The New Yorker Radio Hour
From “On the Media” ’s “Divided Dial”: “Fishing in the Night”
Tue, 20 May 2025
This special episode comes from “On the Media” ’s Peabody-winning series “The Divided Dial,” reported by Katie Thornton. You know A.M. and F.M. radio. But did you know that there is a whole other world of radio surrounding us at all times? It’s called shortwave—and, thanks to a quirk of science that lets broadcasters bounce radio waves off the ionosphere, it can reach thousands of miles, penetrating rough terrain and geopolitical boundaries. How did this instantaneous, global, mass communication tool—a sort of internet-before-the-internet—go from a utopian experiment in international connection to a hardened tool of information warfare and propaganda? This first episode of Season 2 of “The Divided Dial” is called “Fishing in the Night.”
Chapter 1: What is shortwave radio and why is it important?
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Hi, I'm Adam Howard, a senior producer for the New Yorker Radio Hour, and we wanted to share something special with you on the podcast this week. This comes from our friends at On the Media, and it's an episode from the second season of their series, The Divided Dial. Season one was all about the rightward shift of talk radio, and it won a Peabody Award.
In season two, reporter and host Katie Thornton travels to a lesser known end of the radio spectrum. Here's Katie Thornton reporting for On the Media.
Last summer, I met up with a journalist and radio fan named David Gorin. I went to his house in Brooklyn, New York, so that we could listen to the radio together. Not any old radio, not AM or FM, nothing you can pick up in your car, but shortwave radio, the little-known cousin of AM and FM, with fuzzy stations that can reach insanely far distances.
David's been listening to shortwave since he was a kid in the 70s, when his uncle gave him a radio.
And I turned it on, and it's like the radio leapt out of my hand with the North American service of Radio Moscow.
Suddenly, the world was all within reach, available to him right there in this box.
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Chapter 2: How did shortwave radio evolve over time?
And then they turned their findings into entertainment. like the hit CBS radio series hosted by a popular detective novelist named Rex Stout. It was called Our Secret Weapon.
The truth is a weapon that isn't secret in our country, but it's a big secret to the people who live in Germany, Japan, and Italy. Our enemies don't have this weapon. They don't dare let their people know the truth.
Every week, radio sleuth Stout debunked enemy shortwave propaganda.
First a broadcast of the official German news agency on August 2nd.
The meeting between Churchill and Stalin was very excited and hysterical. On August 8th, being that England... This morning, Churchill shook hands with Stalin at the Kremlin.
As we now know, Churchill actually arrived in Moscow on August 12th. You can't beat that for a scoop.
The rest of the Allies were also busy fighting Germany's shortwave radio propaganda. It was during World War II that the BBC ramped up what would come to be known as the World Service on shortwave.
This is London calling in the overseas service of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
They broadcast news to the world with just a bit of pro-Ally spin.
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