AM Radio: Solid Gold

The era of AM radio isn't over, but it's well past its heyday. Dive in today for a trip down memory lane. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:05Josh Clark?

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• 1:39Speaker 03

  Everybody, we have a big announcement, but Josh, I think you need to do your traditional tour announcement.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  There we go. That means it's tour time, everybody. We took off 2025 because it just felt like the right thing to do, but we are hitting the road again next year.

• 1:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  And we are super excited.

• 1:56Josh Clark?

  Yes, get this. So we're going to start hitting the road in January, starting January 27th at the Paramount Theater in Denver. The next day, we'll be at the Paramount Theater in Seattle. And on January 29th, we'll be back to our beloved Sketch Fest at the Sidney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, CA.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  That's right. That's our January run. And then in April, we're going to hit the Midwest and we're going to some cities we haven't been to yet. And I'm super excited because on April 16th, we'll be in Madison, Wisconsin, at the Orpheum Theater. On the 17th, we'll be back in Chicago at the Chicago Auditorium, a city we love. And then to my wife's hometown, finally, April 18th in Akron, Ohio, at the Goodyear Theater.

• 2:38Josh Clark?

  That's right. And get this, for the January leg, tickets are on sale now. And we're actually running a pre-sale today, November 18th. You can use our code SYSKLIVE to get tickets early. Go to stuffyoushouldknow.com. It'll have all the tickets and info that you need. And you can buy Sketch Fest tickets right now as well.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  That's right. Sketch Fest on sale, the 16th of November. There's no pre-sale on that one. General on-sale is happening as we speak.

• 3:07Josh Clark?

  That's right. So we'll see you guys in 2026. We're really excited to get back out there. We hope you're excited, too. If you're not, just fake it when you see us.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  That's right. And pay attention, the great white north, because there's more to come this summer.

• 3:21Josh Clark?

  That's right. So we'll see you soon.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 3:36Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. And we're just kicking it old school, real mellow style, which is what I understand all the kids say today.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  That's right. And hey, before we get going, this is probably the perfect episode to mention that our episode on how vinyl works that was released on vinyl is being reprinted because that thing sold out. And I think people would love to have one of these things for Christmas.

• 4:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we're releasing it just in time for the holidays. As a matter of fact, it's coming out on Black Friday, November 28th this year, which also happens to be Record Store Day, from what I understand. And our friends at Born Losers Records put this out again. They did the first one, did a magnificent job, of course. And they printed 300 red and black marble records that are just beautiful. Those are available online at s y s k vinyl dot com.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:37Josh Clark?

  And then for the actual record store where you have to leave your home, probably put on a cap because it's late November, maybe a coat, go down to your local indie record store.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, do it.

• 4:48Josh Clark?

  There might be a chance that they have one of the 300 gold royalty records. Those are exclusives for record stores.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Well, you can bet your bookie I'll be going to my local record store and supporting ourselves by buying one.

• 5:03Josh Clark?

  That's awesome. You should draw more people by just spending like a full day there and telling everyone.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe I could work something out with the Wook Street here in town. I can go sit up there and those guys can not talk to me.

• 5:16Josh Clark?

  We'll see if we can get a cutout of you too, to stand behind you while you sit there.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  That's great. I'm really excited this is back out though, because people really seem to enjoy it. And what is it again? S Y S K vinyl dot com?

• 5:29Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 5:31Josh Clark?

  And thanks again to our friends at Born Losers. You guys are great.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're the best.

• 5:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they are. Okay, Chuck. So yeah, this is a really good episode to shout out records because we're talking about AM radio. And we talked a little bit about it in our beautiful music short stuff, AKA BM.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 5:50Josh Clark?

  I'll never get over.

• 5:53Josh Clark?

  But there's a lot more to AM radio. And in fact, I didn't realize this. Julia helped us with this one. And I didn't realize before that AM broadcasting basically set the standards.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:07Josh Clark?

