Double Take

A group of extraterrestrial investigators recovers a municipal time capsule containing a recorded July Fourth radio documentary intended to present an idealized portrait of mid-twentieth-century humanity. When they play the magnetic tape, the producers' polished broadcast is inaudible to them; instead their instruments register the mental impulses of the participants, revealing private emotions, rivalries, lusts, guilt, and honest self-scrutiny. Basing their history on those thought-patterns, the visitors judge the species harshly yet paradoxically note a capacity for self-honesty, arriving at a conclusion shaped more by unintended internal signals than by the public image the creators had deliberately prepared.