Numbers Stations

99% Invisible

SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars

Design, Arts

4.8 • 27.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2013

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you tune around on a shortwave radio, you might stumble across a voice reciting an endless stream of numbers. Just numbers, all day, everyday. These so-called “numbers stations,” say nothing about where they are transmitting from or who they … Conti...

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is 99% invisible.
0:03.0	I'm Roman Mars.
0:04.0	Radio Transf
0:05.0	The handle or name you adopt should be one of a kind
0:10.0	based on something special in your life.
0:12.0	This is Portichedrocon. based on something special in your life.
0:13.0	This is Porky, Chadrock on March 12, 1973.
0:16.0	All you nice people living in the middle of America, the beautiful.
0:21.0	Everything is beautiful.
0:24.0	We're talking about radio,
0:26.0	meaning you do not see the picture, you hear the voice.
0:31.0	Here's something called the Vox Humana. Here's a human voice.
0:35.0	But the point is radio involved the audience far more than television ever did.
0:41.0	This is W WJK. Monday, March 12, 1973. Thank you and here's some more hit music.
0:51.0	It's 820 now people this is a big checker.
0:55.0	1.2. One.
1:00.0	On our way to Canaanland. Here we go.
1:03.0	Podcasting, for lack of a better term, has been good to me.
1:08.0	But there's something about the transmission of radio signals that I love.
1:13.8	For billions of years, the electromagnetic spectrum
1:16.4	was populated only by radiation from natural objects.
1:20.4	And then, all of a sudden, the air was filled with voices and codes and dots and dashes and music.
	...

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