“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”  This question will be familiar to fans of what has been called the “golden age of radio.”

As a boy in the 1930s 40s, I certainly remember being scared by hearing the questioner’s sinister voice at nightfall. Nor did I feel reassured by the answer: “The Shadow knows.”

A Brookline resident, Van Christo, serves as the ranking authority on this era in radio history. Thanks to his generosity, Boston University now holds his complete collection of broadcasts, some 4,000 in all.

Thus a number of legendary voices will be preserved: Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy; Major Bowes and his Amateur Hour; Senator Claghorn of the Fred Allen show; the Lone Ranger; and many others.

Christo, now 82, enjoyed a long and successful career in advertising before turning to old radio. A native of Albania, he has also served as a champion of his native country by providing information about it for Americans and acting as a kind of de-facto ambassador.

In addition to the dramatic programs of the golden age, he also loves the music of the period. Artie Shaw, Harry James, and Helen Forrest rank highest in his book of all-stars.

Christo also is also fascinated by radio actors, some of whom would later become famous in other media. Tony Randall, for instance, appeared in “I Love a Mystery’ before he went on to the movies. The singer Mel Tormé, later known as “The Velvet Fog,” played in “Little Orphan Annie.” And the future movie idol Tyrone Power appeared on a program called “Lights Out.”

Christo also admires the versatility of many radio actors. One performer, Matt Crowley, took on the roles of both Dick Tracy and Buck Rogers. Another, Jacky Kelp, did Superman and Henry Aldrich.

For this collector, the way the “sound people” in radio could create fictional places and situations remains one of the medium’s finest achievements. On “Captain Midnight,” for example, they were able to make airplane combat sound real.

When television did arrive, some radio programs moved to it, but bombed. “Fibber McGee and Molly,” for instance, never had the same resonance it had enjoyed on radio. And the one of radio’s most famous newsmen, Walter Winchell, could not make it on TV.

Like other radio fanciers, Christo feels nostalgia for the medium. As he sees it, television, by comparison with radio, lacks the power to bring whole families together. He remembers the way old and young gathered around the radio, transported into a world that was imagined rather than seen..

Radio worked magic on listeners. Its secret, for Christo, was its capacity to stir their imaginative powers.

As he explains: “You brought something to the program. Whatever you heard on the radio, you created in your own mind, in the theater of your imagination.”
If you were listening to a show that featured horror, you called upon what Christo calls “the horror of your own mind.”

Thus radio served as a powerful stimulus for the psyche and brought with it the pleasures of creativity.

As a fervent listener in my boyhood, I share this appreciation of old-time radio. However, my nostalgic feelings are mixed with thanks for a maturity that makes many of the programs seem naive.

American adults who ate up the old programs were products of a simpler time in our history. They lived in an era when people were willing to accept unsophisticated shows that today would seem lacking in credibility.

Would we really be scared nowadays by the Shadow? Would we laugh at the cornball humor of Senator Claghorn?

Of course, it was different for children. The old-time radio shows really did feed their imaginations, almost always with wholesome material. I do not regret having listened to the classic shows of my growing-up years.

But, still, I cannot imagine the same fare feeding my imagination now. I would still enjoy the galloping William Tell overture that introduced the Lone Ranger, but how could I thrill to this character’s simple-minded conversation with the faithful Tonto?

And would contemporary women relish “The Romance of Helen Trent” with its promise of love for females over age 35?  Or would either gender identify with the moralistic crime fighters in programs like Gangbusters?

The old radio shows often relied upon ethnic descriptions that would embarrass us today. The great Sunday-evening comedians ─ Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Fred Allen ─ relied on stereotypes that today’s audiences would find unacceptable.

It was not television alone that killed off the radio programs of my youth. So did World War II, and the GI Bill that followed it. The veterans who took advantage of the new educational opportunities helped transform America. And the prosperity that followed would also change national tastes.

The shows that entertained us so memorably at an earlier stage would no longer fit our new post-war society. Now we were ready for something different.