Radio: the sounds of the weird and wonderful I love, and especially on shortwave radio! You can check out the FREE internet shortwave radio from the Netherlands here at:
Well, good morning, good afternoon or good day, wherever you may be listening to this internet broadcast. I am coming to you tonight under the crisp clear, cool skies of southern British Columbia. I hope you are all doing well. Today, we will be doing something a little different but something that is near and dear to me, and it's called radio.
Yes, radio. It's still around and I remember when it was essentially the internet for me when I was growing up in the sub Arctic of northern Canada in what is called the Yukon Territory. Radio in all its forms, including shortwave, was my window to distant worlds. I owned all the forms of radio growing up: police radios, crystal radios, shortwave radios and how could we forget CB radios? Oh, I loved that Citizen's Band Radio. Many a long winter night was taken up either listening or trying to talk to people in far off lands with my various radios. It never ceased to amaze me that you actually could talk to someone at night with a CB radio that was 2,000 miles away from you when the conditions were just right. And it was free, raw and uncensored, for the most part.
While some areas of commercial radio are struggling the the 21st century, I can assure you, radio is still alive and well. And, there are interesting sounds to delight your mind if you get bored watching cat videos on the internet. Shortwave radio still overs an international world of mystery and intrigue. And the good news is that if you are able to watch this video of mine, you don't even need to buy or own a shortwave receiver to join the fun. The University of Twente in the Netherlands offers an online broad spectrum shortwave tuner that you can use for free. You are able to tune it to whatever station you wish, and even record what you hear. I will place a link in the description for those of you who are interested in trying it.
And if you dare to roam on to the shortwave bands, you will be sure to find the interesting, the odd and the bizarre. You will find everything from normal types of commercial broadcasts from around the planet, to bizarre number stations that transmit cryptic codes to foreign spies and operatives world wide. A number station is an unknown station that broadcasts tones and spoken numbers, often even in a creepy fashion. My favorite number station of all time is the “Lincolnshire Poacher” and I will play you a sample of it right now to give you an idea of how odd and creepy the world of shortwave can get:
Yes, shortwave is a smorgasbord of sounds, guaranteed to inform, delight and even sometimes creep you right out.
And to wet your listening whistle, I will indulge you with radio sounds from around the world. So let's play a little sample that runs about 12 minutes for you. It consists of radio interval signals, station identifications, and various other sound bytes from around the planet earth that I have collected and curated just for you. You may note the amazing diversity in style of communication on the airwaves, some stations are smooth as silk with their announcers, while other stations take themselves a wee too seriously. So without further adieu, here's a trip around the radio world, and don't worry, it's 98% in English so no translation is required...
So what did you think of that? I took you on an audio journey across the planet and even to a few distant locations that most of you will never see in your lifetime. Sound is one of the senses we don't indulge as often as we should and perhaps that is why I love radio so much. Radio is still where the theater of the mind can exist without the hassle of visually paying attention all the time. And often the spoken word is not so beautiful until we are able to embrace how it is framed, in the context of well articulated language in and on the format of radio. Radio forces us to listen, which is something we don't do enough in the modern world.
Take care of yourselves and each other. Until next time tubers...
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