Title: S2 The Divided Dial EPISODE 3: World's Last Chance Radio

Micah Loewinger: Hey, you're listening to the On the Media Midweek Podcast. I'm Micah Loewinger. If you've been following along for the past couple of 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 1 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.

Host Katie Thornton: 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 Allan Weiner from Yonkers was out on the water on a ship, a 200-foot-long freighter.

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

Host Katie Thornton: It drew the Fed's attention because of what was happening on board.

Announcer 1: There's a new rock station in town. Well, not really in town, really in the water, and it may be illegal.

[MUSIC]

Host Katie Thornton: Allan was a tech-savvy hippie with round glasses and a long bowl cut in the style of Johnny Ramone, and together with his comrades, Allan launched a pirate radio station.

Allan Weiner: The only people that have radio stations in New York are gigantic corporations. This is the only other way to do it, especially if you don't have much coin.

Host Katie Thornton: This was not Allan Weiner's first time hijacking the airwaves. He'd been illegally broadcasting for half his life, first getting a knock on the door from the FCC when he was just a teenager, but this was by far his most ambitious effort.

Announcer 1: Radio Newyork International, they call themselves. With a rock and roll accent and a pacifist beat.

Host Katie Thornton: With the stated goal of spreading peace, love, and understanding, and some good old American rock music, Radio Newyork International broadcasts for listeners up and down the East Coast, and artists sent in records for them to play on the air.

Isaac Jeffreys: All right, thanks to Ramones here at RNI, Radio Newyork International. I'm Isaac Jeffreys.

Host Katie Thornton: As for the news media, they pulled out all the stops to cover the story.

Channel 5 News Reporter: Channel 5 News has spared no expense in tracking down these pirates. We've added this vessel to our investigative fleet. It's a duplicate of the one used on Miami Vice. With us is our Captain, Fred Shaw. Fred, these pirates--

Host Katie Thornton: From their first broadcast, Radio Newyork International taunted the Federal Communications Commission, kicking off their transmission with a topical song from the 1960s.

[MUSIC - Every Mother's Son: Come on Down To My Boat]

Come on down to my boat, baby

Come on down where we can play

Host Katie Thornton: After only four broadcast days, just as Allan and his first mate were starting to get their sea legs.

Announcer 1: Good evening. Some defiant DJs who wanted to thumb their noses at Washington have instead gotten an FCC fist in the face.

Host Katie Thornton: Federal agents did come on down to their boat.

Newscaster 1: Shortly before 5:30 this morning, the Coast Guard and FCC engineers moved in. The FCC dismantled the radio equipment, and the Coast Guard arrested the two RNI staffers on board: Ivan Rothstein and Allan Weiner.

[MUSIC - Every Mother's Son: Come on Down To My Boat]

Host Katie Thornton: Allan was incensed as they took him off the ship in bracelets.

Allan Weiner: We weren't breaking any laws, whatsoever. They feel we were a completely illegal station, and now, freeform rock and roll has been snuffed out.

Host Katie Thornton: They had anchored the boat just over four miles off the coast of Long Island, which, per Allan's interpretation of the law, was international waters, but the government said that international waters started much further out.

Newscaster 1: Wiener and another man have now been charged with illegally broadcasting rock and roll music and peace chatter.

Host Katie Thornton: Radio Newyork International was dead.

Announcer 1: The men who wanted your ears were chained, taken away, and could spend years in jail. Do you know how many robberies there were in this town last year? Murders, burglaries, but two pirate DJs won't bother you anymore.

Host Katie Thornton: Allan ended up avoiding jail time for this stunt, in part thanks to the ACLU coming to his defense, but after years of trying to skirt around the FCC, this arrest did change something for Allan. It made him realize that if he wanted to get on the air for good, he'd have to go legit. Allan set out to get his own licensed station. The FCC dragged its feet for years, saying in the official record that it didn't want to give a license to Captain Hook, but in the late 1990s, what many people in the radio business considered to be the impossible happened. Allan the pirate won, and in 1998, he launched WBCQ.

[MUSIC]

The free speech sound heard the whole world round. WBCQ. You're on The Planet.

Host Katie Thornton: It wasn't in the coveted corporatized market of New York City. It was in the 800-person, blink-and-you'll-miss-it town of Monticello in far northern Maine. That was all right, though, because Allan wasn't going for a local audience. He was going to use the shortwaves to bring the freeform peace and love mission of his pirate ship out to the world. This is Season 2 of The Divided Dial from On the Media. I'm your host, Katie Thornton.

