Latest / Stuff You Should Know / AM Radio: Solid Gold

Transcript

AM Radio: Solid Gold · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Everybody, we have a big announcement, but Josh, I think
0:03
Speaker 1: you need to do your traditional tour announcement.
0:05
Speaker 2: COURU, there we go. That means it's tour time, everybody.
0:09
Speaker 1: We took off twenty twenty five because it just felt
0:12
Speaker 1: like the right thing to do. But we are hitting
0:13
Speaker 1: the road again next year and we are super excited.
0:17
Speaker 3: Yes get this. So we're gonna start hitting the road
0:19
Speaker 3: in January, starting January twenty seventh at the Paramount Theater
0:23
Speaker 3: in Denver. The next day we'll be at the Paramount
0:25
Speaker 3: Theater in Seattle, and on January twenty ninth, we'll be
0:29
Speaker 3: back to our beloved Sketch Fest at the Sydney Goldstein
0:32
Speaker 3: Theater in San Francisco, CA.
0:35
Speaker 2: That's right, that's our January run.
0:36
Speaker 1: And then in April we're going to hit the Midwest
0:39
Speaker 1: and we're going to some cities we haven't been to yet.
0:41
Speaker 2: And I'm super excited because on April.
0:44
Speaker 1: Sixteenth, we'll be in Madison, Wisconsin at the Orpheum Theater.
0:48
Speaker 1: On the seventeenth, we'll be back in Chicago at the
0:51
Speaker 1: Chicago Auditorium, a city we love, and then to my
0:55
Speaker 1: wife's some town. Finally, April eighteenth and Akron, Ohio at
0:58
Speaker 1: the Goodyear Theater.
1:00
Speaker 3: That's right, and get this for the January leg. Tickets
1:03
Speaker 3: are on sale now and we're actually running a pre
1:06
Speaker 3: sale today November eighteenth. You can use our code sysk
1:10
Speaker 3: live to get tickets early. Go to stuff youshould Know
1:13
Speaker 3: dot com. It'll have all the tickets and info that
1:16
Speaker 3: you need. And you can buy Sketch Fest tickets right
1:18
Speaker 3: now as well.
1:19
Speaker 2: That's right. Sketch Fest on sale the sixteenth of November.
1:23
Speaker 1: There's no presale on that one. General on sale is
1:27
Speaker 1: happening as we speak.
1:28
Speaker 3: That's right. So we'll see you guys in twenty twenty six.
1:31
Speaker 3: We're really excited to get back out there. We hope
1:33
Speaker 3: you're excited too. If you're not, just bake it when
1:36
Speaker 3: you see us.
1:37
Speaker 1: That's right, and pay attention the Great White North because
1:40
Speaker 1: there is more to come this summer.
1:42
Speaker 3: That's right. So we'll see you soon.
1:48
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:57
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
2:00
Speaker 3: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just keeping it
2:03
Speaker 3: old school, real mellow style, which is what I understand.
2:07
Speaker 1: All of the kids say today, that's right, and hey,
2:12
Speaker 1: before we get going, this is probably the perfect episode
2:15
Speaker 1: to mention that our episode on how Vinyl Works that
2:19
Speaker 1: was released on Vinyl is being reprinted because that thing
2:24
Speaker 1: sold out and I think people would love to have
2:25
Speaker 1: one of these things for Christmas.
2:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're releasing it just in time for the holidays.
2:29
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, it's coming out on Black Friday,
2:32
Speaker 3: November twenty eighth this year, which also happens to be
2:36
Speaker 3: record store Day from what I understand, and our friends
2:39
Speaker 3: at Born Losers Records put this out again. They did
2:42
Speaker 3: the first one, did a magnificent job, of course, and
2:46
Speaker 3: they printed three hundred red and black marble records that
2:51
Speaker 3: are just beautiful. Those are available online at syskvinyl dot com.
2:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then.
2:59
Speaker 3: For the actual store where you have to leave your home,
3:02
Speaker 3: probably put on a cap because it's late November, maybe
3:04
Speaker 3: a coat, go down to your local indie record store. Yeah,
3:09
Speaker 3: they do it. There might be a chance that they
3:11
Speaker 3: have one of the three hundred Gold Royalty records. Those
3:15
Speaker 3: are exclusives for record stores.
3:18
Speaker 1: Well, you can bet your boopie I'll be going to
3:19
Speaker 1: my local record store and supporting ourselves by buying one.
3:24
Speaker 3: That's awesome. You should draw more people by just spending
3:27
Speaker 3: like a full day there and telling.
3:29
Speaker 1: You, oh, yeah, maybe I could work something out with
3:32
Speaker 1: the wack Street here in town. I can go sit
3:34
Speaker 1: up there and those guys cannot talk to me.
3:37
Speaker 3: We'll see if we can get a cutout of you too,
3:39
Speaker 3: to stand behind you while you sit there.
3:42
Speaker 2: That's great.
3:43
Speaker 1: I'm really excited this is back out though, because people
3:45
Speaker 1: really seem to enjoy it.
3:46
Speaker 2: And what is it again, sysk vinyl dot com.
3:50
Speaker 3: That's right awesome and thanks again to our friends at
3:53
Speaker 3: Born Losers. You guys are great. Yeah, they're the best.
3:56
Speaker 3: Yeah they are, okay, Chuck. So yeah, this is a
3:59
Speaker 3: really good episode to shout out Records because we're talking
4:02
Speaker 3: about AM radio and we talked a little bit about
4:06
Speaker 3: it in our Beautiful Music Short stuff AKAABM.
4:11
Speaker 2: That's right, I'll.
4:12
Speaker 3: Never get over. But there's a lot more to AM radio,
4:17
Speaker 3: And in fact, I didn't realize this. Julia helped us
4:20
Speaker 3: with this one, and I didn't realize before that AM
4:25
Speaker 3: broadcasting basically set the standards, yeah, for all sorts of
4:29
Speaker 3: different things like how news is presented, soap operas, all
4:35
Speaker 3: sorts of different stuff that lasted for decades and decades
4:38
Speaker 3: and decades. It all started with AM radio because ultimately
4:42
Speaker 3: it was the very first form of mass communication that
4:45
Speaker 3: was not printed.
4:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Top forty radio started on AM, which
4:50
Speaker 1: is I mean, I think these days the kids, if
4:53
Speaker 1: they hear of AM radio probably either don't know what
4:55
Speaker 1: it is, or may not if they have as we'll
4:58
Speaker 1: see a newer model card especially ev may not even
5:02
Speaker 1: have AM radio or a radio in their house like
5:05
Speaker 1: a transistor radio or something or receiver, but they may
5:09
Speaker 1: think AM radio is as like you know, news talk,
5:14
Speaker 1: sports talk, maybe some foreign language stations, maybe some if
5:17
Speaker 1: they're driving through a rural community, some like weird Farm
5:21
Speaker 1: Report or something that they've never heard. I remember that,
5:24
Speaker 1: And that's that's kind of what AM radio became. But
5:26
Speaker 1: it launched Top forty. It was the up until like
5:30
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. It beat FM, and FM had been
5:32
Speaker 1: around since what like the thirties, Yeah, it had.
5:36
Speaker 3: And everybody said, nope, we're really happy with AM and
5:39
Speaker 3: stuck with it even after FM came around for quite
5:42
Speaker 3: a while. But let's talk about this because, like you
5:47
Speaker 3: hit on some really good points. So We're going to
5:49
Speaker 3: touch on all of those, but let's start at the
5:51
Speaker 3: very very beginning when AM radio really started to come around.