  For all sorts of different things, like how news is presented. Soap operas, all sorts of different stuff.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:15Josh Clark?

  That lasted for decades and decades and decades. It all started with AM radio because ultimately it was the very first form of mass communication that was not printed.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, top 40 radios started on AM, which is, I mean, I think these days, the kids, if they hear of AM radio, probably either don't know what it is or may not, if they have, as we'll see, a new, a newer model car, especially EV, may not even have AM radio. Or a radio in their house, like a transistor radio or something, or receiver, but they may think AM radio is as like, you know, news, talk, sports talk, maybe some foreign language stations, maybe some if they're driving through a rural community, some like weird farm report or something that they've never heard.

• 7:02Josh Clark?

  I remember this.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  And that's, that's kind of what AM radio became, but it launched top 40. It was the, up until like 1978, it beat FM and FM had been around since what, like the 30s?

• 7:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it had. And everybody said, no, we're really happy with AM and stuck with it even after FM came around for quite a while. But let's talk about this because you, like you hit on some really good points and we're going to touch on all of those, but let's start at the very, very beginning. When AM radio really started to come around because people had been messing with AM broadcasting since the very early 1900s. There were some inventions that all kind of came together around the same time.

• 7:47Josh Clark?

  And I do not understand how this could possibly happen, but putting these disparate inventions together and figuring out how to broadcast radio waves that have encoded sound in them is just, I mean, hats off. That's like mad genius stuff. But that's what happened in the very early 1900s.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, there were, there were people broadcasting AM signals at the time and, you know, the only people that had these AM receivers that could listen were like soldiers at sea or something like that. This is before they made it into the homes of Americans. That paused during World War I because they said, hey, we can't have you broadcasting your, your daughter playing violin, even though our soldiers love it that are out at sea.

• 8:29Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Uh, we need to kind of lock this down for now, but starting in about 1920, in fact, exactly 1920, was when commercial broadcast AM radio started with KDKA Pittsburgh.

• 8:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was the very first one. I think that they read the results of the Warren Harding election. I can't remember the other guy's name, somebody Cox. Warren Harding obviously won, but right after that, I mean, like, this was so clearly a groundbreaking medium.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:00Josh Clark?

  It was basically for the people in the 1920s, it was what the, what people in the early 90s experienced with internet.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:08Josh Clark?

  It was almost like, like, holy cow, I can't, like, you can't even begin to imagine all the different ways that this thing is going to change the world. You just know it's going to change the world. That's kind of what happened. And so, right after that first broadcast, it just exploded all over the world. And one reason why it exploded all over the world is because the person who's considered the father of radio, Guglielmo Marconi, he set up companies everywhere. So, very quickly, radio stations started to develop in just a year or two after KDKA went on the air.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  I'm, by the way, a little mad at you because ever since you sent me the Marconi tidbit this morning, I cannot get "We Built This City on Rock and Roll" out of my head.

• 9:55Josh Clark?

  How? Why? That's, that's odd.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Marconi played the mamba.

• 10:00Josh Clark?

  Oh, I never knew they said that.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Listen to the radio.

• 10:02Josh Clark?

  I gotcha.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I, I mean, I hate that song so much, and I can't get it out of my head, all because I just saw the word Marconi typed in an email.

• 10:12Josh Clark?

  I always thought, seriously, there was some gibberish I had in my head. I knew it wasn't right, but it was like, "And on the way says the mamba," something like that. I had no idea Marconi was name checked, but that's appropriate.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm not really mad at you, but it, boy, that thing really gets rooted in your head pretty well. But like you said, by the early 1920s, everybody was on board. In 1922, in fact, AT&T had the first radio network built when they linked 38 radio stations by phone lines and could broadcast, you know, WEAF out of New York all around the country. So like people, it was, it was literally, like you said, like the internet, it was American life before and life after, as far as AM radio goes.

• 10:55Josh Clark?

