One question to ask. "The papers wrote about it the very next day. Why might they still tell it bigger than it was?" A good answer says: they were quick, but they had a reason to make radio look bad.

One thing to do at the table. Ask the oldest person you can about a big night they remember on the radio or TV. Then ask what the papers said the next day. Were they the same size of story?

Make a two-column page. On the left, in ink: what people at your table actually saw or heard. On the right, in pencil: what they heard about it afterwards.

The grown-up layer. After three books of "how long afterwards?", Danya over-trusts the quickest witness. Weigh adds a second question: what did the teller gain? In 1938 radio was taking newspapers' advertising money, and the papers ran thousands of panic stories. That night a ratings survey found about 2 per cent of homes listening. Cantril's 1940 estimate of 1.2 million frightened has been criticised as far too high (Pooley and Socolow, 2013). Some people really were frightened; "the whole country" is the stretch. The closing line, the one rule Danya leaves in pencil, matters for the last book.