American slaves accepted Christian mythology as literally true, in part because it was printed in a book. Coming to them with all the freshness & immediacy any new medium always commands, the Bible enjoyed total acceptance.

Many New Guineans accept every radio program verbatim, no matter how mysterious, irrelevant, or conflicting. This is especially true of radio propaganda. Called by Americans "psychological broadcasts," some political programs are more psycho than logical - designed to reassure broadcasters, not convert listeners. Any political system that strives for rigid internal consistency runs the risk of madness; Voice of America & Peking Radio sometimes cross that threshold. Both broadcast in English - and in New Guinea, English is the prestige language. Radio lets villagers renew school-learned English. I observed young men in isolated villages listening intently to the wildest fantasies. When I talked to them about what they had just heard, or about things heard earlier, they offered literal interpretations, sometimes woven into the fabric of tribal beliefs, but more frequently unclassified.

Western listeners, long conditioned to hear radio as background sound, have little idea how extraordinary that same radio becomes when treated as foreground sound, that is, listened to intently & believed. As long as information is classified, it is controlled. But when it is unclassified, it is wild, unpredictable.