Last Call: You'll Lose Hours In Radio.garden, A Google Earth For Radio Geeks

I'm a child of the 90s, and many nights were spent under my covers with my shortwave radio. That I could listen to a broadcast halfway around the globe felt astonishing, and brought the world to the four walls of my bedroom (this was a time when America Online was still a novelty).

Fast forward several decades, when someone introduced me to radio.garden. If you've not played with it, you may—like me—find the site a breathtaking experience. The interface is essentially Google Earth, but the data points on the map are local radio stations. One night, I remember laying down in my bed in Chicago, and with a few swipes with my thumb, took a virtual trip east via radio.garden—to a radio station I used to listen to growing up in Toronto, then slowly hearing the voices turn French as I headed east to Quebec, then jumping across the pond to hear the morning chat shows on British radio, and onward through Europe, Central Asia, China, up through Eastern Russia, and back to North America, arriving back home to Illinois. I must have spent 90 minutes lost within radio.garden that night. You may find yourself entranced exploring the world from underneath the covers, too.