Among the most famous breaks in social composure in American history is the 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds, a radio program based on the HG Wells novel of the same name. Despite at least four announcements made during the program that the show was a work of fiction, the audience panicked as they listened to what they firmly believed was a factual broadcast of a real Martian invasion. Almost from the moment the Panic occurred, historians have advanced theories that incorporate this event into our social history. It is often cited as evidence of general American anxiety about the impending World War II. Tensions were high and, according to historian Joanna Bourke, many people listening to the War of the Worlds broadcast thought that the Germans or Japanese had been mistaken for aliens (Bourke, 2006, p.184). However, one of the challenges with using theoretical models to connect past events in an attempt to make sense of them, i.e. history, means that we can only look at them from our current shared reality, not from the shared reality of the people who experienced those events. Ludwick Fleck wrote: Truth... is always, or almost always, completely determined within a style of thought. The same thought can never be said to be true for A and false for B. If A and B belong to the same thought collective, the thought will be true or false for both. But if they belong to different thought collectives, it simply won't be the same thought! It must be unclear or be interpreted differently by one of them. (Erickson, 2005, p. 69) What this all means is that our history serves us and only us. The story is absolutely and definitively not true; it can and often does lose meaning over time. A generation of... middle of the paper... a nebulous combination of events and theories is the stock and the historical cannon is the result. This historical canon can go back and be combined with new theories to create new history, or it can be forgotten. The peer review described by Carr acts as a feedback loop, keeping combinations of theories and events in line, to use Fleck's term, with contemporary thought collectives. History, like any well-functioning system, perpetuates itself. It changes over time, but history, the story we tell ourselves about who we are and how we got here, is as old as humanity itself. Works Cited Bourke, J. (2006). Fear: a cultural history. USA: Shoemaker &Hoard.Carr, EH (1961) What is History?. New York: Vintage Books.Erickson, M. (2005) Science, Culture and Society: Understanding Science in the 21st Century. Malden, MA: Politics.