Most of our media are owned by a handful of tech billionaires, but there's one place that still operates like the internet was never invented.

On the new season of the divided dial from On the Media, we're exploring shortwave radio, where prayer and propaganda coexist with news and conspiracy theories, and where an existential battle for the public airwaves is playing out right now.

Listen to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.

Good morning and welcome back to practical stoicism, a little housekeeping, before we get started.

To those of you who have purchased and reviewed the book, thank you. It is a strange thing to have a book out there in the world, sitting on the shelves of Amazon, as it were, knowing that anyone could see it and decide that's for me or alternatively,

lame. You always hope you can get a few dozen five-star reviews before somebody invariably and

inevitably comes through and gives you a one-star review because they're in that kind of mood that

day. Speaking of which, this podcast has finally received after more than 800 five-star reviews across Apple Podcasts and Spotify podcast alone, its first one-star review.

Now, I remember thinking when I woke up to that, who would do that?

And then I remembered some of the first words Marcus said to us, when you wake up in the morning,

tell yourself, the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest,

jealous, and surly, and they are like this because they can't tell good from evil, and they

hate podcasts. That last part I made up, but the rest of it's true. Thinking of this helped me to feel better.

It also helped me to feel grateful for the other 800-plus people who felt as I feel

that this is a five-star podcast doing good work for those who are interested.

So my last housekeeping item is a thank you to you. Thank you. Meditation three of

book three reads as follows. Hippocrates cured many illnesses and then fell ill and died. The Chaldeans

predicted the death of many others. In due course, their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey, Caesar,

who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so many thousand foot and horses in battle,

they too departed this life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire,

but it was moisture that carried him off. He died, smeared with

cow shit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin, and Socrates by the human hand.

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