Short wave radio :
Was from a time when there was no Internet and no satellite TV. People used to send letter in envelope and stamp to communicate with others.
Only way to get exposed to the big world out there was through short wave radio.
You could listen to foreign languages, news broadcast from a different country. Or Bengali news being broadcast from Iran, Russia, USA or UK.
Way to listen to BBC Bangla news in the 70s and 80s was through shortwave radio. As FM broadcast of these channels wasn't there yet.
TV was limited to local broadcast, as it's range didn't extend beyond the city border. But shortwave could be heard from half the world around.
I used to listen to other broadcast like, morse code tranmission and decode it, or time signals and synchronize my clock with it.
Shortwave radio, now a dead culture was a big part when there weren't anything else.