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.

Hi there, Prakoptan. Welcome back. I am glad you're here. Today, we're visiting one of Seneca's

letters, as is our want to do on Tuesdays. And today it will be, let's see here, letter 107,

entitled On Obedience to the Universal Will. And rather than beat around Seneca's Bush, again, gross,

let's dive in with both hands empty and grab two birds. Where is that common sense of yours?

Where is that deafness in examining things, that greatness of soul? Have you come to be tormented by a trifle?

Your slaves regarded your absorption in business as an opportunity for them to run away.

Well, if your friends deceived you, for by all means let them have the name which we mistakenly bestowed upon them,

and so call them that they may incur

more shame by not being such friends, if your friends, I repeat, deceived you, all your affairs

would lack something. As it is, you merely lack men who damaged your own endeavors and

considered you burdensome to your neighbors.

None of these things is unusual or unexpected. It is as nonsensical to be put out by such

events as to complain of being spattered in the street or at getting befouled in the mud.

The program of life is the same as that of a bathing establishment, a crowd, or a journey.

Sometimes things will be thrown at you, and sometimes they will strike you by accident.

Life is not a dainty business.

You have started on your long journey.

You are about to slip, collide, fall, become

weary and cry out, oh for death. Or, in other words, tell lies. At one stage you will leave a

...