  Well put, well put. And not just American life too. Like this, like I said, it spread around the world very quickly. The BBC started broadcasting in 1922. Australia's first radio station, 2SB, which is now ABC Sydney, that's, they started in 1923. Canada got its first one in 1932, XWA out of Montreal. It was just, just like the internet. It's not like it was just one country. It was everybody who got involved because it was a humanity altering invention.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. By the late 1920s, the major networks had launched, and you know, these were radio networks, NBC and CBS. These were international broadcasts from the United States all over the world. And, you know, they worked by, you know, you had to have a receiver. So early on, you know, vacuum tubes worked with radio receivers, connected to loudspeakers, and that's how you could hear things. Later on, transistor radios came along, and that's what really changed the game because that's when it was like TVs for the olds. The young people were, had these little radios in their pocket, and then they started, you know, putting radios in cars. But it's funny to think about a

• 12:09Speaker 03

  time when like, yeah, TVs outdated and we want AM radio in our pocket.

• 12:14Josh Clark?

  And then it came roaring back eventually, thanks to LA law. The, you've mentioned something that I think is worth calling out too. You mentioned that there's a speaker that converts that, that sound signal back into actual acoustic sound. They weren't headphones, they were speakers. So that meant that early radio was a thing that the family gathered around. It was a social activity, listening to all the stuff that was on the radio, which is really important because. I mean, that's definitely become fragmented and fractured today as it, you know, personal media has become like more and more available. But that was like, whatever was on the radio right then, probably whatever your parents wanted to listen to, that's what the family was listening to.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, for better or worse. Uh, I think by 1930, there were 40% of US homes had AM receivers. Uh, hopefully, most of them had speakers, otherwise they'd just sit there and look at it. Uh, there were more than 600 radio stations in 1930, uh, obviously, all of them AM. But, um, like we mentioned, FM came along pretty quickly in the 1930s and had a better sound, but, um, you know, it just didn't, um, take over until 1978. I think, um, by 1940 even, 83% of the households in America, I mean, that's really massive coverage, uh, had AM radio signals like, you know, being broadcast through their homes.

• 13:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And you said, I mean, like FM was around, but people said, no, we're, we're sticking with the AM. One of the big reasons is because the FM receiver needs more power because of the way FM radio was pumped out. And that was a big thing for a long time. That was one reason people stuck around with AM, but, um, there's definitely an affection that developed for AM radio over the years.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, there's also something called FM drift. Um, like, you know, if you're driving around, listening to an FM station, uh, it can kind of go in and out, um, uh, you know, to the left or to the right, I guess. You could kind of turn your dial a little bit and try and dial it back in, but that was an issue. And we'll talk about some of the AM radio issues, but, uh, if you're looking at the dial, uh, AM, uh, but according to the FCC, AM waves have to be broadcast on frequencies between 535 megahertz and 1.7, and FM is from 88 to 108.

• 14:37Josh Clark?

  Sounds legit.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 14:39Josh Clark?

  Those check out based on the radio call signs I'm familiar with.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Do you ever listen to AM radio anymore?

• 14:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I listened to the Bulldogs game on the way home from Yumi's parents' house on Saturday.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Wasn't that nice?

• 14:55Josh Clark?

  The ballgame or listening to the radio?

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Listening to a sports broadcast on the radio.

• 15:00Josh Clark?

  Yes, I used to do that in college. I can't remember the sportcaster's name, the legendary one for Georgia with the hobnail boot.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, Larry Munson.

• 15:10Josh Clark?

  Larry Munson. Yeah, back in college, I would listen to him and watch the game.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:17Josh Clark?

  Like on mute and hopefully they would sync up.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was the preferred method, but I still love, and it doesn't happen a lot because, you know, I'll watch the game on TV generally, but if I'm traveling like you were just talking about, or I remember when I built, we couldn't afford to build like, to get a fence company to build our fence 20 years ago. And so I built our privacy fence like picket by picket over the course of two months.

• 15:41Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  And a lot of that was spent with me listening to Georgia Bulldogs on the radio.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  I mean, it was pre podcast even, and it's just, it's still to me a great way to catch a game.

