It's the Brian Larisho on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC

Centennial series, 100 years of 100 things. Today, thing number 97, just a few to go.

The history of shortwave radio. Why this? Well, if you've been listening to On the Media lately,

you know why. If not, here's a little background. Shortwave radio operates on frequencies

generally between 1.6 and 30 megahertz, while long wave radio,

like AM and FM that some of you are listening to right now, operates on frequencies between 30

and 300 kilohertz. I hope I have my mega and my killers right before hertz. But as we learn in this

segment, as we will learn in this segment, that largely depends on the sun.

If you have access to shortwave radio, depending on the time of day, you could potentially hear shortwave transmissions from all over the globe.

It's because of this, that shortwave radio was once seen as an international form of mass communication.

Think of it like the internet, but way before the internet.

And as some of you know, our colleagues that on the media are in the middle of season two of the Peabody winning series,

The Dile, which tells the story of Shortwave, does this season two,

and how much like the internet that came later on, it took a, quote, turn for the chaotic,

skewing hard toward the political right. And what you may have thought was an obsolete medium,

except for hobbyists, is actually much more than that in today's political world. So season two

of the series explains how the little-known battle playing out on the short waves today might say a lot

about how we regard our public airwaves generally. Host of the divided dial, Katie Thornton joins us now to walk us through some of that history, 100 years of that history.

When she's not hosting on the media is the Divided Dial series.

She's an independent journalist, public historian, and a full bright fellow.

Katie, thanks for coming back on.

Welcome back to the show.

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