Amateur or "ham" radio is a many-faceted hobby. It's more than just chatting to friends in far places. Today, amateur operators have their own space communication satellites, bounce signals off the moon, talk to astronauts, exchange television transmissions, send balloons to the edge of space, and experiment with new forms of digital communications.
An electromagnetic field moving across a conductor causes an electrical current to flow. That's the basis of radio. Nowadays, "radio" usually means a complex device -- and how it works is often a mystery. The "Xtal" or "Crystal" Set Society takes radio back to its bare essentials. That radio signal moving across a conductor -- or antenna -- does, indeed, cause a current to flow. And that moving current can be transformed into sound with a very, very, few components. In its most basic form, I have created a receiver with a single diode and a pair of headphones. The Xtal Set Society is not only for people who are interested in building simple, yet clever, devices for coaxing a bit of energy out of thin air and turning it into the sound of music, but also for those fascinated with the historical roots of broadcast radio. It is amazing what can be accomplished with ingenuity, $3.00 in parts, and a length of wire.
Something is not quite right about Shakespeare. The greatest poet of the English language left only six very poor signatures. In an age of diary-keepers, no one ever records having so much as having dined with him. On his death, he left not a single book to his beneficiaries. His father was illiterate. His children were all illiterates. His son-in-law wrote an autobiography -- without mentioning Shakespeare as a poet. There is no record of him ever attending school of any sort. And if he was a play-writing hack, then why the Sonnets? How could he provide advice on seducing a queen without losing his hand upon the chopping block?
Some scholars advocate Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford as the true author of the plays and poems we know as Shakespeare's. He had the talent and the opportunity. And those of his class had the motive and the power to suppress the knowledge that a nobleman had lowered himself to playwright. Still, in all those same Elizabethan letters and diaries, no one slips up and names Oxford. The references that do exist are too oblique.
As a historian, I'm appalled by what literary scholars construe as "evidence" in support of the man from Stratford. The so-called biographies of the traditional Shakespeare are little more than works of historical fiction. On the other hand, the lack of documentary evidence surrounding the Earl of Oxford readily explains why professional historians avoid the subject like the plague. It is all a first-class mystery.