Have you heard On the Media’s Peabody-winning series The Divided Dial?
It’s awesome and you should, and now you will. In this episode they tell the story of shortwave radio: the way-less-listened to but way-farther-reaching cousin of AM and FM radio. The medium was once heralded as a utopian, international, and instantaneous mass communication tool — a sort of internet-before-the-internet.
But, like the internet, many people quickly saw the power of this new technology and found ways to harness it. State leaders turned it into a propaganda machine, weaponizing the airwaves to try and shape politics around the world. And as shortwave continued to evolve, like the internet, it became fragmented, easily accessible, and right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists and cult leaders found homes on the different shortwave frequencies.
And even today - again, like the internet - people with money are looking to buy up this mass-communication tool in the hopes of … making more money.
This is episode one from the second season of The Divided Dial a limited series from On The Media.
The Divided Dial was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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