• 15:54Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Not even nostalgia wise, like it really is a great way to listen to catch a game.

• 15:59Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, the play calling is like, you have to be really good. There's no assist there. You're telling everybody what's going on, you know?

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:07Josh Clark?

  I say we take a break because we're getting nostalgic already. What do you think?

• 16:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm gonna park that and we'll stick to the facts.

• 16:13Josh Clark?

  Okay, baby. We're taking a break, everybody. We'll be right back.

• 16:35Josh Clark?

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• 17:36Speaker 05

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• 17:54Speaker 06

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• 18:16Speaker 05

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• 18:43Speaker 03

  So if we're talking the golden age of radio as a whole, that was about a three to four decade period from the 20s through the mid 50s or so. That was when AM radio starred. We'll also talk a little bit later about sort of the 70s period when AM radio music was like, you know, the mellow gold stuff was a big deal. But that, you know, that first decade of radio ushered in. You know, it was blowing people's minds. Like, they had never heard sometimes any of this stuff.

• 19:14Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Or certainly had not heard any of this stuff live, like a live broadcast. And speaking of sports, in 1921, over about 125,000 square miles from where it broadcasts out of Jersey City, New Jersey. People listened to the heavyweight boxing championship. And I can't imagine what that was like to hear a sports broadcast like that for the first time, as it happened.

• 19:38Josh Clark?

  Well, hopefully, the commentator knew what he was doing, too. And it weren't like, like, long pauses, like the boom goes the dynamite guy.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  One of them's punching another one repeatedly.

• 19:49Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Forgot to mention, Carpentier just went down.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 19:54Josh Clark?

  One of the other things that we'll see about AM radio, too, Chuck, is that it's, it was long considered a public good. So that the government had like a little more willingness to be like, no, you can say this, you can't say that, and you have to do this. One of the reasons why is because it was very quickly used to kind of spread public information. Like, presidents took to it very quickly. Remember I said that KDKA announced the results of the Harding election, within just a couple of years, Warren Harding was using it to, to talk to America. And FDR was probably the most famous president who used the radio to talk to America. He had a series of, like, just informal speeches, basically called fireside chats.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:36Josh Clark?

  That really made a lot of the country just fall in love with them. But it was very, it was, it was very clear early on just how much influence it could have on people's political opinions.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  Well, and it was a lot of people, the first time they ever heard the president's voice speak, you know?

• 20:54Josh Clark?

  Is that what he sounds like?

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. It wasn't around during Lincoln, because everyone would have been like, really?

• 21:01Speaker 03

  But yeah, you know, there was definitely public good and we'll dive into that a little bit, along with tons of entertainment. You know, it was basically like 15 minute chunks for a long, long time of all over the map variety style stuff, kind of reminiscent of vaudeville. Like there were hosts of shows, but the DJ thing didn't come along until much later. So you had like advice shows and news shows and obviously comedy stuff, game shows, you know, radio dramas were a big, big deal.

• 21:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's where soap operas came from too. They were broadcast almost exclusively with women as their target audience. And at the time, this is just post World War I, where women had helped the war effort in the factories. The men came back and they were like, get back in the house. And women were stuck in the house all day. So these radio dramas were broadcast to them and they were almost exclusively sponsored by cleaning product companies.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 21:58Josh Clark?

  So they became known as soap operas. And one of the longer lasting soap operas of all time actually made the jump successfully from radio to TV. That was Guiding Light.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  No way.

• 22:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it started in 1937 on the radio and was finally canceled in 2009 on TV. It was 72 years of Guiding Light, every weekday too.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  I had a very, very brief foray into soap operas. I guess it was in college or something. I don't know why, but I got hooked for, I mean, not too long, but I was, I was hooked. I was like, these things are stupid. I was like, yeah, but what happens?

• 22:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the same thing happened to me again in college too. And I cannot remember the name of it, but it was just off the chain. I know there's a main character named Marlena and she was possessed by the devil at one point.

