Coded music

Summary

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Click Here – "Coded music" (February 6, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this episode of "Click Here," host Dina Temple-Raston and reporter Karen Duffin tell the riveting, little-known story of four American musicians who, during the Cold War, undertook a secret mission to Soviet Russia. Their goal: connect with a clandestine group of Jewish dissident musicians known as the Phantom Orchestra, gather their stories amidst constant KGB surveillance, and smuggle those stories out—encoded in music. The episode blends suspense, ingenuity, and the enduring power of imagination, revealing how music became both a shield and a secret language of resistance under totalitarian rule.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A Mission Inspired by Defiance and Imagination (00:02-02:41)

• Theme: The power of imaginative resistance in oppressive systems.
• Context: The Soviet Union, 1985—where state surveillance was omnipresent, and information flow was tightly controlled.
• Key Quote:

  "This is a story about people who didn't have political power or weapons or leverage. They had something else. They had music and a willingness to do something that felt, even to them, a little reckless."
  —Dina Temple-Raston (01:25)

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2. The Secret: Musicians as Couriers (05:03-06:47)

• The Setup: Meryl Goldberg, Henkas Netsky, and fellow musicians travel to Moscow under the guise of a cultural exchange.
• First Obstacle: Upon landing, immediate KGB scrutiny.
  • Quote:

    "We land in Moscow and we get off the plane and people are talking in little microphones and we think, oh, oh."
    —Meryl Goldberg (05:37)

• Their True Mission: To meet, document, and help publicize the stories of the Phantom Orchestra—Jewish refusenik musicians banned from performing due to their desire to emigrate.

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3. Concealing Stories in Music: Crafting the Code (10:03-12:42)

• Strategic Hiding: Paper records of names and addresses were too risky, so Meryl drew inspiration from WWII resistance fighter Josephine Baker, who smuggled secrets in sheet music.
• Music as Cipher:
  • Familiar notes A–G were mapped to letters, then completed the alphabet with chromatics (sharps/flats), allowing them to encode full messages.
  • Quote:

    "Just creating a code in music would be the easiest way to go about this."
    —Meryl Goldberg (02:41, reiterated 11:26)

• Demonstration: Meryl plays a snippet on saxophone that decoded to a contact’s name. (12:18-12:30)

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4. Playing Cat-and-Mouse with the KGB (13:12-14:55)

• Constant Surveillance: Their hotel rooms were bugged, KGB trailed them in cars.
  • Memorable Moment:

    "We'd walk up the street and the last car on the block would flash its lights... then the first car on the next block would flash its lights."
    —Henkas Netsky (13:53)

• Small Acts of Defiance: Trolling their minders with off-key Russian folk tunes, for example.

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5. Contact and Camaraderie: Meeting the Phantom Orchestra (14:55-21:05)

• Reaching Out: After a tense journey, they make contact with Issei Goldstein, directed there by coded directions in Meryl’s sheet music.
  • Quote:

    "I had the directions to their apartment actually encoded in my music."
    —Meryl Goldberg (14:20)

• Mutual Understanding: Despite laughs at their espionage inexperience, the Goldstein brothers welcome the Americans.
• Shared Vigilance:
  • Quote:

    "There were four cars he pointed to. He said, these are all KGB."
    —Henkas Netsky (15:14)

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6. The Secret Concert: Music as Freedom (19:34-21:30)

• Profound Connection: In a cramped Soviet apartment, the Americans and Phantom Orchestra musicians play together—music being a momentary escape from oppression.
  • Quote:

    "Playing music was the time when, in their brains, they could be totally, 100% free. When we played together, we were free."
    —Meryl Goldberg (20:41)

• Notable Song: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” plays as a universal anthem of hope.
  • Quote:

    "Probably the most profound music-making I have ever in my entire life made."
    —Meryl Goldberg (21:30)

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7. Encoded Escape & Aftermath (22:18-25:03)

• Smuggling Stories: Overnight, the Americans encoded everything learned into music to take home.
  • Philosophy:

