Hey, you're listening to the On the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Michael Lohenger. If you've been following

along for the past couple weeks, you know that we've been airing the second season of our Peabody

award-winning series, The Divided Dial. This season, it's all about shortwave radio. Episode

one was a deep dive into the role shortwave played as a propaganda tool in the 20th century,

first in the Second World War and then throughout the Cold War.

Episode 2 was a close look at what happened in the early 90s when the end of the Cold War led to a vacancy on the airwaves.

Host Katie Thornton explained how the rise of the militia movement was tracked by an unlikely

duo in Costa Rica, who listened in on shortwave radio as the militias were first getting

off the ground.

If you haven't heard those episodes, I highly recommend pausing this one and catching up first.

In this week's new installment, Katie's adventures take her to some very unexpected places.

The story starts almost 40 years ago.

Here's Katie.

It was July of 1987, on a hot, muggy Thursday in New York City.

Temperatures had been climbing into the 90s all week.

And as people all over the city ran fans in their windows,

wrapped wet towels around their necks and hit the beach,

a 34-year-old man named Alan Wiener from Yonkers was out on the water, on a ship, a 200-foot-long freighter.

Then it's not a gleaming clipper ship, but a broken-down bucket which has drawn the attention to the federal government.

It drew the Fed's attention because of what was happening on board.

There's a new rock station in town. Well, not really in town, really in the water. And it may be illegal.

Alan was a tech-savvy hippie with round glasses and a long bowl cut in the style of Johnny Ramon.

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