• 22:49Speaker 03

  Someone will remember and let you know.

• 22:51Josh Clark?

  Certainly. That's like a very famous plotline. That was going on when I was hooked on them. And then I got hooked on them enough that I would switch channels during ads and what, see what was on other soap operas. And on General Hospital once, there was a scene where this couple was in bed and they did such a poor job of editing that they left in the director saying, cut, and the two actors roll out of bed.

• 23:17Josh Clark?

  I'll never forget it. It was one of the greatest things I've ever seen on television.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  They're like, the sheets are pulled up, you know, to their bare skin.

• 23:24Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  And then they roll out of bed and they have on like, blue jeans.

• 23:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I don't remember what they were wearing or anything, but yeah, I'm sure it was just like that.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  That's really funny. Oh God, to have that time again. Where you could just like, maybe sort of get hooked on a soap for no reason.

• 23:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Religion was also a big deal early on AM radio. All of a sudden evangelists could broadcast far and wide from what they called the electric pulpit. And they became like, you know, big time personalities and stars during the depression era.

• 23:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one of the first people that the question of freedom of speech was raised around was Father Charles Coughlin, who was a bigoted hate speech Catholic priest, who really kind of pushed the envelope, you could say. I think he said the Nazis didn't go far enough during Kristallnacht, like he was that kind of guy.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 24:15Josh Clark?

  So he definitely rose to prominence during this time. On the lighter side, one of the most popular long-running shows was the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:30Josh Clark?

  Which was a ventriloquist act on the radio.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the jokes still work, but it's definitely a visual medium.

• 24:39Josh Clark?

  For sure, but he managed to make it like, super radio-friendly and it was super popular. You said that the golden age of radio ended around the 1962, and we should say this was, this depends on your perspective, because a lot of people say, nope, golden age of radio went all the way to the 70s. This would be like, the first wave of golden age radio where

• 25:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:02Josh Clark?

  it wasn't music, it was like dramas, scripted comedies, like sports, all this stuff. Like what TV is today.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:11Josh Clark?

  This was the first iteration of radio and it was all AM radio. But there was a year, 1962, when two shows were canceled, two long-running shows, and people point to their cancellation as essentially the end of that era.

• 25:24Speaker 03

  What were those?

• 25:25Josh Clark?

  Yours Truly Johnny Dollar.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 25:28Josh Clark?

  It was about an insurance fraud investigator.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  Sounds like true crime.

• 25:33Josh Clark?

  It is. It sounds interesting. Each episode was a flashback of him going over the line items for his expense report for that particular case. And then each line item would kind of bring up like a new scene. Pretty interesting.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  The radio network guy is like, can he kill his lover?

• 25:52Josh Clark?

  And then suspense was another one. And it sounds like it was a little bit of a predecessor to like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and maybe The Twilight Zone here or there. And both of those were really well-produced shows and they got canceled the same year and everybody said, that's it. That's the end of the golden age. And they spat on the floor.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Well, you mentioned the public good. Starting in the 1920s, to jump back a little bit, you know, like you mentioned, president speaking, inaugural addresses were being broadcast, and the government really realized, hey, like, we have a sort of a public service we need to enact when we're sharing information, because we got to get the word out about stuff sometimes. And this is the way to do it. So the USDA radio service began talking to farmers. In 1926, the US Bureau of Home Economics had a chat program they launched, I believe in the same year, where they could talk about like, you know, any emergencies happening in regards to kids, like health and safety stuff, like a new disease going

• 26:56Speaker 03

  around that your kid maybe should get vaccinated against, stuff like that.

• 27:00Josh Clark?

  Newfangled polio.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  But by the end of the 1920s, they were like, hey, there's a limited bandwidth and people are getting political messages out. And we need to make sure that everyone in America is getting sort of equal access to these messages. So, you know, no particular message gets out more than any other. And that's where the fairness doctrine came about, right?

