Shortwave Radio Receiver

My grandfather's shortwave radio is a brown plastic box with a metal antenna that telescopes out to about 3 feet. You turn a dial slowly through bands of static until a voice emerges from somewhere far away. Using it feels like fishing because you never know what you'll pull in. The tuning knob has a resistance to it that rewards patience, a slight friction making you inch past each frequency rather than spinning through them. When you land on a clear signal, the static drops away like parting a curtain. He used to listen to BBC World Service broadcasts in the evenings. I found the radio in a closet after he passed, still tuned to the last frequency he was listening to. The speaker is small and tinny. Audio quality is objectively terrible compared to any podcast app on my phone. But the sound traveled thousands of miles through the atmosphere and arrived in my room through an antenna pointed at the ceiling. That gives it a physical presence streaming doesn't have. I plug it in sometimes at night and just turn the dial.