When I was a child, during the dark ages of communist Romania, long before the internet, I used to pussyfoot into our kitchen after everybody went to bed. Sitting in the dark, I would turn on the radio and then slowly slide up and down the FM dial, and then the AM dial, and finally ‘the magic window to the outside world’: the short wave dial.

I still enjoy taking these radio-dial tours, with equal fascination for the world out there. The cruise is particularly arresting when travelling to a new place, or one visited long ago: an FM trip is a practical way to deep-dive into the local culture.