• 27:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we talked about that in the presidential debates episode, but I think it deserves its own episode. It's so controversial. But basically, the fairness doctrine is what I was talking about earlier when I said, the government wasn't shy about getting involved in regulating radio because of what you just said. Like, you can't Just use radio, or at the time you couldn't, to just put out one, say, specific political viewpoint. So the Fairness Doctrine said you have to have equal time. When you're talking about political matters, you have to give equal time to both opposing viewpoints. It also said some other stuff, too, that I thought was pretty cool. It made sure that commercial concerns did not eclipse social ones.

• 28:05Josh Clark?

  So you couldn't screw over the public for your own bottom line, which is just refreshing these days. That radio served the public good and that you have like a kind of public programming that's essentially like, in addition to all of the, you know, ventriloquist acts and soap operas and all that, you have like stuff that makes people, helps people be more informed citizens. Like, that was what the government was getting involved in radio for.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe perhaps if we would have been around the time, it might have been stuff you should do.

• 28:44Josh Clark?

  Oh, I could see that. I could see that. Yeah, we would have been great for AM radio, I think. As a matter of fact, we should probably just stop podcasting and start broadcasting on AM radio.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, we've got to get the message of jackhammers out far and wide.

• 28:57Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  You know, the Fairness Doctrine went away, and, you know, like you said, we should do a whole episode on that. But one of the things that happened was, you know, the FM becoming a dominant force and just way more choices and way more bandwidth for radio, so they didn't need it anymore.

• 29:16Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  So then, you know, that's where, that's really, literally where the echo chamber of politics started, where you could turn into just your person who only talked about things that you agreed with.

• 29:26Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  And that's it.

• 29:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, not coincidentally, 1980s is when talk radio, like, really started to become a thing with, like, people like Rush Limbaugh. That did not exist before, that kind of thing.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you know FM, when that came around, it did create that echo chamber, but it was mostly like a wealthy educated crowd that could afford FM receivers. They were more expensive, like you were talking about.

• 29:52Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  I think there were more than 2,000 AM stations on the year in the 1950s. Some of them would broadcast on both. I definitely remember, you know, both AM/FM stations.

• 30:03Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  But FM did have some, and still do have some sort of things that weren't in their favor, like if you were inside a building, sometime the AM signal could get blocked and get a little more difficult to get.

• 30:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  A lot of AM stations, I think most of them in fact, have to either reduce their power or just go off the air at night. So, you know, back in the day, and maybe still, you hear those sign-offs at the end of the night, which is kind of fun, where they play like the Star Spangled Banner or something, and it just goes dead.

• 30:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like in Poltergeist.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  That's right. But another cool thing about AM is if you've ever been like driving around out west or something, and you know, probably not these days, but back when I was taking my big out west trips, when all I had was like a cassette player and the radio, once the sun went down, sometimes you could get an AM station on your radio that's like four states away because of those airwaves bouncing off the ionosphere and saying, "We'll take it from here."

• 31:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, during the day, the ionosphere is super ionized, that's where it gets its name. At night, it's less ionized, so there's, for some reason, AM radio signals can bounce off of it easier and, like you said, end up down in Mexico, for goodness sake.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:20Josh Clark?

  Which is pretty cool. For that reason, though, that's why they stopped transmitting at night, a lot of them. Like, I'm with you, I don't know if they still do or not. Seems like the kind of thing that... Maybe was licked, but it also seems so fundamental that maybe it's still a problem. But there were some, some stations that were designated clear channels. They were allowed to broadcast 24 hours a day and they were spread out both physically around the country and in Canada and Mexico, and also spread out on the dial so that their, their signals wouldn't interfere with one another when they traveled really far distances. And one of the reasons why they, they had AM stations designated to operate 24 hours

• 32:03Josh Clark?

  a day is again, part of that public good, which was a service that AM radio offers that is kind of overlooked a lot here in the United States, which is, it is like a national security alert system essentially. We'll talk a little more about that later, but that's why the clear channel thing is a thing.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Right. And to be clear, I didn't even mean that. Not to be confused with the former iHeartMedia company, Clear Channel.

