Author and sociologist Dr. Robert Bartholomew, joined George to discuss his latest book Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias. "To me the lesson is the power of suggestion in the human mind to fool itself," Bartholomew said of the notorious 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds in which many people who listened actually saw or heard evidence of a Martian attack apart from the radio show. Programs modeled after the '38 radio broadcast in such locations as Chile, Ecuador and Buffalo, New York also drummed up similar hysteria Bartholomew pointed out.
He believes the powers of "mass suggestion" were evidenced after the publicity of Kenneth Arnold's 1947 UFO sighting. Bartholomew recounted that Arnold had told a newspaper that the craft he saw were wing-shaped but moved like saucers. Soon after the inaccurate (to Arnold's case) phrase "flying saucers" was coined and numerous sightings of saucer rather than wing-shaped objects were being reported.
Bartholomew stressed the importance of examining the context that strange events occur in, in looking for an explanation. For instance, in the unusual case of "meowing" nuns in France in the Middle Ages, he said that in that era, cats were commonly considered "familiars" of the Devil, and that the meowing may have been a culturally acceptable way for a nun to express that she was possessed. Bartholomew also spoke about the recent terror threat, and predicted that "another anthrax-like scare is going to shake the foundations of this country," though it will likely be more of a psychological than physical threat.