5:55
Speaker 3: Because people had been messing with AM broadcasting since the
6:01
Speaker 3: very early nineteen hundreds. There were some inventions that all
6:05
Speaker 3: kind of came together around the same time. And I
6:09
Speaker 3: do not understand how this could possibly happen, but putting
6:12
Speaker 3: these disparate inventions together and figuring out how to broadcast
6:16
Speaker 3: radio waves that have encoded sound in them is just
6:21
Speaker 3: I mean, hats off. That's like mad genius stuff. But
6:24
Speaker 3: that's what happened in the very early nineteen hundreds.
6:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were people broadcasting AM signals at the time,
6:31
Speaker 1: and you know, the only people that had these AM
6:33
Speaker 1: receivers that could listen were like soldiers at sea or
6:36
Speaker 1: something like that. This was before they made it into
6:39
Speaker 1: the homes of Americans that pause during World War One
6:43
Speaker 1: because they said, hey, we can't have you broadcasting your
6:47
Speaker 1: daughter playing violin, even though our soldiers love it that
6:49
Speaker 1: are out at sea. We need to kind of lock
6:52
Speaker 1: this down for now. But starting in about nineteen twenty,
6:55
Speaker 1: in fact, exactly nineteen twenty was when commercial broadcast AM
7:00
Speaker 1: radio started with KDKA Pittsburgh.
7:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the very first one. I think that
7:06
Speaker 3: they read the results of the Warren Harding election. I
7:10
Speaker 3: can't remember the other guy's name, somebody Cox. Warren Harding
7:14
Speaker 3: obviously won. But right after that, I mean, like, this
7:18
Speaker 3: was so clearly a groundbreaking medium. It was basically for
7:22
Speaker 3: the people in the nineteen twenties. It was what people
7:26
Speaker 3: in the early nineties experience with internet. Yeah, it was
7:29
Speaker 3: almost like, holy cow, I can't like, you can't even
7:32
Speaker 3: begin to imagine all the different ways that this thing
7:35
Speaker 3: is going to change the world. You just know it's
7:37
Speaker 3: going to change the world. That's kind of what happened.
7:39
Speaker 3: And so right after that first broadcast, it just exploded
7:45
Speaker 3: all over the world. And one reason why it exploded
7:48
Speaker 3: all over the world is because the person who's considered
7:50
Speaker 3: the father of radio, Gulielmo Marconi. He set up companies everywhere,
7:55
Speaker 3: so very quickly radio stations started to develop. And just
7:59
Speaker 3: a year or two after Katie Ka went on the.
8:02
Speaker 1: Air, I'm, by the way, a little mad at you
8:06
Speaker 1: because ever since you sent me the Marconi tidbit this morning,
8:11
Speaker 1: I cannot get we built the city on rock.
8:14
Speaker 2: And roll out of my head.
8:16
Speaker 3: How waii. That's that's odd.
8:19
Speaker 1: Marconi played the mamba Oh never do the radio. Yeah,
8:25
Speaker 1: And I mean, I hate that song so much and
8:28
Speaker 1: I can't get it out of my head, all because
8:30
Speaker 1: I just saw the word Marconi typed in an email.
8:33
Speaker 3: I always thought, seriously, it was some gibberish I had
8:36
Speaker 3: in my head. I knew it wasn't right, but it
8:37
Speaker 3: was like in La says lebar something like that. I
8:42
Speaker 3: had no idea Marconi was name check. But that's appropriate.
8:45
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm not really mad at you, but boy, that
8:48
Speaker 1: thing really gets rooted in your head pretty well. But
8:51
Speaker 1: like you said, by the early nineteen twenties, everybody was
8:55
Speaker 1: on board. In nineteen twenty two, in fact, AT and
8:57
Speaker 1: T had the first radio network built when linked to
9:00
Speaker 1: thirty eight radio stations by phone lines, and could broadcast,
9:05
Speaker 1: you know, weaf out of New York all around the country.
9:08
Speaker 2: So like people, it was it was literally, like you said,
9:11
Speaker 2: like the.
9:11
Speaker 1: Internet, it was American life before and life after as
9:15
Speaker 1: far as AM radio.
9:16
Speaker 3: Goes, well, we'll put it and not just American life too.
9:19
Speaker 3: Like this, like I said, it spread around the world
9:21
Speaker 3: very quickly. The BBC started broadcasting in nineteen twenty two
9:25
Speaker 3: Australia's first radio station, two SB, which is now ABC Sydney.
9:30
Speaker 3: That's they started in nineteen twenty three. Canada got its
9:34
Speaker 3: first one in nineteen thirty two XWA out of Montreal.
9:38
Speaker 3: It was just just like the Internet, It's not like
9:41
Speaker 3: it was just one country. It was everybody who got
9:44
Speaker 3: involved because it was a humanity altering invention.
9:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
9:50
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen twenties, the major networks had launched,
9:54
Speaker 1: and you know, these were radio networks NBC and CBS.
9:57
Speaker 1: These were international broadcasts from the un United States all
10:00
Speaker 1: over the world, and you know they worked by you know,
10:05
Speaker 1: you had to have a receiver.
10:06
Speaker 2: So early on, you know.
10:07
Speaker 1: Vacuum tubes worked with radio receivers connected to loud speakers
10:13
Speaker 1: and that's how you could hear things. Later on, transistor
10:16
Speaker 1: radios came along and that's what really changed the game
10:19
Speaker 1: because that's when it was like TV's for the olds,
10:23
Speaker 1: the young people, we had these little radios in their pocket.
10:26
Speaker 1: And then they started, you know, putting radios in cars.
10:29
Speaker 1: But it's funny to think about a time when like, yeah,
10:32
Speaker 1: TV's out outdated, right, and we want AM radio in
10:35
Speaker 1: our pocket.
10:35
Speaker 3: And then it came roaring back eventually thanks to LA Law.
10:40
Speaker 3: You mentioned something that I think is worth calling out too.
10:42
Speaker 3: You mentioned that there's a speaker that converts that sound
10:46
Speaker 3: signal back into actual acoustics sound. They weren't headphones, they
10:51
Speaker 3: were speakers. So that meant that early radio was a
10:54
Speaker 3: thing that the family gathered around. It was a social
10:57
Speaker 3: activity listening to all the stuff that was on the
10:59
Speaker 3: ra which is really important because I mean that's definitely
11:04
Speaker 3: become fragmented and fractured today as it you know, personal
11:09
Speaker 3: media has become like more and more available. But that
11:12
Speaker 3: was like whatever was on the radio right then, probably
11:15
Speaker 3: whatever your parents wanted to listen to. That's what the
11:17
Speaker 3: family was listening to.
11:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, for better or worse.
11:21
Speaker 1: I think by nineteen thirty there were forty percent of
11:24
Speaker 1: US homes had AM receivers. Hopefully most of them had speakers.
11:28
Speaker 1: Wise they just sit there and look at it. There
11:31
Speaker 1: were more than six hundred radio stations in nineteen thirty,
11:34
Speaker 1: obviously all of them AM. But like we mentioned, FM
11:37
Speaker 1: came along pretty quickly in the nineteen thirties and had
11:40
Speaker 1: a better sound, but you know, it just didn't take
11:44
Speaker 1: over until nineteen seventy eight. I think by nineteen forty
11:48
Speaker 1: even eighty three percent of the households in America. I
11:51
Speaker 1: mean that's really massive coverage had AM radio signals, like
11:56
Speaker 1: you know, being broadcast through their homes.
11:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you said, I mean like FM was around,
12:02
Speaker 3: but people said, no, we're sticking with the AM. One
12:05
Speaker 3: of the big reasons is because the FM receiver needs
12:08
Speaker 3: more power because of the way FM radio was pumped out,
12:12
Speaker 3: that was a big thing for a long time. That
12:14
Speaker 3: was one reason people stuck around with AM. But there's
12:17
Speaker 3: definitely an affection that developed for AM radio over the years.
12:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's also something called FM drift, Like you know,
12:26
Speaker 1: if you're driving around listening to an FM station, it
12:30
Speaker 1: can kind of go in and out, you know, to
12:33
Speaker 1: the left or to the right. I guess you could
12:35
Speaker 1: kind of turn your dial a little bit and try
12:37
Speaker 1: and dial it back in. But that was an issue.
12:39
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about some of the AM radio issues.
12:41
Speaker 1: But if you're looking at the dial, AM according to
12:46
Speaker 1: the FCC, AM waves have to be broadcast on frequencies
12:49
Speaker 1: between five thirty five megahertz and one point seven and
12:54
Speaker 1: FM is from eighty eight to one oh.
12:56
Speaker 3: Eight sounds legit, so check out based on the radio
13:02
Speaker 3: call signs I'm familiar with.
13:05
Speaker 2: Do you ever listen to AM radio anymore?
13:08
Speaker 3: Yeah? I listened to the Bulldogs game on the way
13:11
Speaker 3: home from Yumi's parents house on Saturday.
13:15
Speaker 2: Wasn't that nice?
13:16
Speaker 3: The ballgame?
13:17
Speaker 2: Or listening to the radio, listening to a sports broadcast
13:21
Speaker 2: on the radio.
13:21
Speaker 3: Yes, I used to do that in college. I can't
13:24
Speaker 3: remember the sportscaster's name, the legendary one for Georgia with
13:28
Speaker 3: the hobnail boot.
13:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Larry Munson.
13:32
Speaker 3: Larry Munson. Yeah, back in college. I would listen to
13:36
Speaker 3: him and watch the game. Yeah, like I'm mute, and
13:39
Speaker 3: hopefully they would sync up.
13:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the preferred method.
13:42
Speaker 1: But I still love and it doesn't happen a lot
13:46
Speaker 1: because you know, I'll watch the game on TV generally,
13:48
Speaker 1: but if I'm traveling like you were just talking about,
13:51
Speaker 1: or I remember when I built we couldn't afford to build,
13:55
Speaker 1: like to get a fence company to build our fence
13:57
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. So I built our privacy fence like
14:00
Speaker 1: picket by picket over the course of two months, and
14:03
Speaker 1: a lot of that was spent with me listening to
14:07
Speaker 1: Georgia Bulldogs on the radio. I mean it was pre
14:11
Speaker 1: podcast even, and it's just it's still to me a
14:13
Speaker 1: great way to catch a game for sure, not even
14:17
Speaker 1: nostalgia wise, like it really is a great way to
14:19
Speaker 1: listen to catch a game.
14:20
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. The play calling is like you have to
14:22
Speaker 3: be really good. There's no assist there. You're telling everybody
14:25
Speaker 3: going on, you know. Yeah, I say we take a
14:29
Speaker 3: break because we're getting nostalgic already. What do you think.
14:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna park that and we'll stick to the facts.
14:34
Speaker 3: Okay, baby, we're taking a break. Everybody will be right back.
15:11
Speaker 1: So, if we're talking the golden age of radio as
15:14
Speaker 1: a whole, that was about a three to four decade
15:18
Speaker 1: period from the twenties through the mid fifties or so.
15:21
Speaker 1: That was when am radio starred. We'll also talk a
15:24
Speaker 1: little bit later about sort of the seventies period when
15:27
Speaker 1: am radio music was like, you know, the Mellow Gold
15:31
Speaker 1: stuff was a big deal. But that you know, that
15:34
Speaker 1: first decade of radio ushered in. You know, it was
15:38
Speaker 1: blowing people's minds like they had never heard sometimes any
15:41
Speaker 1: of this stuff, or certainly had not heard any of
15:44
Speaker 1: this stuff live like a live broadcast and speaking of
15:47
Speaker 1: Sports in nineteen twenty one, over about one hundred and
15:51
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand square miles from where it broadcasts out
15:54
Speaker 1: of Jersey City, New Jersey, people listened to the heavyweight
15:58
Speaker 1: boxing championship. I can't imagine what that was like to
16:02
Speaker 1: hear a sports broadcast like that for the first time.
16:05
Speaker 2: As it happened.
16:06
Speaker 3: Hopefully the commentator knew what he was doing too, and
16:08
Speaker 3: when they weren't like long pauses like the boom goes
16:12
Speaker 3: the dynamite guy.
16:13
Speaker 2: One of them's punching another one repeatedly.
16:17
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Carpentee just went down.
16:21
Speaker 2: That's right.
16:22
Speaker 3: One of the other things that we'll see about AM
16:24
Speaker 3: Radio two, Chuck, is that's it was long considered a
16:28
Speaker 3: public good, so that the government had like a little
16:33
Speaker 3: more willingness to be like, no, you can say this,
16:35
Speaker 3: you can't say that, and you have to do this.
16:37
Speaker 3: One of the reasons why is because it was very
16:39
Speaker 3: quickly used to kind of spread public information, Like presidents
16:43
Speaker 3: took to it very quickly. Remember I said that Katie
16:45
Speaker 3: Ka announced the results of the Harding election. Within just
16:49
Speaker 3: a couple of years, Warren Harding was using it to
16:52
Speaker 3: talk to America and FDR was probably the most famous
16:56
Speaker 3: president who used the radio to talk to America. Had
16:58
Speaker 3: a series of like just informal speeches basically called fireside chests. Yeah,
17:05
Speaker 3: that really made a lot of the countries just fall
17:07
Speaker 3: in love with them. But it was very it was
17:10
Speaker 3: it was very clear early on just how much influence
17:14
Speaker 3: it could have on people's political opinions.
17:17
Speaker 1: Well, and it was a lot of people the first
17:19
Speaker 1: time they ever heard the president's voice.
17:21
Speaker 2: Speak, you know, how what he sounds like. Yeah, it
17:25
Speaker 2: wasn't around during Lincoln because everyone would.
17:27
Speaker 1: Have been like really, but yeah, you know, there was
17:31
Speaker 1: definitely public good and we'll dive into that a little bit,
17:34
Speaker 1: along with tons of entertainment and you know, it was
17:37
Speaker 1: basically like fifteen minute chunks for a long long time
17:39
Speaker 1: of all over the map variety style stuff, kind of
17:44
Speaker 1: reminiscent of vaudeville. Like there were hosts of shows, but
17:47
Speaker 1: the DJ thing didn't come along till much later. So
17:49
Speaker 1: you had like advice shows and news shows and obviously
17:53
Speaker 1: comedy stuff, game shows.
17:56
Speaker 2: You know. Radio dramas were a big big deal.
17:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where soap op came from. Two They were
18:01
Speaker 3: broadcast almost exclusively with women as their target audience. And
18:07
Speaker 3: at the time, this is just post World War One,
18:10
Speaker 3: where women had helped the war effort in the factories.
18:13
Speaker 3: The men came back and they were like, get back
18:15
Speaker 3: in the house, and women were stuck in the house
18:18
Speaker 3: all day. So these radio dramas were broadcast to them
18:21
Speaker 3: and they were almost exclusively sponsored by cleaning product companies.
18:26
Speaker 2: That's right.