This season is all about shortwave radio. How it went from a utopian experiment in global communication to a tool of government and far-right propaganda, and what a little-known battle playing out on the shortwaves today means for the future of our public airwaves. This episode, the story of one station and one man that tells us a lot about shortwave in the Internet era.

Last episode, we learned how shortwave took a hit when the Internet came around, lots of stations closed, but WBCQ was just getting started. Today, it's one of the highest-powered privately owned broadcasting facilities on Earth. How did Allan Weiner pull it off? The answer has to do with an absolutely giant antenna that reaches every continent, and how that antenna came to be up there in rural Maine, and what it broadcasts. That was one of the most unexpected stories I dug up on my journey into the shortwaves. Because at WBCQ today, it's not all peace and love, man. Far from it.

Allan Weiner: Hello?

Host Katie Thornton: Early last year, I reached out to Allan Weiner. Hi, Allan, it's Katie calling.

Allan Weiner: Hello, Katie.

Host Katie Thornton: He mentioned that he and some of his engineering buddies would be gathering for last April's solar eclipse, which happened to pass directly over WBCQ. Offhandedly, he invited me along.

Allan Weiner: Yes, sure, come on up. You can't miss the station. It's got a ginormous antenna.

Host Katie Thornton: Other than a friend of mine who told me about the station, no one I knew had ever even heard of WBCQ, and I know a lot of radio freaks. I really wanted to know more, so I took Allan up on his offer. 1 mile ahead, 2 miles ahead, and 1 mile right. If I look north, northeast, I should see the tower.

Google Maps: Turn right onto Britton Road.

Host Katie Thornton: Okay. Holy shit. Well, he was not lying when he said you can't miss it. One of, if not the most powerful, commercial broadcast stations in the world. No one's ever heard of it. No one even knows it's here, and I am closing in on it.

WBCQ Station Engineer: Now, during totality, I'll remove the solar filter from the telescope. You can look at it in totality without the filter.

Host Katie Thornton: When I arrived at the station, Allan was there with his wife, Angela, some friends, a farmer neighbor, and the station's engineer. They were warm and friendly. They'd lugged an assortment of wooden and plastic chairs out to the station's small parking lot and had an extra ready for me. They offered me sunscreen and eclipse-proof glasses.

WBCQ Station Engineer: We got 55.

Host Katie Thornton: It was brisk, there was snow on the ground, but the skies were this perfect blue.

WBCQ Station Engineer: Three minutes.

Allan Weiner: Three minutes. Oh, there's barely anything left. It's a pinhole sun. Yes, pinhole sun. Rest in peace, Chris Cornell. What a beautiful man.

Host Katie Thornton: At one point, as it started to get darker, the automatic floodlights came on in the parking lot where we sat.

Tim: Oh, look, the lights just came on.

Allan Weiner: Oh, shit. Yes, turn them off, would you? [crosstalk] Oops. Yes, thank you.

Host Katie Thornton: That was the sound of a station employee's handgun falling to the ground out of his back pocket when he got up to turn the lights off. One of the guys who came up for the big event was named Tim. He has a long-running weekly show on WBCQ playing mostly rock and roll, sprinkled in with some funny skits and stories. Like Allan, he had long gray hair, though Tim's was notably more unkempt, and also like Allan, Tim got his start in pirate radio a long time ago.

Tim: I was with my buddy and thought, "Hey, why not?" Each of us popped a tab of acid, and we're starting to trip our brains off. I ran next door, and then I grabbed a bunch of records and other stuff and a reel-to-reel tape machine, and patch cables, and broadcasted on shortwave. I called it Radio Timtron Worldwide. It was just a great goof.

Host Katie Thornton: Another friend of Allan's had been an engineer at the US-based Christian Science Monitor shortwave station, which used to broadcast news and information to Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

Christian Science Monitor's Former Engineer: When the Berlin Wall came down, we got quite a few letters in, thanking us for broadcasting. It makes me feel like I helped tear down the Berlin Wall.

Host Katie Thornton: At WBCQ, I got the full range of shortwave's aspirations. Some of them wanted to use the power of this megaphone to promote democracy, others just to have a little fun, but for the time being, our focus was elsewhere, on the sky and the sun and the moon that was rapidly stepping into its path. Finally, the moment we'd been waiting for was here, and it was breathtaking.