    "It was really important to get stories out there. It means you exist and other people know you exist. If your story is never told, it's like it hasn't happened."
    —Meryl Goldberg (22:33)

• Final Test: At the airport, the KGB search their bags but overlook the coded sheet music.
  • Quote:

    "And then they just hand it right back to me. Oh, it was just really fantastic."
    —Meryl Goldberg (23:47)

• Advocacy Back Home: They share the musicians’ stories widely, organizing concerts and petitions. Within two years, many of the Phantom Orchestra members are allowed to leave the USSR.
  • Meryl on Courage:

    "You know, the powers that be try to suppress you... but you're going to be in trouble if you don't speak up. So really, for me, the only choice is to speak up."
    —Meryl Goldberg (25:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Description | |---|---|---| | 01:25 | Dina Temple-Raston | "Some of the most effective acts of defiance begin... not with force, but with something even more powerful. Imagination." | | 05:37 | Meryl Goldberg | "We land in Moscow and we get off the plane and people are talking in little microphones and we think, oh, oh." | | 11:26 | Meryl Goldberg | "Just creating a code in music would be the easiest, easiest way to go about this." | | 14:20 | Meryl Goldberg | "I had the directions to their apartment actually encoded in my music." | | 15:14 | Henkas Netsky | "There were four cars he pointed to. He said, these are all KGB." | | 20:41 | Meryl Goldberg | "Playing music was the time when, in their brains, they could be totally, 100% free. When we played together, we were free." | | 21:30 | Meryl Goldberg | "'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' touched us in a way that I hadn't been touched before... Probably the most profound music-making I have ever in my entire life made." | | 23:47 | Meryl Goldberg | "And then they just hand it right back to me. Oh, it was just really fantastic." | | 25:03 | Meryl Goldberg | "You're going to be in trouble if you don't speak up. So really, for me, the only choice is to speak up." |

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Structured Timeline & Timestamps

• Opening Theme & Episode Framing - 00:02
• Mission Context & Recruitment - 05:03
• KGB Scrutiny at Moscow Arrival - 05:37
• Origins of the Phantom Orchestra - 06:47
• Why Musical Code? Inspiration from Josephine Baker - 10:03
• How the Music Cipher Worked - 11:26
• Life Under Surveillance, Small Acts of Defiance - 13:12-14:09
• Tracking Down the Goldsteins with Encoded Notes - 14:20
• Meeting the Phantom Orchestra - 14:55-15:19
• Secret Concert: Musical Solidarity - 19:34-21:30
• Night of Encoding the Stories - 22:18
• Airport Interrogation, Code Remains Undetected - 23:07-23:47
• Aftermath and the Power of Telling Stories - 24:11-25:22

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Takeaways & Reflections

• Resistance through Art: Even without traditional power or weapons, defiance can manifest in creative, unexpected forms—in this case, through music.
• Courage under Surveillance: The episode makes clear the constant dangers for both visitors and dissidents, highlighting the small acts of bravery required each step of the way.
• Legacy: The coded music didn’t just convey secrets—it saved lives, aided global advocacy, and eventually helped bring about real change.

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Closing Reflections (25:22-27:00)

Dina Temple-Raston closes by reflecting on the enduring question raised by the story:

"When a system decides who gets to exist and who gets to be heard, what do you do with the tools you already have?"
The episode leaves listeners considering their own power—imaginative or otherwise—in the face of injustice.

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This summary encapsulates the main themes, chronologically traces the action, includes powerful quotations, and highlights both the strategic ingenuity and emotional stakes of a mission where music became both code and hope.