18:27
Speaker 3: So they became known as soap operas. And one of
18:30
Speaker 3: the longer lasting soap operas of all time actually made
18:33
Speaker 3: the jump successfully from radio to TV. That was Guiding
18:38
Speaker 3: Light No Way. Yeah. It started in nineteen thirty seven
18:41
Speaker 3: on the radio and was finally canceled in two thousand
18:44
Speaker 3: and nine on TV. It was seventy two years of
18:47
Speaker 3: Guiding Light every weekday. Too.
18:50
Speaker 1: I had a very very brief foray into soap operas. Yeah,
18:54
Speaker 1: I guess it was in college or something. I don't
18:56
Speaker 1: know why, but I got hooked for I mean, not
18:59
Speaker 1: too long, but I was hooked.
19:01
Speaker 2: I was like, these things are stupid. I was like, yeah,
19:03
Speaker 2: but what happens.
19:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, the same thing happened to me again in college too,
19:08
Speaker 3: and I cannot remember the name of it, but it
19:11
Speaker 3: was just off the chain. I know there was a
19:13
Speaker 3: main character named Marlena, and she was possessed by the
19:16
Speaker 3: devil at one point. Someone will remember, like, yeah, certainly,
19:20
Speaker 3: that's like a very famous plotline that was going on
19:23
Speaker 3: when I was hooked on them, and then I got
19:26
Speaker 3: hooked on them enough that I would switch channels during
19:28
Speaker 3: ads and see what was on other soap operas and
19:32
Speaker 3: general hospital. Once there was a scene where this couple
19:36
Speaker 3: was in bed and they did such a poor job
19:39
Speaker 3: of editing that they left in the director saying cut
19:42
Speaker 3: and the two actors roll out of bed. I'll never
19:45
Speaker 3: forget it. It was one of the greatest things I've
19:47
Speaker 3: ever seen on television.
19:49
Speaker 1: They're like that, the sheets are pulled up, you know,
19:51
Speaker 1: to their bare skin, and.
19:53
Speaker 2: Then they roll out of bed and they have on
19:54
Speaker 2: like blue jeans.
19:56
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't remember what they were wearing or anything,
19:58
Speaker 3: but yeah, I'm sure it was just like that.
20:00
Speaker 2: That's really funny.
20:01
Speaker 1: Oh God, to have that time again where you could
20:03
Speaker 1: just like maybe sort of get hooked on a soap
20:05
Speaker 1: for no reason.
20:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
20:08
Speaker 1: Religion was also a big deal early on AM radio.
20:12
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, evangelist could broadcast far and wide
20:14
Speaker 1: from what they call the electric pulpit, and they became like,
20:18
Speaker 1: you know, big time personalities and stars during the depression era.
20:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the first people that the question of
20:25
Speaker 3: freedom of speech was raised around his father, Charles Coughlin,
20:29
Speaker 3: who was a bigoted, hate speech Catholic priest who really
20:35
Speaker 3: kind of pushed the envelope, you could say. I think
20:38
Speaker 3: he said the Nazis didn't go far enough during Crystal
20:41
Speaker 3: knockt like, he was that kind of guy.
20:43
Speaker 2: Wow.
20:44
Speaker 3: So he definitely rose to prominence during this time. On
20:48
Speaker 3: the lighter side, one of the most popular long running
20:53
Speaker 3: shows was the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show, Yeah,
20:58
Speaker 3: which was a ventralic act on the radio. Yeah.
21:03
Speaker 1: I mean the jokes still worked, but it's definitely a
21:06
Speaker 1: visual medium for sure.
21:07
Speaker 3: But he managed to make it like super radio friendly
21:11
Speaker 3: and it was super popular. You said that the Golden
21:14
Speaker 3: Age of radio ended around the nineteen sixty two, and
21:18
Speaker 3: we should say this was This depends on your perspective,
21:22
Speaker 3: because a lot of people say no Golden Age of
21:24
Speaker 3: radio and all the way to the seventies. This would
21:27
Speaker 3: be like the first wave of Golden age radio where
21:30
Speaker 3: it wasn't music. It was like dramas, scripted comedies, like sports,
21:36
Speaker 3: all this stuff like what TV is today. This was
21:40
Speaker 3: the first iteration of radio and it was all am radio.
21:43
Speaker 3: But there was a year nineteen sixty two when two
21:46
Speaker 3: shows were canceled, two long running shows, and people point
21:49
Speaker 3: to their cancelation as essentially the end of that era.
21:52
Speaker 2: What were those yours?
21:54
Speaker 3: Truly? Johnny Dollar?
21:56
Speaker 2: Okay?
21:57
Speaker 3: It was about an insurance fraud investigator.
22:00
Speaker 2: Sounds like true crime, it is.
22:02
Speaker 3: It sounds interesting. Each episode was a flashback of him
22:05
Speaker 3: going over the line items for his expense report for
22:08
Speaker 3: that particular case, and then each line item would kind
22:11
Speaker 3: of bring up like a new scene. Pretty interesting.
22:15
Speaker 2: The radio network guys like can he kill his lover?
22:21
Speaker 3: And then Suspense was another one, and it sounds like
22:23
Speaker 3: it was a little bit of a predecessor to like
22:26
Speaker 3: Alfred Hitchcock Presents and maybe The Twilight c here or there,
22:30
Speaker 3: And both of those were really well produced shows and
22:34
Speaker 3: they got canceled the same year, and everybody said that's it,
22:36
Speaker 3: that's the end of the Golden Age, and they spat
22:39
Speaker 3: on the floor.
22:40
Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned the public good starting in the nineteen twenties.
22:44
Speaker 1: To jump back a little bit, you know, like you
22:48
Speaker 1: mentioned President speaking inaugural addresses were being broadcast, and the
22:52
Speaker 1: government really realized, hey, like we have a sort of
22:56
Speaker 1: a public service we need to enact when we're sharing information,
23:00
Speaker 1: because we got to get the word out about stuff
23:02
Speaker 1: sometimes and this is the way to do it. So
23:04
Speaker 1: the USDA Radio Service began talking to farmers in nineteen
23:08
Speaker 1: twenty six. The US Bureau of Home Economics had a
23:12
Speaker 1: chat program they launched, I believe in the same year
23:15
Speaker 1: where they could talk about, like, you know, any emergencies
23:19
Speaker 1: happening in regards to kids, like health and safety, stuff
23:23
Speaker 1: like a new disease going around that your kid maybe
23:26
Speaker 1: should get vaccinated against, stuff.
23:28
Speaker 3: Like that new fangled polio.
23:32
Speaker 1: But by the end of the nineteen twenties, they were like, hey,
23:36
Speaker 1: there's a limited bandwidth and people are getting political messages out,
23:41
Speaker 1: and we need to make sure that everyone in America
23:44
Speaker 1: is getting sort of equal access to these messages, so
23:48
Speaker 1: you know, no particular message gets out more than any other.
23:51
Speaker 1: And that's where the fairness doctrine came about, right.
23:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, we talked about that in the Presidential Debates episode,
23:57
Speaker 3: but I think it deserves its own episode. It's so contraal,
24:00
Speaker 3: But basically, the fairness doctrine is what I was talking
24:03
Speaker 3: about earlier when I said the government wasn't shy about
24:05
Speaker 3: getting involved in regulating radio because of what you just said, Like,
24:09
Speaker 3: you can't just use radio at the time. You couldn't
24:12
Speaker 3: to just put out one, say, specific political viewpoint. So
24:16
Speaker 3: the fairness doctrine said, you have to have equal time
24:18
Speaker 3: when you're talking about political matters, you have to give
24:22
Speaker 3: equal time to both opposing viewpoints. It also said some
24:26
Speaker 3: other stuff too that I thought was pretty cool. It
24:29
Speaker 3: made sure that commercial concerns did not eclipse social ones,
24:33
Speaker 3: so you couldn't screw over the public for your own
24:36
Speaker 3: bottom line, which is just refreshing these days. The radio
24:42
Speaker 3: served the public good and that you have like a
24:46
Speaker 3: kind of public programming that's essentially like in addition to
24:53
Speaker 3: all of the you know, ventriloquist acts and soap operas
24:56
Speaker 3: and all that, you have like stuff that makes people,
25:00
Speaker 3: helps people be more informed citizens. Like that was what
25:03
Speaker 3: the government was getting involved in radio for.
25:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe perhaps if we would have been around the time,
25:10
Speaker 2: it might have been stuff you should know.
25:12
Speaker 3: I could see that. I could see that, Yeah, we
25:15
Speaker 3: would have been great for AM radio. I think as
25:18
Speaker 3: a matter of fact, we should probably just stop podcasting
25:20
Speaker 3: and start broadcasting on AM radio.
25:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got to get the message of Jackhammer's out
25:25
Speaker 1: far and wide.
25:26
Speaker 3: That's right.
25:28
Speaker 1: You know, the fairness doctrine went away, and you know,
25:32
Speaker 1: like you said, we should do a whole episode on that.
25:34
Speaker 1: But one of the things that happened was, you know,
25:37
Speaker 1: the FM becoming a dominant force and just way more
25:40
Speaker 1: choices and way more bandwidth for radio, so they didn't
25:43
Speaker 1: need it anymore. So then you know, that's where that's
25:46
Speaker 1: really literally where the echo chamber of politics started, where
25:50
Speaker 1: you could turn into just your person who only talked
25:53
Speaker 1: about things that you agreed with.
25:55
Speaker 2: Yep, and that's it.
25:56
Speaker 3: Yeah. Not coincidentally, in nineteen eighties is when talk radio
26:00
Speaker 3: like really started to become a thing with like people
26:02
Speaker 3: like Rush Limbaugh that did not exist before that kind
26:07
Speaker 3: of thing.
26:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, FM when that came around, it
26:12
Speaker 1: did create that echo chamber, but it was mostly like
26:16
Speaker 1: a wealthy, educated crowd that could afford FM receivers. They
26:19
Speaker 1: were more expensive, like you were talking about. I think
26:23
Speaker 1: there were more than two thousand AM stations on the
26:25
Speaker 1: air in the nineteen fifties, some of them would broadcast
26:27
Speaker 1: on both I definitely remember, you know, both AMFM stations,
26:32
Speaker 1: but FM did have some.
26:35
Speaker 2: And still do have.
26:36
Speaker 1: Some sort of things that weren't in their favor, like
26:40
Speaker 1: if you were inside a buildings sometimes the AM signal
26:43
Speaker 1: could get blocked and get a little more difficult to
26:45
Speaker 1: get a lot of AM stations, I think most of
26:49
Speaker 1: them in fact, have to either reduce their power or
26:52
Speaker 1: just go off the air at night, so you know,
26:54
Speaker 1: back in the day and maybe still you hear those
26:56
Speaker 1: sign offs at the end of the night, which is
26:57
Speaker 1: kind of fun where they play like the stars angle
27:00
Speaker 1: banner or something.
27:00
Speaker 2: Then it just goes dead.
27:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, like in Poltergeist.
27:04
Speaker 2: That's right.
27:05
Speaker 1: But another cool thing about AM is if you've ever
27:08
Speaker 1: been like driving around out West or something, and you know,
27:11
Speaker 1: probably not these days, but back when I was taking
27:14
Speaker 1: my big out West trips, when all ahead was like
27:17
Speaker 1: a cassette player in the radio. Once the sun went down,
27:20
Speaker 1: sometimes you could get an AM station on your radio
27:23
Speaker 1: that's like four states away because of those bear waves
27:28
Speaker 1: bouncing off the ion a sphere and saying we'll take
27:31
Speaker 1: it from here.
27:32
Speaker 3: Yeah. During the day, the ionosphere is super ionized. That's
27:35
Speaker 3: where it gets its name. At night, it's less ionized,
27:38
Speaker 3: So there's for some reason AM radio signals can bounce
27:42
Speaker 3: off of it easier and like you said, end up
27:44
Speaker 3: down in Mexico for goodness.
27:46
Speaker 2: Sake, Yeah, which is pretty cool.
27:49
Speaker 3: For that reason though, that's why they stop transmitting at night,
27:53
Speaker 3: a lot of them. Like I'm with you, I don't
27:55
Speaker 3: know if they still do or not. It seems like
27:57
Speaker 3: the kind of thing that maybe was licked, but it
28:00
Speaker 3: also seems so fundamental that maybe it's still a problem.
28:03
Speaker 3: But there were some stations that were designated clear channels.
28:08
Speaker 3: They were allowed to broadcast twenty four hours a day,
28:11
Speaker 3: and they were spread out both physically around the country
28:14
Speaker 3: and in Canada and Mexico, and also spread out on
28:18
Speaker 3: the dial so that their signals wouldn't interfere with one
28:22
Speaker 3: another when they traveled really far distances. And one of
28:25
Speaker 3: the reasons why they had AM stations designated to operate
28:31
Speaker 3: twenty four hours a day is again part of that
28:33
Speaker 3: public good, which was a service that AM radio offers
28:38
Speaker 3: that has kind of overlooked a lot here in the
28:40
Speaker 3: United States, which is it is like a national security
28:44
Speaker 3: alert system essentially We'll talk a little more about that later.
28:47
Speaker 3: But that's why the clear Channel thing is a thing.
28:52
Speaker 1: Right, And to be clear, I didn't even mean that,
28:55
Speaker 1: not to be confused with former iHeartMedia company Clear Channel.
29:01
Speaker 3: No, but I bet that's where they get their name.
29:04
Speaker 2: Man, it'd be a real coincidence. Huh.
29:06
Speaker 3: Wasn't that the name of the city that was built
29:09
Speaker 3: on rock and roll?
29:11
Speaker 2: Clear Channel?
29:12
Speaker 3: Yeah? Clear Channel City.
29:14
Speaker 1: I'm not falling for anything you ever say anymore, so
29:16
Speaker 1: don't even try.
29:18
Speaker 2: Should we take another break?
29:19
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, we'll take another break talk about the
29:22
Speaker 1: rise of TV and you know, music on AM radio
29:26
Speaker 1: right after this.
30:00
Speaker 3: Okay, Chuck, we're back. And we talked about how the
30:03
Speaker 3: Golden Age of radio ended, but that was what the
30:06
Speaker 3: old stars considered the golden age. If you were young
30:08
Speaker 3: and hip, the Golden Age was still yet to come.
30:12
Speaker 2: That's right.
30:13
Speaker 1: I mentioned Top forty was invented on AM and it
30:15
Speaker 1: was specifically developed by a station odor named Todd Stores
30:19
Speaker 1: in Nebraska at the beginning of the nineteen fifties. I guess,
30:25
Speaker 1: and he said, Hey, you know, radio has all these
30:28
Speaker 1: great shows. I love those puppets. That ventriloquism is great,
30:33
Speaker 1: but we've got rock and roll now and R and
30:36
Speaker 1: B and soon you know, pop music coming our way,
30:40
Speaker 1: pop and pop music.
30:43
Speaker 2: Who was that is that? Falco?