Allan Weiner: You can look at it.

Angela: Oh my God. Now look at that.

Allan Weiner: The eye of God.

Tim: How cool is that?

Allan Weiner: That is it.

Angela: That is cool.

Tim: I believe you can see the star. Yes, it looks like John Bonham's bass drum insignia. [unintelligible 00:11:41]

[laughter]

Host Katie Thornton: Yes, the morning after the eclipse. Just woke up in the back of the minivan in the Walmart parking lot here in Houlton. I don't know if you all know this about solar eclipses, but it's impossible to find a cheap hotel. It's impossible to find any hotel, especially all the way up here, 12 miles past the northern terminus of Interstate 95, which runs from Maine to Florida.

I knew all this going into the trip, and I'd booked an RV with a heater, but it canceled on me at the last minute, so I rented a minivan from some guy in Boston and threw an air mattress in the back. It was like 20 degrees last night. It was really cold. Made it, though. I'm getting ready to-- I decided to go back to WBCQ because something wasn't adding up. During the eclipse, we sat in the shadow of this huge, shiny new antenna, but elsewhere on the property, radio equipment clanked away inside various trailers and falling-down shacks.

There were lots of old school buses and World War II-era radar devices. Allan told me he uses them to search the skies for extraterrestrial life. A massive anti-aircraft gun was parked at one of the station's driveways. That big, new antenna was just so out of place with the rest of the station. I wanted to know how it all came to be. Allan and I chatted as he showed me around.

Allan Weiner: We're a free speech radio station on shortwave, and we lease airtime to anyone.

Host Katie Thornton: How are you all charging?

Allan Weiner: $50 an hour. Yes, and that's what we were charging when we went on the air.

Host Katie Thornton: From the time WBCQ launched in 1998, anyone could buy airtime. Buy an hour every month, every week, every day, you pay, Allan will beam it out, and that $50 an hour rate, it's kind of insanely affordable. For reference, I used to work at a small community radio station that charged $50 for a 30-second underwriting announcement, those "Programming is supported by" messages you hear.

When WBCQ started, the exodus from shortwave was well underway. About a fifth of Americans were already on the Internet, but despite that, there was still demand for affordable airtime. WBCQ started adding more frequencies. This was all happening before they got the big new antenna, but the station could still reach pretty far, South America, and even Antarctica.

Folks bought airtime to play niche music shows, classic rock, deep cuts, even old wax cylinders and 78s, but as Allan quickly discovered, when you advertise yourself as a haven for free speech on a medium that was already home to militia leaders and extremists, that's who shows up.

Allan Weiner: The American Nazi Party. Do you know they were one of the first people to sign up with us? They came to us, "Oh, free speech? Right on the air." I said, "Yes, no problem."

Host Katie Thornton: Allan's father was Jewish, and Allan was mostly raised Jewish, though his mother was Roman Catholic, but Allan thought of himself as a free thinker, a First Amendment warrior, and having Nazis as paying customers posed no ethical dilemmas for him, at least not at first.

Allan Weiner: We had a programmer that kept getting on the air and telling people to go out and kill the Jews, and I kept calling him up and going, "Look, you can't encourage people to go out and kill people. You know, if that happens, you're going to go to jail. I'm going to go to jail because we'd be complicit, and you can't do this." They wouldn't listen. Even my father heard that.

Host Katie Thornton: Allan's father did not like tuning in and hearing Nazis.

Allan Weiner: He called. He says, "Son, what are you--?" "Yes, I know, I know. I'm going to fix it."

Host Katie Thornton: After multiple warnings about the Nazis' explicit calls for violence, Allan pulled the broadcast, citing the station's self imposed hate speech, policy.

Allan Weiner: Which basically says, if you get on the air and encourage people to go out and hurt and harm other people, we're going to give you a warning. We're going to say, "Don't do that," and if they don't--

Host Katie Thornton: The Nazi show was called American Dissident Voices, and when Allan cut it, it caused a stir. Deep in the archives of one popular shortwave show, I found a call-in that dealt with the cancellation head-on.

Bill Cooper: We're talking about American Dissident Voices being booted off of WBCQ.

Host Katie Thornton: The host was Bill Cooper. He was a hugely influential thought leader in the conspiracy and militia movements of the '90s. We heard some of his show on the last episode.