Transcript

[Dena Temple Rastin]

From recorded future news and prx, this is click here. Hey there, it's Dena. For the past month or so, something a little different has been happening around here. You may have noticed it in the stories we're choosing. Click Here has taken a step out of the podcast world and we're returning to our roots. Radio. We're now a one hour, once a week national show on public radio, which means what you're hearing isn't a preview. It is the show. Same curiosity, same reporting, but with some new voices from the team and some brand new investigations that we haven't done before. If this feels like the kind of show you want to listen to on your local station, you can help make that happen. Tell your local NPR station to add Click Here to their schedule because the more places this show lands, the more stories we can tell. We really appreciate your support. You're the reason we've been able to expand the show and broaden the audience. So thank you. It means a lot. And here's this week's episode. There's a moment that comes before resistance looks heroic. Before the slogans, before the crowds start to gather, before anyone knows a story is even unfolding. It's the moment when someone realizes the system isn't working the way it should be. And instead of shouting, they look sideways. They notice the gaps, the workarounds, the places where power isn't paying close attention. That's where some of the most effective acts of defiance begin. Not with force, but with something even more powerful. Imagination. This is a story about people who didn't have political power or weapons or leverage. They had something else. They had music and a willingness to do something that felt, even to them, a little reckless.

[Meryl Goldberg]

So when he asked me, oh, my first reaction I think was, that sounds crazy cool. I'm in.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

I'm Dena Temple Rastin, and this is Click Here. We tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. This week, Karen Duffin takes us back to the Soviet Union in 1985, to a time when information didn't travel freely, when surveillance was constant, and when four American musicians decided to use the one thing the system didn't quite know, how to control. Music.

[Meryl Goldberg]

I remember thinking, we're musicians. Just creating a code in music would be the easiest way to go about this.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

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[Karen Duffin]

Merrill Goldberg was a conservatory student in Boston during the height of the Cold War. Her days revolved around her saxophone rehearsal rooms and the warm, familiar rhythm of the music she loved so much. But in 1985, Meryl found herself 4,000 miles from home, anxious and unsettled, stepping off a plane in Moscow. She was on a secret mission, so secret that not even the American government knew the real reason that she and her musician friends were there.

[Meryl Goldberg]

Yeah, so we land in Moscow and we get off the plane and people are talking in little microphones and we think, oh, oh.

[Karen Duffin]

Because the Soviet authorities seem to be expecting them. She was there with a fellow musician named Henkas Netsky.

[Henkas Netsky]

And they told us to get our luggage but not go anywhere to bring the luggage into the, I guess, interrogation room.

[Meryl Goldberg]

We were flagged, there's no question about it.

[Henkas Netsky]

And sit with an agent.

[Meryl Goldberg]

They start going through everything, and I mean absolutely everything, and opening up every single thing we have, which was a.

[Karen Duffin]

Problem because buried in that luggage was something they didn't want the Soviets to find. If they did, Meryl and Henkes would be sent home, or worse, because Their visa application said that they were part of a cultural exchange, a musical exchange. But that was just their cover. The real mission. They were there to track down members of a secret musical ensemble known as the Phantom Orchestra.

[Meryl Goldberg]

They were called the Phantom Orchestra because they had to play somewhat in secret, right? So if they had gone out and decided, oh, we're going to play in the park, they would have been picked up and arrested.

[Karen Duffin]

These local musicians weren't just performers. They were what was called refuseniks. Soviet Jews who had applied to leave the country. And in Soviet Russia, wanting to leave the country marked you as a traitor to the state.

[Meryl Goldberg]

Most of them had already been either imprisoned or beat up or had a lot of issues already.

[Karen Duffin]

Word of these musicians plight had been passed through Jewish communities around the world and eventually reached Meryl and her musician friends in Boston.

[Meryl Goldberg]

So we first heard of the Phantom Orchestra through the network of people who were working in the 80s, trying to help people escape from the Soviet Union.

[Karen Duffin]

For Meryl, the poll was immediate, not just because she was a fellow musician, but because she was also Jewish. Her ensemble actually specialized in Jewish folk music.

[Meryl Goldberg]

The actual ask was to go over to the Soviet Union in secret, essentially, and meet with refuseniks, mostly, you know, focus in on the Phantom Orchestra members and to basically go in, find out information about what they were doing, who they were, how they wanted their stories to get out.

[Karen Duffin]

Their plan was simple. Gather the musicians stories and share them with the world.