30:44
Speaker 3: No, I shouldn't have opened my big mouth because I
30:48
Speaker 3: don't remember I even have that on my phone, so
30:50
Speaker 3: maybe I'll look sometime soon.
30:53
Speaker 2: But he said, hey, let's let's start playing this music.
30:56
Speaker 1: Let's create a what Julia calls a jew box driven
31:00
Speaker 1: media and you know, play people stuff that. You know,
31:04
Speaker 1: DJs became a thing. That's when they became personalities. Each
31:08
Speaker 1: station started having you know, these sort of wacky that's
31:10
Speaker 1: where those first you know, like the Wolfman and all
31:13
Speaker 1: those sort of wacky early DJs came from that were
31:16
Speaker 1: like real personalities people would tune into just to listen
31:19
Speaker 1: to their specific show.
31:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like each station had to have their own personality,
31:25
Speaker 3: like the Big Bopper, one of the most famous of
31:27
Speaker 3: all time. Yeah, he was djaying for a station in Beaumont, Texas.
31:31
Speaker 3: Like it had like, if you had a station, you
31:34
Speaker 3: had to have a personality, and some of them just
31:36
Speaker 3: happened to be so popular that they became international icons essentially.
31:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing.
31:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like the Wolfman went on to own a furniture
31:46
Speaker 3: store in North Georgia called Gallery Furniture. If you wanted
31:50
Speaker 3: a waterbed, you would go ask for the Wolfman.
31:53
Speaker 2: Boy, that's a niche joke. Should we even explain it
31:57
Speaker 2: or not? Okay?
31:58
Speaker 1: Good?
31:58
Speaker 3: I think if you go onto utube and you look
32:00
Speaker 3: up Gallery Frensham the Wolfman, there'll be something on there.
32:04
Speaker 2: Oh. Sure, but that was a wolf mate, Jack. Are
32:06
Speaker 2: you sure you didn't really think it was the same guy,
32:09
Speaker 2: did you?
32:10
Speaker 3: No?
32:11
Speaker 2: Okay, See, I don't know what to believe anymore.
32:15
Speaker 3: I'm not trying, you know, I just wanted to come
32:17
Speaker 3: clean about this.
32:18
Speaker 2: Okay.
32:19
Speaker 3: I've never tried to fool you. That was a thing
32:22
Speaker 3: that just kind of evolved. I've just been making dry,
32:26
Speaker 3: random jokes all this time, but it's never been to
32:30
Speaker 3: fool you. You took that and ran with it. I've
32:33
Speaker 3: never done it directly to fool you.
32:35
Speaker 2: This is not what you said during our therapy session
32:37
Speaker 2: last week.
32:40
Speaker 3: Well, doctor Krantz said.
32:41
Speaker 2: That, Doctor Katz, that's who we should have gotten.
32:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, doctor Katz said that I needed to make more
32:46
Speaker 3: stuff up.
32:47
Speaker 2: So we're not therapy together. By the way, everybody, that
32:50
Speaker 2: was a joke. But if we did we'd get the
32:52
Speaker 2: guy who therapied Metallica, right.
32:55
Speaker 3: Oh, I forgot that they were in therapy together. Yeah,
32:59
Speaker 3: I guess it worked.
33:01
Speaker 2: I'm not knocking at at all.
33:02
Speaker 1: I mean, we haven't had to do it, but I
33:04
Speaker 1: think that's a great idea for any kind of partnership.
33:06
Speaker 3: You know, agreed? Okay, Was that the therapist that talked
33:11
Speaker 3: Metallica out of their emo phase? Right, because hats off
33:14
Speaker 3: to that therapist. Maybe we're talking, Oh yeah, we're talking
33:20
Speaker 3: about what was going on with this transition to music.
33:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
33:25
Speaker 3: Well, one of the reasons why AM radio transition to
33:28
Speaker 3: music and away from things like soap operas and all
33:31
Speaker 3: that stuff was because those things ended up on TV. Yeah,
33:35
Speaker 3: the older people followed those. Remember, they're like radios the
33:38
Speaker 3: pits now because the golden there is over And then
33:41
Speaker 3: they turn on their TVs and they're like, oh, the
33:43
Speaker 3: golden there is over here. Now, let's just keep going
33:46
Speaker 3: and watching now instead of just listening. And that left
33:49
Speaker 3: the kids to fill this vacuum, which was AM radio,
33:53
Speaker 3: And like you said, the top forty format started there.
33:56
Speaker 3: The like big internationally known DJs started there, and it
34:01
Speaker 3: just kind of took off little by little. But really
34:04
Speaker 3: picked up steam when a few things kind of came
34:07
Speaker 3: together and one of them you already mentioned, which was
34:09
Speaker 3: transis to radios, So now you didn't just have to
34:12
Speaker 3: sit at home with the oldsters to listen to your
34:15
Speaker 3: favorite hits. And then also AM radio started to show
34:19
Speaker 3: up in cars essentially as not even an option after
34:23
Speaker 3: a while, like you got the AM radio whether you
34:25
Speaker 3: wanted it or not.
34:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think more than half of American cars had
34:30
Speaker 1: AM radio receivers factory installed by the nineteen fifties. And
34:35
Speaker 1: that was a huge, huge deal obviously, and you know,
34:39
Speaker 1: it was the dominant paradigm for music until seventy eight.
34:44
Speaker 1: And there was that period from kind of the early
34:48
Speaker 1: seventies to the early eighties, little under ten years where
34:52
Speaker 1: that you know, sort of yacht rocky am mellow gold
34:56
Speaker 1: stuff really really took over. Yeah, you had to kind
34:59
Speaker 1: of watch what you put on the radio because FM
35:02
Speaker 1: was playing you know, they were playing the AOAR album
35:07
Speaker 1: oriented rock stuff that had a little more mckismo and
35:11
Speaker 1: testosterone fuel, like you know rock bands. Big hair, yeah, exactly,
35:15
Speaker 1: big hair, long hair, not a mustache in sight unless
35:19
Speaker 1: it was part of a beard probably, but wasn't the
35:22
Speaker 1: case on AM with yacht rock, there were mustachioed dudes,
35:25
Speaker 1: generally sensitive guys. The songs weren't about usually like conquering women.
35:32
Speaker 1: Most of them were about getting dumped by women. A
35:34
Speaker 1: lot of sad sack music coming out, Yeah on AM
35:38
Speaker 1: radio in the nineteen seventies.
35:39
Speaker 2: I still listened to a lot of that stuff.
35:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a lot of the constraints. I found this
35:44
Speaker 3: to be true throughout my life. When you put constraints
35:47
Speaker 3: on something, it automatically fuels creativity because it doesn't mean
35:51
Speaker 3: you don't still want to get across you know, subversive ideas.
35:55
Speaker 3: You just have to cloak them within the confines of
35:58
Speaker 3: these constraints, and it makes you more creative than just
36:00
Speaker 3: saying the idea out loud, right, which is why album
36:05
Speaker 3: rockers are typically dumb compared to yacht rockers as far
36:09
Speaker 3: as the artist go.
36:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, like, if you're a songwriter and you're like,
36:15
Speaker 1: I'm a yacht rocker, I'm not going to sing about,
36:18
Speaker 1: you know, teenage girls. I'm going to sing about things
36:21
Speaker 1: I like, like Penia Kalattison and getting caught in the ring.
36:24
Speaker 3: Man. That guy, I think he's one of the most
36:27
Speaker 3: reprehensible songwriters of all time. Not song, not just that song,
36:32
Speaker 3: the Penia Kalada song. Have you ever heard the song him?
