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Outlook: I set up a radio station for aliens

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John Shepherd

28/10/2020 GMT

I set up a radio station for aliens

BBC World Service - Outlook, I set up a radio station for aliens

Electronics whizz John Shepherd spent years trying to contact alien life, with music

John Shepherd set up a radio transmitter in his grandparents' home in the US, broadcasting reggae, afrobeat and jazz to alien life forms.

John Shepherd is a self-taught electronics whizz. From a young age he was fascinated by science and electricity. He'd spend his days collecting discarded radio and tv sets and re-fashioning them into new devices. He used his skills for an unusual pursuit - he wanted to reach out to potential extra-terrestrial life. This was the 60s, the space race was in full swing and there was a collective fascination with alien life and UFOs. But how do you start a conversation with an alien? Initially he transmitted binary tones in an attempt to make contact. But he later settled on a different way to communicate, he started broadcasting reggae, afrobeat, jazz, and more, the ‘universal language’ of music. There's a Netflix documentary about John's story called John Was Trying to Contact Aliens.

Awa Farah is a British-Somali filmmaker behind Somalinimo – a film about Somali women at Cambridge University. Inspired by her mother’s journey from Somalia to Europe, she wanted to change the fact that growing up, she never saw stories about other black Muslim women.

Obi Emenlonye is a Nigerian filmmaker who normally works on buzzing movie sets. But when the Coronavirus lockdown shut down his industry, he decided to make his latest work remotely – directed entirely from his sofa.

Any comments please email us on outlook@bbc.com

Picture: John Shepherd 
Credit: Courtesy of John Shepherd

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