Bill Cooper: Good evening. You're on the air.

Mike: Yes, this is Mike in South Florida. Good evening, Bill.

Bill Cooper: Hi, Mike.

Mike: I don't agree with the person of WBCQ because he became judge and jury with no due process.

Caller: If the radio station makes a claim that they will broadcast anybody's opinion, then they should honor that promise, all right? I lost a lot of respect for Al Weiner by him not honoring his promise.

Mike: In Allan Weiner's case, he simply pulled the plug.

Bill Cooper: Yes, he certainly did that.

Host Katie Thornton: And then.

Bill Cooper: Good evening, you're on the air.

Allan Weiner: Hi, Bill, it's Allan Weiner.

Host Katie Thornton: Allan called in.

Bill Cooper: Hi, Allan. Well, I think a lot of people out there are glad you called. I hope you understand this is not [crosstalk]

Host Katie Thornton: Allan told listeners that he alone was responsible for the decision, but that axing the show violated every principle he held dear.

Allan Weiner: That everyone has a right to speak on the radio, and everyone should be given that right. However, I did change the way I felt on that one specific program because I did get some input from a lot of other people, and the day I decided to pull it off, I knew it was a no-win situation, and to all the listeners out there that hold me to my principles of allowing all voices on the air, I apologize, and I am sorry, but in this one instance, and I plan to make it the last instance, I had to do it.

Host Katie Thornton: Allan did indeed make it the last instance. Hate groups kept coming to WBCQ, and Allan kept selling them airtime.

Allan Weiner: The KKK contacted us.

Host Katie Thornton: Allan told me about this on my visit.

Allan Weiner: They were really pleasant and nice, and I said, "Sure, we'll put you on the air," and they were very, very impressed.

Host Katie Thornton: Maybe it was his own crystallizing free speech absolutism, or maybe it was the fact that it didn't take long for WBCQ to start feeling the economic squeeze of the Internet era, but Allan was quickly entering the business of shortwave extremism. Within a few years of launching, he welcomed a guy named Hal Turner, who used the shortwaves to call for violence.

Hal Turner: I advocate shooting and killing these Mexicans as they cross the border.

Host Katie Thornton: Turner also called for the murder of Jews, Black Americans, LGBTQ people, and politicians.

Hal Turner: We don't want to have to kill you. We hope to not have to kill you, but we can kill you, and if need be, we will kill you.

Host Katie Thornton: Hal Turner first made a name for himself as a frequent caller to Sean Hannity Show on the big AM station WABC in New York, but Hal went to shortwave because he felt AM and FM conservative talk had grown soft. On shortwave, he said whatever he wanted.

Hal Turner: There are approaching, on the horizon, situations where killing elected officials may be necessary. Well, what are a few lives in the grand scheme of liberty? Not a big deal.

Host Katie Thornton: Allan's assortment of extremist talk shows and the occasional esoteric music program was far from a cash cow. Allan needed people to buy more time. He offered big discounts for hosts who bought airtime in bulk. A few, including Hal Turner, came to buy several hours, most every day. At one point, Allan was even in talks with Radio Sputnik-

Allan Weiner: Radio Sputnik is Russia, and they almost leased one of our transmitters [crosstalk]

Host Katie Thornton: -to take a whole frequency, 24/7. Yes, what happened with those Radio Sputnik conversations?

Allan Weiner: They decided not to go. I don't know why, because we really made them a good deal. See, we can get people on [crosstalk]

Host Katie Thornton: One man did have around-the-clock presence on one of WBCQ's frequencies. His name was Ralph Gordon Stair, also known as R.G., also known as Brother Stair.

Ralph Gordon Stair: I don't believe there's a man on the face of the Earth that is higher in spiritual authority in the kingdom of God than I am. I don't believe that.

Host Katie Thornton: Stair was a self-proclaimed prophet who preached an ultra-conservative, homophobic, and misogynistic Christian ideology. He bought airtime on other shortwave stations, too, and he didn't just use his show to preach. He also used it to recruit listeners from as far away as New Zealand to live with him on his farm in South Carolina. At the farm, the men wore long beards, and the women always wore full-coverage skirts and had their hair in tightly wound buns.

