Don't listen to this piece expecting to be scared or frightened. What's interesting about this piece is that it becomes very clear in listening to it exactly how much more sophisticated we've become as media consumers; how much more we demand these days from our radio, our television and our movies.

Carl Nelson's abject fear, which the announcer assures us is genuine and caused a sensation across Europe, sounds almost quaint by our standards today. It's hard to believe that listeners would fall for this. But what this shows me is that our own expectations today -- what it would take to illicit any kind of emotional reaction -- are so much higher than they were 50 years ago. I don't necessarily read this as greater "sophistication" or anything like that. More like an emotional callousness that takes more and more shock, more and more drama to break through.