Tuning in to 1938 now, eighty-two years to the hour after “War of the Worlds”... https://twitter.com/abradschwartz/status/1322308771641778177

Listening to “Carl Phillips” (Frank Readick) interview “Prof. Pierson” (Orson Welles) at the @Princeton Observatory in “War of the Worlds.”

Sadly, the actual observatory at Princeton was demolished earlier this year, as @Wellesnetcom reported: https://www.wellesnet.com/princeton-observatory-welles/

Now the Martians have opened fire in Grover’s Mill. We’ve lost contact with the reporter on the scene...

(This, we know from letters sent to Orson Welles, was the part of “War of the Worlds” most likely to convince listeners the broadcast was real news: )

It gets me every time, too – largely because of actor Frank Readick, who based his performance on Herbert Morrison’s report of the Hindenburg disaster.

Now Prof. Pierson (Orson Welles) is explaining the workings of the Martian “heat-ray.”

No word on whether it’s the same device the Trump administration contemplated using on protestors. #WaroftheWorlds https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/trump-admin-considered-using-heat-ray-on-protestors-report.html

Now the “Secretary of the Interior” (Kenny Delmar, doing his best impression of FDR) is explaining how the federal government is working “to protect the lives...of its people.”

If only our federal government would do the same. #WaroftheWorlds

“I come from...many places. A long time ago from Princeton.”

Me too, Professor Pierson. Me too. #WaroftheWorlds

“They got themselves in solid; they wrecked the greatest country in the world.”

“Well, there won’t be any more concerts for a million years or so, and no nice little dinners at restaurants.”

These lines from “War of the Worlds” hit a lot harder in the Trump/COVID era...

Prof. Pierson arrives to find New York empty.

Soon, he discovers bacteria have saved the world.

#WaroftheWorlds

If “War of the Worlds” has a moral, it’s that humans don’t know as much as we like to think we do.

Science—whether coming from outer space, or something as humble as a microscopic organism—can reshape our collective future, and we ignore it at our own peril.