UFO's

Listen Up

• Steven Spielberg's 2005 film, The War of the Worlds is one of many reworkings of H. G. Wells' classic novel from 1898. A an earlier film version from 1953 appeared during a wave of intense interest in sci-fi movies in America – a topic discussed in this NPR report (7:32).

• The modern interest in UFO’s is often traced back to June 24, 1947, and a “creditable” report by a Washington state businessman Kenneth Arnold about spying a host of bright objects in the night sky. This historical radio report (27:57) from CBS news and its famed correspondent, Edward R. Murrow, dates from 1950, that is, from the early days of the Cold War and America’s concern with the Soviet Union, international communism, and atomic bombs.
• In 1938, actor Orson Welles struck fear into much of the country when he broadcast this radio play version of The War of the World (51:24).

Write Now

• What are your thoughts on fear as a universal part of the human condition, and especially the differences between individual fear (when one person is afraid) and group fear (when one’s social group as a whole feels threatened)?
• What strikes you as old-fashioned about the 1950 CBS radio broadcast; what, if anything, seems more contemporary?

Read On

• More from Wikipedia.com on UFO’s and the Orson Welles 1939 radio broadcast
• You can read Welles’s radio script.