From the inception of radio in Palestine, the interaction between the technology, its operators, and its listeners was extremely fraught. The development of radio in Palestine was embedded in British colonial attempts to modernize and educate the population and was shaped by the increasing tension between the Zionist and Arab national movements. The first Palestinian radio station, which broadcast in English, Arabic, and Hebrew, was inaugurated by the government only two weeks prior to the eruption of the great Arab revolt in 1936, and hence was received by the listeners with much ambivalence. Radio became more prevalent during the years of the Second World War and the postwar period when listeners attempted to distinguish between propaganda and reliable news. While scholars have studied the development of broadcasting during this period from the side of the transmitters, much less attention was given to the part of the listeners. This paper examines the interaction of Arab Palestinian listeners with radio and the development of listening patterns. Based on a wide range of archival documents, published accounts, and interviews, the paper aims to reconstruct the practice of radio-listening within the daily lives of Arab Palestinians. Radio sets became more prevalent in Palestinian cities and villages from the mid-1930s; they were distributed both by the government and private sellers. However, the size and price of radio sets, and their reliance on electricity or batteries kept them beyond the reach of most Palestinians, and made radio listening a predominantly collective experience. The common practice of listening to the radio in cafés and public spaces broadened the ability of middle- and lower-class men to join the audience, but at the same time excluded women from taking part in this activity, demonstrating how social context impacted participation. Nevertheless, public listening provided crucial mediation between the literary Arabic broadcasts and uneducated listeners. This paper explores how the pre-existing practices of entertainment, leisure, and cultural consumption facilitated the introduction of radio into the public spaces of Palestinian society. It demonstrates how access to the radio in Mandate Palestine developed unequally and was determined by geography, class, and gender. Finally, it shows that, although radio was a new medium and allowed unprecedented communication possibilities, radio did not undermine social hierarchies during the Mandate period, but mainly reproduced them. In this way, the paper points to the reciprocal relations between technology and society in Mandate Palestine.