When James had left their apartment so as to avoid being discovered, they brought a crystal radio along. It was a bit old, something he built long ago back in middle school for a tech lab project, but it still worked. They needed a way to keep up with news reports while on the move and this was it.
Of course the flaw with crystal radios is that many of them needed large wire antennas to capture enough radio waves to convert into the electrical current to vibrate the crystal or operate the speakers in a headset. But because James’ hearing as a pony was so much better than when they were human, the weak audio strength from the small wire antennae wasn’t a big issue.
Besides, keeping up with news and weather reports on the go helped with planning some detours. The trip west was going to require checking the news reports over those AM stations somewhat regularly.