Halloween 1938: Orson Welles takes to the CBS airwaves and supposedly sends millions of Americans fleeing into the streets, convinced Martians have landed in New Jersey. It is the most famous radio broadcast of all time. There is just one problem with the story you were taught in school.

This episode deconstructs the legend of the War of the Worlds panic, revealing how a brilliant audio experiment became a textbook case of fake news manufactured by a threatened industry. We examine how the broadcast was engineered to feel real, why the mass hysteria was almost entirely invented, and how the same format later turned deadly in Ecuador.

• How the Munich crisis and constant breaking-news bulletins primed an anxious 1938 audience for simulated news flashes
• The audio engineering tricks, from studying the Hindenburg recording to u ...