People who visited have said that there were radios and loudspeakers set up in every one of the compound's buildings and on the fields so that followers would hear Stair's preaching even as they worked his land. Stair's flock took a pledge of poverty when they joined, giving their money to his Overcomer Ministry.

Ralph Gordon Stair: The Overcomer Radio Broadcast.

Host Katie Thornton: At one point, Stair was spending $100,000 a month on shortwave and local radio broadcasts.

Ralph Gordon Stair: Heard around the world 7 days a week, 24 hours.

Host Katie Thornton: In 2017, video surfaced of Stair molesting a 12-year-old girl during a sermon. More women came forward with reports of abuse. Stories and court cases from years prior came to light, alleging everything from fraud to the improper burial of babies who died, apparently after Stair encouraged mothers to forego modern medical care in favor of faith healing.

Ralph Gordon Stair: You're dealing with a doctor; he won't tell you the truth. You'd better get away from him. [unintelligible 00:22:05]

Host Katie Thornton: Multiple people who escaped the Overcomer Ministry said R.G. Stair was running a cult.

Ralph Gordon Stair: Deal with truth. It's just deceit, this lying, this half-truth [crosstalk]

Host Katie Thornton: Thanks to survivors who spoke out, the FBI and local law enforcement investigated Stair, and later that year, they raided the farm.

Newscaster 2: More victims brought their stories to police. Stair, facing more charges of criminal sexual conduct, this time, many involving children.

Host Katie Thornton: Stair's show was dropped from a bunch of local stations, but in Allan and his wife, Angela's eyes, he stood still, had a right to the airwaves, and yes, Stair bought lots of time on WBCQ, but it wasn't like he was making the station rich. Allan still couldn't always afford to repair or maintain equipment. He'd let go of staff.

Allan Weiner: The $50 we get here and there, that doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't.

Host Katie Thornton: For WBCQ and a lot of shortwave stations that survived into the Internet era, this was the play: offering a megaphone to religious extremists and the far right while still barely scraping by, but in 2018, everything changed at WBCQ. Coming up, Allan gets a huge leg up and that powerful new antenna from an unexpected source.

[MUSIC]

Host Katie Thornton: This is Season 2 of The Divided Dial from On the Media.

[MUSIC]

Host Katie Thornton: This is The Divided Dial from On the Media. I'm Katie Thornton. Right before the break, I was telling you about how WBCQ was struggling financially, but in 2018, that all changed.

Allan Weiner: That summer was great.

Host Katie Thornton: WBCQ got a many-million-dollar cash injection, and that massive new antenna. It can pump out 500 kilowatts of power, 10 times as much as WBCQ's other signals. The town's electric system wasn't even powerful enough to support it. Allan offered to split the cost of rewiring with the local government.

Allan Weiner: They're rewiring the town. I'd walk into the town office. "Well, thank you. We're getting all new power here for business and stuff. Thank you so much." "You're welcome. You're welcome."

Host Katie Thornton: The antenna weighs 200 tons and is gigantic at its base, like one of those redwood trees that you can drive through, except the electromagnetic frequencies this beast emits are known to jam up cars' computer systems and stall them out, so you can't drive even near it. To anchor the antenna, they had to get a host of cement trucks to come in and put a footing down, 40 by 40 feet wide and 12 solid feet deep. The antenna is fully rotatable, sitting on a gargantuan ring bearing that can be turned to point in any direction, beaming shortwave radio signals to any continent on Earth.

Allan Weiner: Oh, I hear the motors.

Host Katie Thornton: There it goes.

Allan Weiner: Oh, there it goes. There it goes. Quite something.

Host Katie Thornton: That's wild. Oh my goodness. It's like watching a skyscraper spin.

Allan Weiner: Yes, but listen to it. It's like a fine watch. They're going to the UK now. I think this is the only privately owned 500 kilowatter in the world. Because most of the 500 kilowatters that I know are either owned by the Catholic Church, the Vatican, or governments. By the time we got done with it, it could cost about $8 million. Was it $8 million? Yes, I think it was $8 million.

Host Katie Thornton: Wow. Sure. When the windfall came, WBCQ also got a bespoke new studio and transmitter building outfitted with an apartment for a live-in engineer. People in the shortwave world had one question. Who paid for this? How did WBCQ, with their transmitters in falling-down shacks and a broadcast studio in a single-wide trailer, become a swanky, world-class, enormously high-powered shortwave station? It turns out Allan's new backer was a group called World's Last Chance.

