Alien Radio Station imagines extraterrestrials interpreting Earth’s culture through country, hip-hop, and rock radio—one sees pickup trucks and war, another designer drugs and regional pride, while the third deciphers metaphor-heavy rebellion. The experiment reveals how media segmentation distorts reality, mirroring today’s algorithms that feed users narrow, tailored bubbles. Breaking free from these silos, like tuning into unfamiliar stations, exposes richer human experiences beyond the echo chambers of curated content. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that would have a better name if they weren't all taken.
Working solo today, no guest.
Just want to remind everyone that if anyone has anything they'd like to voice a disagreement with regarding anything I say on this podcast, you can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
If you agree with something I say and you just want to tell me how good a job I'm doing, then that's fine as well, but I don't take compliments very well and the email might get no response.
You were warned.
Today I want to talk about stories.
Humans have told stories since the beginning of time.
Stories are created based on the experiences of the people who created them, but those stories also work to affect the experiences of those who hear them.
In the age-old question of whether art imitates life or life imitates art, stories do both.
Stories affect people in that they might have an emotional impact, but more than that, they are a method of communicating all the small details of life that you don't always get to see firsthand.
Or perhaps you do see firsthand and just like to see that they happen to other people.
Even a story about something that is obviously fictitious and unrealistic will include details that are realistic and relate to the audience in some way.
The story of Picos Bill tells us of him being raised by wolves.
Being raised by wolves is ridiculous and obviously fictitious, but wolves themselves are not fictitious.
Neither is the act of growing from a boy to a man that happens when someone is raised.
If all the stories we ever heard had details in common with each other, we would take this information in and use it to construct a view of the world around us in our minds.
Some of the things that happen in Shakespeare plays seem strange to us because they include habits we don't do anymore.
If you read all of Shakespeare's plays, you might get a picture of what life was like in 16th century England.
Science fiction stories do something slightly different.
Science fiction stories use an unrealistic and usually futuristic scenario to carve away most of the noise in our current day lives and focus on a few single aspects of life.
The things that philosophers call thought experiments do exactly the same thing, but with no plot or characters.
Today I'm going to introduce you to a thought experiment of my own making that I use to examine stories.
I want you to imagine that aliens from another galaxy exist and that they are in orbit above our planet right now on a fact-finding mission.
They have organized themselves into various teams and each team is assigned a subsection of our popular media that can be picked up as a broadcast.
They are meant to consume that media and describe what they think life on planet Earth is like based on what they have read, heard, and viewed.
One team is in charge of listening to radio stations.
One alien has selected a country and western station.
Another alien is listening to an urban hip-hop station.
And yet another is listening to a rock and roll station.
I don't know what music each person listens to, but most of us are exposed to at least these three types of music regularly enough that we might have some idea what kind of report each of these aliens might produce about human life.
The country and western alien will probably say that life on earth has a lot to do with romantic relationships.
There's a lot of getting together and breaking up.
Divorce will be mentioned a lot, but so will family and alcohol.
Probably not a lot about any other drugs.
Maybe something about long drives and pickup trucks and dusty roads and quite a bit about the importance of something called home.
And there might be a few notes in the report about war and soldiers and depression that comes from all of that experience collectively.
The urban hip-hop alien will probably say that life on Earth has a lot to do with sexual coupling.
There's a lot of yearning for it and a whole lot of bragging about having done it.
There will also be a lot of mentions of alcohol, marijuana, ecstasy, maybe even a few other designer drugs.
Flashy cars will be prominent.
They'll probably get the idea that the men of Earth are fairly violent, or at least threatening and mistrustful of many of the other men on Earth.
The women might be less so, but still fairly aggressive in a lot of aspects.
And this alien might very easily get the idea that where exactly a person is from is of great importance.
The rock and roll alien will probably have a picture that looks a lot less focused.
They will say that there are a lot of metaphors that need more context to interpret, but there are, again, a lot of getting together, breaking up, coupling, and failing to connect.
This alien will probably mention war an awful lot more than any of the other two aliens did.
Drugs will feature fairly prominently, but the range of drugs will probably have a much greater variety than either the hip-hop or country music aliens will say.
Of course, many of those drug references will be veiled by metaphor, and that might be a stumbling block for our alien listeners.
None of the reports about human life created by the aliens listening to these three radio stations will be incorrect, but neither will they be complete.
If the aliens decided to listen to only hip-hop music to discover what life was like on Earth and then use that knowledge alone to communicate with us, what would that be like?
This same thought experiment can be done with all manner of media we consume.
Radio stations quickly discovered that people had tastes for certain types of music, so they created individual stations to play only that one type.
One can easily see how the act of surrounding yourself with that one kind of music could give you a skewed view of the overall world.
Many of us now use the internet to find new things to read, watch, and listen to.
Social media algorithms are all essentially doing the same thing.
They are attempting to discover your preferences so as to show you more of the things you prefer.
The better they get at this, the more likely you, as a singular human in this world, are to being like one of those aliens listening to a single radio station and attempting to form a view of the world based on it.
I don't consider what these algorithms are doing to be evil.
I think they're very useful at the thing they are intended to do, and not very useful for the more general parts of our lives.
I think we're better off as people if we look at things that are outside of our regular box.
So today, I'm issuing a challenge to everyone who listens to this podcast.
Expose yourself to things that are outside of your regular comfort zone.
Come to understand what life is like for someone who isn't exactly like yourself.
If you have a belief that you hold tightly to, then take a few moments and listen to some people who don't hold that same belief.
Listen to music that is outside of your regular playlist.
Watch a YouTube video about something that is well outside the recommended for you list.
Watch a Netflix show that doesn't look all that interesting to you, but that has been popular with other people.
And more than anything else, don't be an alien sitting alone, filling your mind with one thin slice of human experience.