[Meryl Goldberg]

In the 80s. At that time, the more publicity a refusenik or dissident had, the more protection they would have from being imprisoned or beaten up or whatever would happen to them. But if the west knew about them, they had a better shot at getting out.

[Karen Duffin]

And most people would look at an issue like this and figure there's just nothing an ordinary person could do. But Meryl and her friends looked at their skills and they decided actually they could make a difference, even if it was a small one.

[Meryl Goldberg]

So when he asked me, oh, my first reaction I think was, that sounds crazy cool. I'm in.

[Karen Duffin]

Saying yes, of course, was the easy part. What came next was harder. Get into the Soviet Union, slip past the kgb, find these members of the Phantom Orchestra, collect their stories, and smuggle them out without getting caught. Four musicians against the kgb. And to help them prepare, they turn to a nonprofit called the Action for Soviet Jewry.

[Meryl Goldberg]

We had to have several months of, I would say, kind of a learning curve and. And figuring out how we would go in without giving up who we were.

[Karen Duffin]

And for weeks, they sat in the locked Back room of the nonprofit getting trained on what to do when they were inevitably followed or bugged. They also learned how to slip a tail, how to handle an interrogation. And then there was this one other tiny problem.

[Meryl Goldberg]

You can't just walk into the Soviet Union with a list of names and numbers of people who you know are theoretically on their bad list. You need to hide this.

[Karen Duffin]

They needed a way to not just collect the stories, but also hide them and smuggle them out of the country. And as they puzzled over how to do this, Beryl suddenly remembered another moment in history, another time when a musician became a spy. Josephine Baker.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

I'm the frost one.

[Josephine Baker (historical reference)]

We need the Dixie Sun.

[Karen Duffin]

That's her singing. Josephine Baker was an American who became a celebrity in Paris. A singer, a dancer, a bon vivant in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, she was famous for walking her pet cheetah down the Champs Elysees. And When World War II came around, she became something else. A resistance fighter. Or to put a finer point on it, a spy. She'd sing at parties, chat up important people, and then take what she learned about things like troop movement and supply lines and smuggle it out of occupied France by writing messages in invisible ink on sheet music. And Meryl thought, maybe we could do something a bit like that by turning music into code.

[Meryl Goldberg]

I remember thinking, we're musicians. Just creating a code in music would be the easiest, easiest way to go about this.

[Karen Duffin]

Musical notes, of course, have letters assigned to them. A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. But that only got her partway through the Alphabet.

[Meryl Goldberg]

You know, with the regular notes, you only have A through G. So she.

[Karen Duffin]

Turned to what's called chromatics. These are half steps, essentially sharps and.

[Meryl Goldberg]

Flats, and using different notes, where I figured out all 26.

[Karen Duffin]

And with that, she could encode names, addresses, entire stories into sheet music. Secret messages hidden in plain sight.

[Meryl Goldberg]

So if someone knew music, they'd look at it and they'd think, huh, that's modern music.

[Karen Duffin]

Meryl picked up her saxophone.

[Meryl Goldberg]

I'll play a little bit for you.

[Karen Duffin]

There's actually a dissident's name coded inside those notes.

[Meryl Goldberg]

This one was intro to a new person that they wanted us to meet who was a musician, and it was for someone in Moscow.

[Karen Duffin]

So they had their code, and now they had to execute their plan. They would land in Moscow, make their way south to Georgia, which was still part of the Soviet Union at the time, and find members of the Phantom Orchestra, which is how Merrell Goldberg, Hank Osnetsky, and two other Musicians found themselves at the airport in Moscow being interrogated by the authorities. Once they got to the hotel, it was clear that the KGB was not finished with them.

[Meryl Goldberg]

We knew that the rooms were bugged. We could actually see the microphones. That was a no brainer. We can see little microphones like one near the phone, you know, it was, it, it was kind of obvious.

[Karen Duffin]

Strangely, that ended up being useful. At one point, they mentioned kind of casually to each other that the sink in their room was leaking.

[Henkas Netsky]

And then when we got back from dinner, the sink was fixed. So that's how closely we were being monitored.