WBCQ Announcer: This is WBCQ, bringing World's Last Chance radio to you from Monticello, Maine, USA.

Host Katie Thornton: They're an ultra-conservative Christian End Times Ministry, and they preach, among other things, that the Earth is flat.

Christian End Times Minister 1: We are talking flat Earth. In the Bible, the Earth is flat, and God tells you so.

Host Katie Thornton: World's Last Chance was started in 2004 by an Egyptian cosmetics and food magnate turned religious leader named Galal Doss. At first, even Allan didn't think World's Last Chance was on the level.

Allan Weiner: They came to us, but they wanted a superpower. "We really want to be with your station because you're free speech." I said, "Well, we can get you on the air. It's 50 kilowatts, blah blah blah." They said, "No, we don't want that. We want more power." I said, "Well, how much more power?" "At least 500,000 watts." I said, "We'd have to build that, and we'd have to charge you for it and all that. That's millions of dollars, you know what I mean." They said, "Fine." Well, that afternoon, they wired me $30,000. I said, "Okay, these people are serious."

Host Katie Thornton: Some of what the ministry preaches is just downright strange or really in the weeds about doctrine.

Christian End Times Minister 2: Cosmologies and cosmogonies.

Christian End Times Minister 3: Scholars have always known the truth, but it's been hidden.

Host Katie Thornton: For a while, World's Last Chance believed that Pope John Paul II was going to come back as the Antichrist.

Christian End Times Minister 3: Shocking truth emerges.

Host Katie Thornton: They also follow a strange combination Luni-Solar Calendar, not the Gregorian calendar, so their Sabbath falls on different days from week to week.

Christian End Times Minister 3: That Yahushua could not have been crucified on a Friday and most certainly was not resurrected on a Sunday, so we've got a conundrum.

Host Katie Thornton: In 2018, they took out full-page text-only ads in places like People Magazine and USA Today, saying demons were going to come to Earth disguised as aliens to deceive Christians, but other things they broadcast have more clear overlap with the conspiratorial right. They are staunchly anti-establishment, especially since COVID.

Christian End Times Minister 3: Well, let's be honest. We shouldn't be surprised that the church has failed to stand up to government dictates. The closer we get to the end, the more the fallen churches will spout the serpent's agenda.

Host Katie Thornton: They even link their flat Earth beliefs not just to extreme biblical literalism, but to their anti-globalist agenda.

Christian End Times Minister 2: The only kind of circumnavigation which could not happen on a flat Earth is north-southbound. Both the North Pole and Antarctica are military-enforced no-fly and no-sail zones due to restrictions originating from none other than the United Nations.

Host Katie Thornton: World's Last Chance is very dubious, but it's not exactly a cult. Though they do sometimes encourage their members to quit their jobs to dedicate themselves to the ministry, they don't appear to take money from their followers. They've never had what they refer to as an earthly headquarters, as in no sketchy farm. They say their members are spread literally over the four corners of the world.

They bill themselves as a web-based ministry, and they have this janky website that looks straight out of the early Internet. We're talking retrofuturistic graphics and pictorial backdrops with text-heavy blocks, and a left-hand column of like 40 hyperlinks. If World's Last Chance's website is less than convincing, their shortwave radio broadcast is top-tier. It's super listenable, well-produced, and among the slickest broadcasts on American shortwave today.

Allan will be the first to tell you it's the religious programming that pays the bills. World's Last Chance's doomsday ministering is the key to it all. The ministry's payments more or less bankroll WBCQ's original operation, all the other frequencies with the free speech programs that still roll in at $50 a pop.

Allan Weiner: Well, all right, what's on the air now? This is on the air. [MUSIC] That's on the air. Radio Trump International is on the air.

President Trump: The polls came out.

Host Katie Thornton: Radio Trump International was one of Allan and Angela's shows, which they ran leading up to the 2024 election.

Allan Weiner: We're Trump supporters, we are, and we've decided to take one of our channels, 5130, and we broadcast Radio Trump International 24 hours a day because we can.

Host Katie Thornton: Having a backer like World's Last Chance has also made it easier for Allan to keep broadcasting people like brother R.G. Stair, a man he and Angela came to consider a friend.

Allan Weiner: What the government did to the beautiful people at the Overcomer, they raided the place like it was a Ruby Ridge.