36:35
Speaker 3: His song Him?
36:37
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know it by name. What
36:39
Speaker 2: I recognize it?
36:40
Speaker 3: You think, I don't know. It's a it's considered yacht rock,
36:44
Speaker 3: but it's it's a really despicable song about this this
36:47
Speaker 3: guy whose girlfriend is sleeping around on him. So he's
36:50
Speaker 3: got a teacher a lesson to basically bring her back
36:53
Speaker 3: to heal and how he's not heartbroken or hurt. He's
36:57
Speaker 3: just mad that this guy. He says, like nobody should
37:00
Speaker 3: get it for free. Yeah, that's what he's upside. Well,
37:04
Speaker 3: it's a nutsoe song. Go listen to it. But yeah,
37:08
Speaker 3: Rupert Holmes, I don't think he'd like him Bodies the seventies,
37:12
Speaker 3: like the worst part of Men in the seventies, I.
37:15
Speaker 1: Think, Yeah, I mean, I really don't like that song
37:18
Speaker 1: at all. But I do love most yacht rock. And
37:20
Speaker 1: I know we've probably talked about it briefly at some
37:22
Speaker 1: point as a recommendation, but the yacht rock documentary that
37:25
Speaker 1: came out last year is really really good. Yeah, and
37:28
Speaker 1: we do definitely want to say that that term was
37:31
Speaker 1: not coined until the two thousands, when a comedy web
37:34
Speaker 1: series spoofing the genre made up the nam yacht rock.
37:38
Speaker 1: Before that, I think, like you know, Time Life put
37:41
Speaker 1: out those the am Gold series of CDs. I think
37:43
Speaker 1: am Gold or mellow or easy listening. That sort of
37:48
Speaker 1: is what we called it, right, didn't that what you
37:50
Speaker 1: called it?
37:50
Speaker 3: Easy listening? Yeah, that's what I was first introduced to it.
37:53
Speaker 1: As our mutual friend Allison who we used to work with.
37:58
Speaker 1: My friend Eddie's wife calls it carsick music because it
38:02
Speaker 1: just brings back days of like riding backwards in a
38:04
Speaker 1: station wagon and being car sick and that stuff just
38:07
Speaker 1: droning on and on.
38:08
Speaker 3: That's a perfect name for it.
38:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good.
38:10
Speaker 3: But when you know, when you're familiar with the idea
38:12
Speaker 3: that they had to kind of cloak subversive ideas in
38:17
Speaker 3: like non obvious terms, right, and you go back and
38:21
Speaker 3: listen to some of this mellow Gold stuff, it's like,
38:23
Speaker 3: whoa they were Really it's a little crazier than you thought.
38:26
Speaker 3: Like for example, love Grows where My Rosemary Goes is
38:31
Speaker 3: code for let's smoke some DMT. Yeah, that was the
38:38
Speaker 3: only one I turned up.
38:40
Speaker 2: I mean, what do you think Ride Like the Wind
38:42
Speaker 2: is about?
38:42
Speaker 3: Come on, right, that's about DMT as well. Oh wow,
38:46
Speaker 3: all right, but he's talking about what it's like to
38:48
Speaker 3: be on DMT, not just inviting you to smoke DMT.
38:52
Speaker 1: Well, when you know what's funny, I think Christopher Cross
38:55
Speaker 1: wrote Ride Like the Wind when he was on LSD.
38:58
Speaker 3: I believe that.
38:59
Speaker 2: I think said that in the yacht Rock doc.
39:01
Speaker 3: Did he really? Yeah, it's a great song.
39:05
Speaker 1: It's a great song and has one of the most
39:08
Speaker 1: one of the greatest guitar solos because he's a killer
39:10
Speaker 1: guitar player. But it's so buried in the mix, and
39:13
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of YouTube videos now where they're like, yeah,
39:15
Speaker 1: let's bring it up in the mix and talk about
39:17
Speaker 1: this solo and like how amazing it is.
39:19
Speaker 3: That's kind of like those videos of Van Halen with
39:23
Speaker 3: nothing but David Lee Ross's vocals. Have you heard those?
39:28
Speaker 2: Yeah?
39:28
Speaker 1: Those are Those are very funny. And to be clear,
39:31
Speaker 1: it's a ripping solo for yacht Rock. It's no so
39:34
Speaker 1: it's not like the solo for My Sharona or anything,
39:37
Speaker 1: but it's still good.
39:38
Speaker 3: I don't Yeah, neither of the solos stand out to me.
39:41
Speaker 3: I can't bring either one to mind.
39:43
Speaker 1: Oh man, the My Sharona solo is a top five
39:46
Speaker 1: guitar solo of all time for me. And you got
39:49
Speaker 1: to listen to the radio version cut out a full minute.
39:51
Speaker 1: It's like nineties plus seconds the full version.
39:55
Speaker 3: Wow.
39:55
Speaker 1: And they cut out two thirds of it for the
39:57
Speaker 1: radio version. So you got to listen to the real
39:59
Speaker 1: full version. It's like it's way better than it should
40:02
Speaker 1: be for that song.
40:03
Speaker 3: That would be the album at it right?
40:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so it's Kiddler.
40:08
Speaker 3: Or the twelve inch version.
40:10
Speaker 2: I don't know about the twelve inch Okay.
40:12
Speaker 3: Well, regardless, go listen to some Mellow Gold. It'll make
40:15
Speaker 3: you happy for sure.
40:18
Speaker 2: But where are we these days with AM radio?
40:20
Speaker 3: Well, there's this battle over it, just like absolutely every
40:26
Speaker 3: single other thing that people more than one person talks
40:29
Speaker 3: about in America, AM radio's actually managed to become politicized
40:35
Speaker 3: a bunch of car makers, from what I can tell,
40:37
Speaker 3: led by Tesla. I think they were the first ones
40:40
Speaker 3: to announce this back in twenty twenty that they were
40:42
Speaker 3: going to discontinue AM radios in their cars. Boo yeah.
40:48
Speaker 3: And I think now you can kind of imagine why
40:50
Speaker 3: it's a politicized idea, But the ostensible reason is that
40:57
Speaker 3: the AM stereo is interfered with by the ev long story,
41:03
Speaker 3: short AM waves are much more susceptible to noise because
41:08
Speaker 3: of electrical interference. Well, an electrical vehicle is lousy with
41:12
Speaker 3: electrical interference, And so the whole car industry is like,
41:15
Speaker 3: we're gonna have to spend a bunch of money just
41:17
Speaker 3: to keep this AM radio in there. And the US
41:21
Speaker 3: government is a pretty adamant that AM radio needs to
41:26
Speaker 3: stick around again, not just for the public good thing,
41:29
Speaker 3: the nostalgia factor, but also because if you are going
41:33
Speaker 3: to get an alert that you know the Cubans have invaded,
41:38
Speaker 3: you're going to probably get that alert over an AM
41:41
Speaker 3: radio station because that's what the whole system is set
41:44
Speaker 3: up to do. Not because it's antiquated, but because AM
41:47
Speaker 3: radio does all sorts of things those they could. The
41:50
Speaker 3: waves can travel very far, so it reaches a lot
41:53
Speaker 3: of people. Rural people listen to AM radio still today,
41:57
Speaker 3: like it's just part of rural life. So it's everybody
42:02
Speaker 3: is reached by AM one way or another. And I
42:04
Speaker 3: didn't know this, but you can make a type of
42:08
Speaker 3: radio a crystal receiver radio that can play AM radio
42:15
Speaker 3: broadcasts without any battery or power source. The crystal manages
42:20
Speaker 3: to take the energy in the radio carrier wave and
42:23
Speaker 3: it's amazing and use that alone to basically reproduce the sound.
