’re still struggling to develop safeguards and means of discerning truth. We still struggle to protect the freedom of speech. We still struggle to govern ourselves in a way that promotes the flourishing of all people, not just a select few. Howard Koch offers this insight:
We can have thrust upon us a false picture of reality as distorting as the trick mirrors in a Coney Island funhouse. In the role of politics, we are especially vulnerable. The politician can bend the airwaves to create an image of himself and of the world that suits his purposes. Nor can we question him or answer back. His is the privileged voice and we its captured audience.
—The Panic Broadcast, page 158
Unfortunately when dealing with systemic issues, we can’t rely solely on individual responsibility, but it is still important to work on ourselves. Since that’s all I can offer here right now, my personal takeaways from this story are:
1. The importance of education. Education, especially higher education helps us discover frameworks for evaluating information and encountering unknowns or difficult and challenging situations. I hope to be able to support your efforts in continuing education through this newsletter (though I certainly make mistakes).
2. The importance of skepticism in our consumption of media. Gathering multiple sources is no longer sufficient, we must also be able to listen to alternative view points. Having a single source for all of your information is exceptionally dangerous, and only listening to those who validate your current opinions or beliefs is the most vulnerable position we can find ourselves in.
Let’s be careful out there. Let’s choose to empathize before we explain. Let’s take an account of our habits, our media, and our willingness to listen carefully.
By clever manipulation, people can be made to swallow poison—literally and figuratively—if administered in small doses, carefully timed, and with the label of an accepted authority.
—The Panic Broadcast, page 160