Host Katie Thornton: Allan and Angela told me they don't believe the well-documented allegations of sexual assault.

Allan Weiner: A bunch of farmers, a bunch of cattle-raising-

Angela: God-fearing Christians.

Allan Weiner: -goat-raising Christian people tilling the soil, and they pretty much went in there and terrorized everyone.

Host Katie Thornton: Stair is dead now. He died in 2021 while awaiting trial, but his followers still live at the compound, and they still send the preacher's reruns to Allan to broadcast around the world all day, every day.

Allan Weiner: Brother Stair, he helped us keep BCQ on the air, expand, and I always promised that we would keep him on the air no matter what, even if they didn't have money.

Host Katie Thornton: Allan knows that a lot of people would have considered him liberal in his early years. He knows that in some people's eyes, he's made a shocking transformation from his days as a peacenik rock and roll pirate. For Allan's part, he says that his philosophy is the same as today, as it's always been: that people need to hear even the most hateful speech so that they can understand it and resist it.

Allan Weiner: My political science professor used to say that if you let things fester in the dark, they will fester and grow, but if you shine the light on them, the light will help expunge it and bring it out so people can say, "Hey, this is wrong. We don't agree with this. You shouldn't do this." That, to us, is the whole point.

Host Katie Thornton: Were you all concerned about having those voices on the air, that it could lead to harm?

Allan Weiner: Well, we were, but we felt people need to have a right to know. It's shedding light. You really got to shed the light.

Host Katie Thornton: I don't think that whole shedding the light thing really worked. Several of the hosts Allan has been running on WBCQ since the early days are still spewing racist, violent rhetoric, like Hal Turner. Even though Allan says that Hal's toned it down since his days advocating that people kill immigrants, Hal's still on WBCQ five days a week, and anyway, Allan says, Hal's show gets you thinking.

Allan Weiner: He gets you thinking. He gets you thinking. Without being specific.

Host Katie Thornton: Here's Allan with Angela on their radio show just last month, recycling tired critiques of rap music.

Allan Weiner: There are some cultures, and maybe even races, that are steeped in violence and proud of it.

Angela: The kind of music, I believe it makes people angry.

Allan Weiner: Nasty. Free speech, peace, love, and understanding. We talk about those things.

Angela: Yes, but the understanding has gone too damn far. Whoops. Too, too far.

Allan Weiner: Too far.

Angela: It has.

Allan Weiner: In some ways, yes.

Angela: The understanding kind of just gone too far because everything in the world except for the Love of God [crosstalk]

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Host Katie Thornton: In some ways, Allan's transformation is not that remarkable. There are plenty of hippies who aged into libertarians or right-wingers, and it's not surprising that a lot of these guys use free speech as a cover for people to say whatever they want without any regard for truth or for consequences. To me, though, the remarkable part of Allan's story is that with shortwave, he's been able to get these hateful voices out to the far reaches of the globe.

No board, no meaningful oversight from the FCC. Just him at his discretion. Thanks in part to Allan Weiner, the demonstrably false, fatalistic, and paranoid programming of World's Last Chance, the hateful rhetoric of Hal Turner, the cultist preachings of R.G. Stair, that's a huge part of what shortwave listeners around the world hear as the voice of American broadcasting, and people are hearing this stuff almost every day. Allan gets letters or emails from listeners around the country and around the planet.

Allan Weiner: Just got one from China. It came in this morning. Yes, on email. They picked up the station. They really liked the programming.

Host Katie Thornton: Wow. This one came in from Australia. "Dear Sir, Madam, hope you had a nice Christmas holiday. This year, I have Christmas alone, but listening to your program makes me happy."

Allan Weiner: From Antwerp Network, "Signal was nice and clear."

Host Katie Thornton: They have New York, Philadelphia, Australia.

Allan Weiner: We've got a bunch of Russian listeners, too, and here's one from Buffalo, New York, in Antarctica at the Scientific. "Dear Sir, on Saturday, September 23rd."

Host Katie Thornton: People are still coming to Allan for a platform, too. Within an hour of my first arriving at WBCQ, Allan's phone rang.

Allan Weiner: Nowhere. [phone ringing] We pay attention to light.

Host Katie Thornton: Yes, okay, here, go ahead.

Allan Weiner: Hello?

Host Katie Thornton: As he disappeared out the door, I could hear Allan explaining his simple, well-worn policy to the shortwave curious caller. "Free Speech Radio. Yes, we'll get you on the air. It's $50 an hour."

