Introducing: Unread

A show about looking for answers in the digital breadcrumbs people leave behind.

(To learn more about Unread, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @unreadpod.)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Chris Stedman. I'm an author, activist, and I
teach in a department of religion and philosophy. I can be,
as he might be able to guess from all of that,
a little too serious sometimes. Back in two thousand nine,
I met a guy named Alex. He definitely wasn't too serious.

(00:21):
I a little on our little pol tour. I will
throw a foul pool Comma Hollows. He was unlike anyone
I'd ever met. I'm looking tornado chasing in East Colorado
and a tornado just hit the ground fifteen miles away.

(00:44):
I'm excited. I'm a big boy. I'm a scientist. I'm
a meteorologist, a true individual, entirely and unapologetically himself. I
think Alex is probably the most anthentic person that anyone
who has ever come across, but definitely me, I could
say that for sure. Alex completely changed my life, as

(01:09):
he did for everyone who ever met him. Everybody was
so conventional and like no one did anything ever to
like shake it up, and then Alex cable off. He
really shook up my whole world. Ten years later, in

(01:31):
Alex shook up our worlds again when he sent out
a handful of scheduled emails saying he had ended his life.
This person who had changed my whole world was suddenly
no longer in it, and I couldn't understand how it
had happened or why. But he left something behind for me,

(01:55):
a small detail near the end of his email that
at first appeared random and trivial, a link to a
private SoundCloud page. When I opened the link, I found
two audiophiles of him talking to someone he had met
in a Britney Spears fan for him almost a decade earlier,
someone who went by the name Alice and who happens

(02:19):
to sound just like Britney Spears. If I ever said
her name, yeah would Alex was obsessed with Brittany Wing.
I know you kind of clue what to do with

(02:42):
But he wasn't just a fan. She was everything to him.
Her life choices were like not only hilarious and like
entertaining to him, but also so relatable and like. I
think that he felt like he knew her and that
they were friends or something. You know. At first, the
idea that they actually might have been friends seemed too

(03:06):
unreal to be true, But then Alex was totally unreal
in the weeks after his death, I couldn't stop wondering
why Alex left me these clips, And despite my immense
seriousness and skepticism about most things in life, I also
couldn't stop wondering if the person in these audio files

(03:28):
might have actually possibly been Brittany. Either way, it began
to feel clear that Alex, including these files and his
email to me wasn't random. I think that, like, there's
a reason why he left you those files. I don't
know if I can exactly like pinpoint what it is,

(03:50):
but I mean, it'll be cool if we could find out.
So I went looking for answers, enlisting the help of
a super sleuth. Can you would teach me how to
be an investigative journalist in like the next thirty minutes.
That'd be super helpful. Yes, I can. Anybody who lives

(04:11):
on the Internet right now is probably decent at searching
for stuff. You could do it. A fellow Britney fan
who also talked to Alice, I remember you would go
to tiny Chet because you just wanted to spend some
time at the time. This girl she would come in,
and she sounded exactly like Britney would. And the thing

(04:31):
that really was fun and she never claimed to be Brittany,
which only like gave her credit to be Brittany. She
would come in and she would just talk random everyday stuff.
She would love as Brittney. She would be as Brittney
you know everything, signature she would do. A former MTVVJ
who was on the ground floor for Britney's meteoric rise.
I can absolutely see someone like her who's face and

(04:56):
name and image. She's a little bit lost control of
talking anonymously to somebody and saying what she really thinks,
in not having to second guess it, and figuring out
who she is outside of the industry that has sprung
up around her name. Yeah, I mean that. That actually
seems really healthy. And a small group of people who
got emails from Alex to his sister and some of

(05:20):
his best friends. They quickly became my inner circle after
he died, and they both encouraged me to go looking
for this mysterious figure and helped me along the way.
People are very passionate over this. That was one thing
I found. There are a lot of posts for someone
just asks who has banana alice, and it's pretty hilarious

(05:43):
to see. There are so many passionate responses saying it's
not Brittany, this was from so long ago. It's just
someone pretending who cares. Leave it alone. Unread as a
show about trying to find your way after losing someone

(06:05):
who changed your whole world, especially when they've left a
digital trail behind full of bread crumbs that might add
up to something or might not mean anything at all.
Where with the trail Alex left leave me? Do you
feel like that name of Charlie and always studying in
Philadelphia in the office, surrounded by like putting strings in

(06:26):
between one of my favorite teams ever. And that's the
kind of belly picture you making this podcast? On June tenth,
join me as I go down the rabbit Hole on Unread.
All four episodes dropped that day. Listen and subscribe to
Unread on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your favorite shows for two