[Karen Duffin]

So they started trolling their minders. Like they'd play Russian folk songs, but like slightly off key just to annoy them. But when they went outside, the KGB would follow them there too.

[Henkas Netsky]

We would walk up the street and the last car on the block would flash its lights and then we'd cross the street and then the first car on the next block would flash its lights and then the same thing would happen on the next block.

[Karen Duffin]

And then after a few days, they took the leap. They decided to try to track down the first member of the Phantom Orchestra, Issei Goldstein.

[Meryl Goldberg]

I had the directions to their apartment actually encoded in my music. And that's how we remembered how to get there.

[Karen Duffin]

They used their evasion training, ducking down alleyways, splitting into pairs, jumping on and off subways at random.

[Meryl Goldberg]

We're all going to get on the subway and then we're all going to get off and Rosie and I are going to jump back on.

[Karen Duffin]

They did this for hours until finally they found themselves standing at the Goldstein's apartment, who had no idea they were coming or who they even were. They knocked and held their breath.

[Henkas Netsky]

Esai Goldstein opened the door.

[Meryl Goldberg]

You know, first thing we say is, you know, we're being, we, we think we've outwitted them, but you know, we've been interrogated. Tell us if you want us just to turn around and go away.

[Karen Duffin]

Issei waved them inside. Then his brother Gregory walked to the window.

[Henkas Netsky]

There were four cars he pointed to. He said, these are all kgb.

[Meryl Goldberg]

And they laughed at us like, of course you're being followed. And please come in because it's way more important for you to come in. We need you to visit. We need you to tell our story.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

That was Karen Duffin. And when we come back, Karen tells us about a secret concert with a phantom orchestra.

[Meryl Goldberg]

Probably the most profound music making I have ever, ever in my entire life made.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

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[Osvar Loschen]

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[Cara Price]

Suddenly it seems like the very existence of AI is changing everything, including our relationships.

[Karen Duffin]

I would like to think that I could not fall in love with an AI companion, but I really think that anybody could.

[Osvar Loschen]

I'm Osvar Loschen.

[Cara Price]

And I'm Cara Price.

[Osvar Loschen]

We break down the tech news you really need to know. Listen to tech stuff in the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Your podcast you're listening to, Click here. I'm Dina Temple Raster. In the Soviet Union, asking to leave wasn't just about paperwork. It was a test of loyalty. And if you failed it, the system didn't arrest you right away. It did something more efficient. It froze you out. That's where the Goldstein brothers were in 1985. Musicians whose careers had been shut down, whose movements were restricted, and whose names were already known to the state. That's where Karen Duffin picks up the story.

[Karen Duffin]

The Goldstein brothers were not surprised by the surveillance. They lived inside it every hour, every day. The surprise for them was that anyone had shown up at all. They led Meryl Hankes and the others into a small living room, instruments stacked in the corner, sheet music piled on a desk. They talked about the orchestra, about being barred from performing, about friends who tried to leave and paid the price for it. It was a remarkable scene, really. At any moment, someone could burst in, take them all into custody, or worse. And yet here they all were, four Americans sitting in a Soviet dissident's living room. Because the people with the real power to help were incoming. Over the course of the evening, members of the Phantom Orchestra showed up one by one. And after Merrill and Henkes collected their stories, the musicians, Soviets and Americans alike, reached for their instruments, slipping into the language. They all understood music.

[Meryl Goldberg]

So for the people there who had so much courage and, you know, were constantly battling, you know, whatever was going to happen to them for their activism, playing music was the time when, in their brains, they could be totally, 100% free. When we played together, we were free.

[Karen Duffin]

This is an actual recording of the Phantom Orchestra. For one night in the thick of the Cold War, in a cramped Soviet apartment, American and Soviet musicians played together. They played klezmer music, that Jewish folk music Meryl and her ensemble knew so well. They played traditional songs, and then they played a song that crossed every cultural boundary.

