WNYC Studios’ On The Media Presents Season Two of the Peabody Award-Winning Series “The Divided Dial”
New season explores the untold history of shortwave radio and its quiet resurgence today
Debuts today, with weekly episode drops every Wednesday through May 28
Listen to the first episode here
(New York, NY – May 7, 2025) Today, On The Media debuts the second season of “The Divided Dial,” the Peabody Award-winning podcast series. Following season one’s deep dive into the growth and impact of right-wing AM talk radio, season two tells the untold story of shortwave radio, a cousin of AM and FM radio that – while less-listened to – has the distinct capability to extend its broadcasts beyond national borders.
“The Divided Dial” can be found in the podcast feed for On The Media, wherever you get your podcasts. It will also air during On the Media’s weekly radio broadcasts on over 400 public radio stations beginning Friday, May 9, and on its regular shortwave radio broadcast on WRMI.
Once considered a utopian, international, and instantaneous mass communication tool, shortwave radio has gone the way of much of AM talk radio, becoming a haven for far-right extremists and cults. Season Two of “The Divided Dial” explores its early days as a propaganda tool for democratic and socialist governments during WWII and the Cold War to its more recent use as a recruiting tool for the 1990s militia movement, and looks at why – even in the age of the internet and the podcasting “manosphere” – this once-dying medium is experiencing a quiet resurgence.
Host and reporter Katie Thornton travels around the country to meet influential voices in shortwave, and presents rare archival audio from World War II, 1990s militia broadcasts and modern pirate broadcasts, some of which has never before been digitized. Over the course of the four episodes, “The Divided Dial” series reveals how the trajectory of the medium — and a little-known battle playing out on today’s shortwaves between radio fanatics, pirate broadcasters, and Wall Streeters looking to send trading data at fractions of a second faster than the internet can — may serve as a parable for what happens when we cede control of our public airwaves.
Guests in the series include:
- Allan Weiner, a former rock n’ roll pirate who now owns one of the world’s most physically powerful radio stations — which beams 24/7 flat earth preaching and a uniquely American brand of right-wing extremism around the globe;
- Radio scholars and historians including University of Michigan professor Susan Douglas and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor emerita Michele Hilmes;
- Shortwave listeners/documenters David Goren and Bennett Kobb;
- Former shortwave broadcaster Brad Heavner, who ran the now-defunct progressive Costa Rican-based station Radio For Peace International, which documented the far-right American shortwave movement on their 1990s show “Far Right Radio Review”).
“Despite my long career in radio, I had barely heard of shortwave radio before researching and reporting this season. This season of ‘The Divided Dial’ tells the untold history of how this medium completely altered the course of the 20th century, and how it’s finding new life among groups with very different visions for the airwaves,” said Katie Thornton. “There are far-right religious and cult leaders (some of whom broadcast from beyond the grave with the help of sympathetic station owners), radio pirates attempting to reclaim the airwaves for something joyous, and deep-pocketed financial entities who want to use shortwave’s far-reaching capabilities to make even more money. At a time when extreme anti-government sentiment has entered the mainstream, ‘The Divided Dial’ traces the long history of these beliefs, and how early right-wing and anti-government voices utilized this unusual medium to build a movement that has – decades later – become more normalized.”
Episode descriptions are as follows:
May 7, 2025: Fishing in the Night
You know AM and FM radio. But did you know that there is a whole other world of radio surrounding us at all times? It’s called shortwave — and, thanks to a quirk of science that lets broadcasters bounce radio waves off of the ionosphere, it can reach thousands of miles, penetrating rough terrain and geopolitical boundaries. How did this instantaneous, global, mass communication tool — a sort of internet-before-the-internet — go from a utopian experiment in international connection to a hardened tool of information warfare and propaganda?
May 14, 2025: You Must Form Your Militia Units
Many governments eased off the shortwaves after the Cold War, and homegrown US-based rightwing extremists edged out shortwave peaceniks to fill the void. In the 1990s, US shortwave radio stations became a key organizing and recruiting ground for white supremacists and the burgeoning anti-government militia movement. On this instantaneous, international medium, they honed a strategy and a rhetoric that they would take to the early internet and beyond. But at a progressive shortwave station in Costa Rica, peace activists were monitoring them.
May 21, 2025: World’s Last Chance Radio
Today, in the internet era, much of the shortwaves have been left to the most extreme and off-the-grid voices — including a conspiratorial flat earth ministry and a longstanding end-times cult that has been charged with everything from sexual abuse to illegal burials of dead infants. In the 737-person northern Maine town of Monticello, one of the world’s farthest-reaching radio stations has given them a home, pumping out extremism and conspiracy theories to the world as the voice of American broadcasting.
Plus, we hear from some On the Media listeners who found the show on shortwave radio, where On the Media has been broadcasting on the multi-continent shortwave station WRMI since June 2024.
May 28, 2025: The Finance Bros Want Your Airwaves
In recent years, creative, often music-focused pirate broadcasting has been thriving on shortwave. But these surreptitious broadcasters are up against a surprising opponent: not the FCC, but a deep-pocketed group of Wall Streeters trying to wrestle the airwaves away from the public, and use them for a money-making scheme completely antithetical to broadcasting. What do we lose when we give up our public airwaves?
“The Divided Dial” is reported and hosted by award-winning multimedia journalist Katie Thornton and edited by Katya Rogers, executive producer of On The Media.
ABOUT KATIE THORNTON
Katie Thornton is an audio journalist and writer covering media, infrastructure, and history. In 2022, she worked with WNYC’s On the Media to create the first season of their Peabody-winning podcast series “The Divided Dial,” which dove into the history, politics, and economics of conservative talk radio. Her other work has been published in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, National Geographic, 99% Invisible, NPR, BBC, and many more. She has also been honored with a Fulbright Fellowship, grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and has served multiple times as a reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. She can otherwise be found digging through print and audio archives, teaching a podcasting course at Macalester College, or touring with her bands.
ABOUT WNYC STUDIOS
WNYC Studios is the premier producer of on-demand and broadcast audio, and home to some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed and popular podcasts, including Radiolab, On the Media, and The New Yorker Radio Hour. WNYC Studios productions have been honored with Edward R. Murrow Awards, George Foster Peabody Awards, duPont-Columbia Awards, Webby Awards and more. WNYC Studios is leading the new golden age in audio with podcasts and national radio programs that inform, inspire, and delight millions of curious and highly engaged listeners across digital, mobile, and broadcast platforms. Programs include personal narratives, deep journalism, revealing interviews, and smart entertainment as varied and intimate as the human voice itself. For more information, visit wnycstudios.org.