Life — June 5, 1931 — page 6: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Alice in Radioland" This is a parody of Lewis Carroll's *Alice in Wonderland*, reimagined for the radio age. The illustration shows Alice at a tea party with the March Hare and the Dormouse (characters from the original story), but now they're discussing radio broadcasts. The satire mocks both radio technology and abstract philosophical debates. The characters engage in circular logic about whether unheard radio waves constitute "music" or "sound"—a jest at radio's invisible nature and listeners' credulity about programming they cannot verify. The joke targets early radio enthusiasm: audiences accepted radio content on faith, unable to verify what they heard. Alice's pragmatic objections to nonsensical arguments mirror readers' potential skepticism about this new medium's claims. This reflects 1920s-30s cultural anxieties about mass media's intangible yet persuasive power.