[Meryl Goldberg]

I think Somewhere over the Rainbow touched us in a way that I hadn't been touched before. And I think, because, first of all, it's a beautiful tune in and of itself musically, but also the whole feeling of the song Somewhere over the Rainbow and the hope in that. I remember just being transported, that it was this feeling, perhaps of amazement, of relief, of immediate camaraderie. Probably the most profound music Making I have ever in my entire life made.

[Karen Duffin]

The night ended, and they said their goodbyes. And then the Americans returned to the hotel, where they stayed up until the late hours, translating every name, every address, every moment into their secret musical code.

[Meryl Goldberg]

It was really important to get stories out there. It means you exist and other people know you exist. If your story is never told, it's like it hasn't happened.

[Karen Duffin]

Once they were done, they collapsed into sleep, only to be jolted awake just a few hours later. They were ordered to report immediately to the hotel office. The Soviet authorities told them they knew about the visit to the Phantom Orchestra and they were not happy about it.

[Meryl Goldberg]

And then tell us that we're flying back to Moscow. And they drove us for what seemed to be like hours and hours. And I thought, oh, man, now they're really going to do it. They're going to lock us up.

[Karen Duffin]

Instead, they were taken to the airport, not imprisoned, but expelled. But there was one last test. Their luggage was seized and searched. Suitcases filled with all of that precious, encoded sheet music. Meryl held her breath, kept her gaze steady. And then.

[Meryl Goldberg]

And then they just hand it right back to me. Oh, it was just really fantastic.

[Karen Duffin]

They quickly repacked their bags, and they were marched onto a waiting plane. Back home, they kept their promise. They told the Phantom Orchestra's story in living rooms, in synagogues, on stages, at press conferences. Here's Meryl speaking. Back then, it didn't feel like we.

[Meryl Goldberg]

Were anywhere except in our own world of great music making of great people. And we certainly learned that for all the courage in the world that we could have imagined, we found it. And people like these men and people like the.

[Karen Duffin]

They organized concerts, created petitions, they lobbied American officials. And in the end, the pressure worked. Two years later, many of the musicians they met were finally allowed to leave the Soviet Union. The thing is, none of this was inevitable. It would have been easy to say they were just powerless. But instead, Meryl and her friends took stock of their skills. They found their courage and acted.

[Meryl Goldberg]

You know, the powers that be try to suppress you. Try to say, if you speak up, you're going to get in trouble. You know what? You're going to be in trouble if you don't speak up. So really, for me, the only choice is to speak up.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

That was Karen Duffin. The technology has changed since 1985. The surveillance is quieter, the borders are more digital. But the question is the same. When a system decides who gets to exist and who gets to move and who gets heard, what do you do with the tools you already have. I'm Dena Temple Rastin and this is Click Here. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Today's show was written and produced by Megan Dietrich, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch and Casey Giorgi. It was edited by Karen Duffin and Sarah Covedo and Fact Checked by Darren Ancrum. Original music is by Ben Levingston with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, our illustrator is Megan Gough, and our sound designers and engineers are Jake Cook and Jesse Niswonger. Find us on X or Facebook at click here show or leave us a voice message at 661-5CHTalk. Sometimes we'll turn those moments into reporting, sometimes into a conversation, and sometimes into a future story you'll hear on this show. I'm Dena Temple Raston and thanks for listening. Before we go, if you're curious about what a Click Here radio show sounds like, we're now a one hour, once a week show airing on public radio stations across the country. You can check whether your local NPR station is carrying it. Over 80 stations have already picked it up. And as always, if there's a question you can't stop thinking about, a story you believe hasn't been fully told, or if there's something in the digital world that just doesn't sit right with you, let us know. You can find us on X or Facebook at click here show. You can leave us a voicemail at 6615CH talk. That's 6615CH talk. Or email [e-mail] Sometimes those messages will turn into reporting, sometimes maybe into a conversation, and sometimes into future stories you'll hear right here. In fact, if you send us something today, there's a good chance it could be shaping tomorrow's show. And finally, we want to pause for a moment to say thank you. Your support is why the show keeps growing and why these stories keep finding new listeners. And it means a lot to the Click Here team.

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