Preacher: As the Lord restores and refreshes you.

Host Katie Thornton: WBCQ is just one station. There are about a dozen privately run shortwave stations operating out of the US today, and they're on almost all owned or operated by religious groups, mostly the Christian right. There's one station out of Tennessee that seems to still mostly play sermons by Pete Peters. He was the white supremacist preacher you heard last episode who helped bring together the far reaches of the right in the 1990s.

Like R.G. Stair, he's dead now, too, though you wouldn't know it on shortwave. While these fanatical voices might be some of the loudest on shortwave radio today, there are at least some shortwave listeners who want something else. We know because we asked.

WNYC Caller: Hello, to the people at WNYC.

Host Katie Thornton: For several months, we've been running this show, On the Media, on WRMI. It's a shortwave station out of Florida and one of the few that isn't owned by a religious group, and in the breaks, we've been asking people to get in touch to tell us about their shortwave experience.

Interviewee 1: As a little boy, I'd often wanted to tell my mom and dad about something that they didn't read about until the next day in the paper when it broke.

Interviewee 2: I was a Peace Corps volunteer, first in Micronesia, then in Sri Lanka. I listened to shortwave radio during both tours, and I have listened to shortwave radio ever since.

Interviewee 3: There's something about tuning through the static and landing on real broadcasts from halfway across the world that just feels cool.

Host Katie Thornton: We did get emails from people all over the world, but for the most part, the voicemails we received were from North Americans, and over and over again, they told us the same thing: shortwave is a way to get out of your media bubble, to get out of the US and Western-centric news cycle.

Interviewee 3: It's a way to stay connected to the world, hear different perspectives.

Interviewee 2: I regularly listen to Radio Dabanga out of Sudan.

Interviewee 4: I love shortwave because of what it offers to people. The ability to freely access information, no matter where you are in the world.

Host Katie Thornton: Often, they said the broadcasts they hear most don't represent what they love about the medium.

Interviewee 5: What do you have today? Mostly, you've got a lot of religion.

Interviewee 6: Unfortunately, TN shortwave radio, I feel just too much religious programming.

Interviewee 5: These days, it falls into two categories: Christian preaching and far-right political talk radio-type programming. I don't really like any of that.

Interviewee 4: Thank you for broadcasting your program.

Interviewee 7: I did enjoy listening to your program a couple of evenings ago.

Interviewee 1: That's the kind of content we need today on radio, period, let alone shortwave radio.

Interviewee 8: There's been a welcome change of content versus the typical religion and talk radio that you hear on shortwave.

Interviewee 6: You have the freedom to do that, but we don't have a lot of cultural programming anymore on shortwave radio.

Interviewee 4: I don't always agree with your political views, but I still thought it was a very, very cool thing to find you guys. In fact, it made me appreciate the whole thing even more.

Host Katie Thornton: Next time on The Divided Dial, it turns out, on these hollowed-out frequencies, pirate broadcasters have been hijacking the airwaves in droves with a more idealistic vision for shortwave, but that vision is getting pushback from a very unlikely source, not the Federal Communications Commission, but a handful of finance bros, who want to wrestle the airwaves away from the public.

Allan Weiner: Who would have thought that shortwave is now fabulously valuable to Wall Street? The fact is, now Wall Street is deeply invested in it, so the question is, what is the FCC going to do about all of this?

Host Katie Thornton: On the final episode of this season, it's the battle playing out right now for our shortwaves between the pirates and the profiteers. The Divided Dial is written and reported by me, Katie Thornton, and edited by OTM's executive producer, Katya Rogers. Music and sound design is by Jared Paul. Jennifer Munson is our technical director. Fact-checking by Graham Haysha.

This series is made possible in part with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Special thanks this week to documentarian Joe Lewis for talking with us about his time at the Overcomer. Special thanks, enormous thanks, to everyone who responded to our callout on WRMI. It was great to hear back from the shortwaves. We'll catch you next week.

Micah Loewinger: That's it for the midweek podcast. On the big show this weekend, I'll be taking a look at the consumer conspiracy theorists within the Trump administration who are now tasked with holding the MAGA media at bay. In the meantime, consider following the show on Blue Sky, Instagram, and TikTok. Just search "On the Media." I'm Micah Loewinger.

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