[Chas]

my radio has 2 bands, regular AM and police (I assume shortwave?)

RM says: The Philco model 37-60 series uses a 5-tube 2-band (BC and 2.3 - 7.4 MHz) chassis...

The "Shortwave Band (as labeled)" no longer supports "Police" activities. They have moved to VHF/UHF digital.  What you will find is CHU Canada time at 3.33, Ham radio CW (requires a carrier) AM phone and Single Side Band (requires an inserted carrier to understand) at or about 3.5 to 4.0, 40 meter ham radio 7.0 to 7.35 and shortwave broadcast at 39 meters. This spread of frequencies is most active at night, but propagation can bring activity in the two Ham bands. The current AM band wire antenna is fine for these frequencies.

Though an external oscillator can radiate to this radio and insert a carrier for SSB, the trick gets real old real quick. Much Ham conversion is of Ham activities, their equipment and antennas. You may find AM shortwave broadcasts in the 41 and 39 meter bands with human interest, social discussions etc from foreign countries. Without a Beat frequency oscillator some CW may "seem" to be heard but it is a result of mixed carriers of two or more stations.

When this radio was built such programming was rampant prior to WW-II and war reports during.

If there is someone local (20 miles or so) from you that is operating a Software Defined Radio SDR, that can be navigated to via your cell phone."Tune-in" to that station where the frequency can be changed to listen for stations that you could possibly receive with the Philco. There is an SDR map with hot links to these stations around the world. That, nearby radio is useful to determine of the band is "open", the SDR can decode CW, SSB, RTTY. There are other decoding tools but I, have not been able to get them to work well for me... BTW this is not an APP, nothing to install!

GL

Chas