42:28
Speaker 3: So for all those reasons, AM like radio really makes
42:31
Speaker 3: a lot of sense to put all of your eggs
42:33
Speaker 3: in that basket. As far as getting like emergency broadcasts out,
42:37
Speaker 3: So the government said, long story short, you need to
42:40
Speaker 3: keep AM radios in cars, and they're trying to figure
42:43
Speaker 3: out how to get that mandated.
42:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's called the Emergency Alert System now.
42:50
Speaker 1: It used to be the EBS, the Emergency Broadcast System.
42:52
Speaker 1: And if you're thinking, like man, I get my Amber alert,
42:55
Speaker 1: so like all that stuff comes through my phone now.
42:58
Speaker 1: And this isn't like gen X saying like, oh, to
43:01
Speaker 1: rely on on your phones, but like if you expect
43:05
Speaker 1: that phone to always work in all cases for the
43:08
Speaker 1: rest of time, you're sorely mistaken because if that system
43:13
Speaker 1: is taken out, then you're gonna rely on something like
43:16
Speaker 1: AM radio to get important information out, you know. I mean,
43:20
Speaker 1: that's why it's still there. That's why they're you know,
43:22
Speaker 1: going to the car makers and saying like, hey, like
43:26
Speaker 1: you may not listen to it, you may think it's
43:27
Speaker 1: old fashioned, but there are still four thousand AM stations
43:30
Speaker 1: and eighty million listeners a month that some of them
43:34
Speaker 1: rely on this stuff to get information, and you can't
43:36
Speaker 1: just say like, well, it seems old timey, so we
43:39
Speaker 1: don't interferes with our stuff, so we don't want it anymore.
43:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do kind of have the feeling that there
43:44
Speaker 3: is like a certain scorn toward the nostalgic factor of
43:48
Speaker 3: AM radio. Yeah, and that that's part of maybe what's
43:51
Speaker 3: driving it, which really ticks me off, because who are
43:55
Speaker 3: car makers to decide whether AM radio sticks around or not.
43:59
Speaker 3: Congress says, no, we actually have come up with a
44:02
Speaker 3: law called the Am Radio for Every Vehicle Act that
44:06
Speaker 3: basically says, if you sell a car in the United States,
44:08
Speaker 3: it has to have AM radio as a feature, not
44:12
Speaker 3: even an option. And a lot of carmakers are like, sure, fine,
44:16
Speaker 3: we're on board with that. Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar, Kiya, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Silantis, Subaru,
44:23
Speaker 3: Toyota all said we're keeping AM radio. Ford had said
44:27
Speaker 3: they weren't, and they said, okay, we didn't realize AM
44:30
Speaker 3: radio was so popular, we're going to keep it too.
44:33
Speaker 3: So I guess if you want to show your support
44:35
Speaker 3: for AM radio, everybody should just go out and buy
44:37
Speaker 3: a Jaguar.
44:39
Speaker 1: Well, Tesla, Rivian, Pollstar, BMW, Volkswagen, and Balvo dispensed with
44:45
Speaker 1: AM radio and some of their new car models. I
44:47
Speaker 1: don't think completely across the board for each of those manufacturers,
44:51
Speaker 1: but that every AM for Every Vehicle Act failed in
44:55
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Unfortunately, it was reintroduced this year in
45:00
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, just I think recently in September, and
45:04
Speaker 1: has a lot of support, like on you know, both
45:06
Speaker 1: sides of the aisle. So you know, if the one
45:10
Speaker 1: hundred and nineteenth Congress ever decides to do anything at all,
45:13
Speaker 1: perhaps that will be reconsidered.
45:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's got legs like an intern carrying coffee back
45:19
Speaker 3: to the office is how they put it in Washington.
45:23
Speaker 2: It's good. That was the original zzy top line, but
45:26
Speaker 2: it was a little bagg.
45:28
Speaker 3: Don't forget the Zzy top Eliminator video trilogy. You were feminist,
45:34
Speaker 3: that's right. You got anything else? Man?
45:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that was that was good support support
45:40
Speaker 1: AM radio. It's not a relic it's still important.
45:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, well put dude. If you want to know more
45:47
Speaker 3: about AM radio, start listening to AM radio. And since
45:50
Speaker 3: I started to sign off this episode like it was
45:52
Speaker 3: one of the OG episodes, that means it's time for
45:55
Speaker 3: listener mail.
45:59
Speaker 2: This is from car just kind of a thank you.
46:01
Speaker 1: Carra started listening in two thousand and eight when she
46:04
Speaker 1: was sick at home from high school with pneumonia. Yours
46:07
Speaker 1: was the very first podcast ever listened to, back when
46:09
Speaker 1: hardly anyone knew what a podcast was. I've been avid
46:13
Speaker 1: listener to a lot of shows since, but you have
46:15
Speaker 1: been a constant in my life through the end of
46:17
Speaker 1: high school, college, grad school, and beyond. Your voices have
46:20
Speaker 1: always been a sense of comfort and familiarity when things
46:23
Speaker 1: in life got really difficult. I went to see You
46:25
Speaker 1: Live in Boston three times, always on my own, and
46:29
Speaker 1: each show felt like a small celebration for myself of
46:31
Speaker 1: something that had carried me through so many years.
46:34
Speaker 3: I wonder if that's the person who had the laugh
46:36
Speaker 3: that we called out in Boston every time.
46:38
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. Maybe I think Kara would have
46:41
Speaker 2: mentioned that. Probably.
46:42
Speaker 1: Probably one rule with stuff you should know for me, though,
46:46
Speaker 1: is I could not listen to an episode until I
46:48
Speaker 1: could really pay attention, like other shows were background podcasts
46:53
Speaker 1: for me, but not yours. The only downside was that
46:56
Speaker 1: I fell further and further behind unless I had the
47:00
Speaker 1: focus to listen. This year, I've had to do a
47:02
Speaker 1: lot of driving, though, and things have settled down some,
47:05
Speaker 1: so I made it a goal to catch up in
47:07
Speaker 1: time to listen to the twenty twenty five Halloween special
47:09
Speaker 1: on Halloween. I also told myself, if I did it,
47:13
Speaker 1: get finally right in and tell you how much I
47:14
Speaker 1: appreciate the information, banter, humor and movie.
47:19
Speaker 2: Rerecks and stuff like that.
47:20
Speaker 1: So this is a day before Halloween email coming from
47:25
Speaker 1: Kara or Kara ka R.
47:27
Speaker 3: That's awesome, Thanks Carra. Kara obviously very goal motivated and
47:32
Speaker 3: I appreciate that, and thank you for listening to all
47:36
Speaker 3: of our shows for so long. That means a lot
47:39
Speaker 3: that we have friends who are travelers like you. You know.
47:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean We've said it before. If there weren't
47:45
Speaker 1: the Cara Karras, then we would not exist as a
47:48
Speaker 1: show anymore.
47:49
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that sounds like a T shirt if you ask me.
47:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Cara Carra sounds like I don't know, like
47:55
Speaker 2: a food Yeah, like replaced.
47:59
Speaker 3: Okay, if you want to get in touch of this
48:02
Speaker 3: like Kara Kara did and let us know what we
48:04
Speaker 3: meant to you. We love those emails. You can wrap
48:08
Speaker 3: it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it
48:10
Speaker 3: off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
48:17
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
48:20
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
48:24
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.