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 for Kaptone. I hope you're well. Thanks for being here. Today is a bit of a long read,

so I want to jump right into it. But before I do, did you know we have an app coming? Yeah,

for real, an iOS store, Apple only app. You know how it goes? You got to do Apple first. It's a whole thing.

Anyway, it's exciting. If you want to learn more about it, go to app.com.

Okay, that's all I'm teasing. Here's today's episode, which features letter 106 from Seneca

on the corporeality of virtue. Let's dive in.

My tardiness in answering your letter was not due to press of business.

Do not listen to that sort of excuse. I am at liberty, and so is anyone else who wishes to be at

liberty. No man is at the mercy of affairs. He gets entangled in them, of his own accord,

and then flatters himself that being busy is proof of

happiness. Very well, you no doubt want to know why I did not answer the letter sooner.

The matter about which you consulted me was being gathered into the fabric of my volume,

for you know that I am planning to cover the whole of moral philosophy

and to settle all the problems which concern it. Therefore, I hesitated whether to make you

wait until the proper time came for this subject or to pronounce judgment out of the logical

order. But it seemed more kindly not to keep waiting one who comes from such a distance.

So I propose both to pick this out of the proper sequence of correlated matter, and also to send you

without waiting to be asked, whatever has to do with questions of the same sort.

Do you ask what these are? Questions regarding which knowledge

...