The Euphio Question a Kurt Vonnegut short story
Love pluribus, but i'm reading kurt vonnegut again and came across this short story. it's very close minus a couple tweaks. not complaining, just throwing out something you may enjoy reading
le plot:
Six months earlier, the sociologist along with Dr. Fred Bockman, a physics professor and radio astronomer, appeared on a program for Lew Harrison, who runs the town's only radio station. During the program, Dr. Bockman plays over the air a strange signal detected in a part of space with no heavenly bodies. While meant to only play for five second, it's left running for five minutes, only stopping when an engineer's sleeve accidentally caught on a switch. All the participants in the broadcast booth feel an unexplained sense of euphoria. Returning home, the sociologist finds both his wife Susan, who was listening to the broadcast, and his son Eddie, who left in the middle of a baseball game with all the other players, laying in the house in a listless daze. Going to Dr. Bockman's, they find that the whole town was affected for those five minutes, whether listening to the radio or not. Bockman theorizes that this is because the transmitter itself amplified and rebroadcast the waves, which the sociologist dubbed "Bockman's Euphoria."
Posted Aug 12, 2026, 3:16 AM UTC