Where did all the radio DJs go?
YouTube Live apparently.
I was listening to this playlist I created from some old 99x recordings of just random broadcasts that I guess someone recorded live onto a cassette tape. 99x was an Atlanta based FM station that played rock and alternative music in the 90s. You can listen to this playlist here.
As a child I loved listening to the radio. The radio wasn’t just a a source of new music, radio DJs were essentially a one to many one way communication device that only the select few were allowed to do. You could broadcast whatever you wanted but there were rules from the FCC. I was always fascinated by the idea of being a radio DJ both picking what music goes on the radio and also all of the technology of radios. But really I loved the vibe. It seemed cool to be on the radio and I wanted in. I suppose I never got to be on the radio and I guess I’m glad because it seems like the job is far less exciting than it used to on account that everyone started streaming. I have noticed that French people all seem to listen to the radio still. But everyone else is streaming.
And that’s the point I guess. Computers took what used to be a craft, screaming into the void, and gave everyone the ability to do it. Just last night I watched a woman do crafts from Hobby Lobby. Just like chatting with the people in her chatroom while doing the crafts on video like painting picture frames with glitter. It was quite pleasant. Her name is Liah and you can watch her here if you want.
None of this is bad in any way. I think it’s good that we can create micro communities about anything that connect through live streaming or chat servers or whatever. Thinking about radio and live streaming got me thinking about how scientists communicate about things.
It’s an old conversation but scientists who post on social media get more traction in their work. And recently on LinkedIn I was wondering along with others why do we publish papers anymore the way we do? If we are to publish papers perhaps they should go on ArXiv and submitted to journals when you can be bothered to do so. But really we should think about how could all this work have more impact.
Much of science costs a considerable amount of taxpayer money. In his super excellent 2025 Neurips talk, KyungHyun Cho advocated for designing research agendas that maximize impact. This was a small part of what was one of the best talks of Neurips 2025 and I recommend watching it. He said as scientists we have an obligation to create impact as we have been trusted as stewards of science and community resources by taxpayers. In my opinion this means we should also examine how we communicate science.
Getting started I think everyone should be putting all their papers on ArXiv. Open access is more important than peer review as open access often allows community review like in the case of the potential high temperature superconductor a couple years ago. Second I think we should have more micro publications like substacks and other online media that allow for instant reach to readers. Substacks and blogs allow for a larger space of ideas to be discussed and at a higher velocity as ideas change more quickly these days.
I think we should stop submitting so much to journals and organize more conference proceedings as the AI fields have done. There are a lot of problems with conference proceedings but they do give a regular output that allows for peer review and also a central communication portal (the conference itself). This portal used to be the journal periodical. But now People simply don’t sip their coffee in the morning flipping through the Nature or Physical Review they just received in the mail. We must change or become obsolete.
And save the whales.