• 32:33Josh Clark?

  No, but I bet that's where they get their name.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Man, that'd be a real coincidence, huh?

• 32:38Josh Clark?

  Wasn't that the name of the city that was built on rock and roll?

• 32:43Speaker 03

  Clear Channel?

• 32:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Clear Channel City?

• 32:46Speaker 03

  I'm not falling for anything you ever say anymore, so don't even try.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Should we take another break?

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  All right, we'll take another break, talk about the rise of TV and, you know, music on AM radio right after this.

• 33:16Josh Clark?

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• 33:26Speaker 03

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• 33:39Josh Clark?

  Or discover Toyota. Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic forerunner and land cruiser designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you could trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 34:38Speaker 07

  To this day, Ordinary would not have done anything, and I would have not been able to put it out if Book Talk didn't back it up and if my wife and her friend didn't back it up.

• 34:47Speaker 05

  Amazing.

• 34:48Speaker 07

  Pretty crazy how like, just one thing.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  Right.

• 34:50Speaker 07

  I mean, I bet we could point to nine different things in our careers where it's just one thing all of a sudden. If that one thing didn't happen, then I wouldn't be here.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  What you're talking about right now is what I've been talking about since the beginning of my career. There's these things outside of you that make everything happen. These other forces somehow came into contact with each other and helped propel you to this place.

• 35:14Speaker 07

  It's just insane.

• 35:15Speaker 05

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 35:42Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, we're back. And we talked about how the golden age of radio ended, but that was what the oldsters considered the golden age. If you were young and hip, the golden age was still yet to come.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  That's right. I mentioned Top 40 was invented on AM and it was specifically developed by a station owner named Todd Storrs in Nebraska at the beginning of the 1950s, I guess. And he said, hey, you know, radio has all these great shows. I love those puppets. That ventriloquism is great. But we've got rock and roll now and R and B. And soon, you know, pop music coming our way.

• 36:22Josh Clark?

  Pop, pop, pop music.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Who was that? Is that Falco?

• 36:27Josh Clark?

  No.

• 36:29Josh Clark?

  I shouldn't have opened my big mouth because I don't remember. I even have that on my phone. So maybe I'll look sometime soon.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  But he said, hey, let's, let's start playing this music. Let's create a, what Julia calls a jukebox driven media. And, you know, play people's stuff. You know, DJs became a thing. That's when they became personalities. Each station started having, you know, these sort of wacky. That's where those first, you know, like the Wolfman and all those sort of wacky early DJs came from that were like real personalities people would tune into just to listen to their specific show.

• 37:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Like each station had to have their own personality. Like the Big Bopper, one of the most famous of all time.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:11Josh Clark?

  He was DJing for a station in Beaumont, Texas. Like it had, like if you had a station, you had to have a personality. And some of them just happened to be so popular that they became international icons essentially.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's amazing.

• 37:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Like the Wolfman went on to own a furniture store in North Georgia called Gallery Furniture. If you wanted a water bed, you would go ask for the Wolfman.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  Boy, that's a niche joke. Should we even explain it or not?

• 37:39Josh Clark?

  Nah.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  Okay, good.

• 37:41Josh Clark?

  I think if you go onto YouTube and you look up Gallery Furniture and the Wolfman, there'll be something on there.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Oh, sure. But that wasn't Wolfman Jack.

• 37:49Josh Clark?

  Are you sure?

• 37:51Speaker 03

  You didn't really think it was the same guy, did you?

• 37:52Josh Clark?

  Uh, no.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Okay. See, I don't know what to believe anymore.

• 37:57Josh Clark?

  I'm not trying, you know, I just want to come clean about this.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 38:01Josh Clark?

  I've never tried to fool you. That was a thing that just kind of evolved. I've just been making dry, random jokes all this time, but it's never been to fool you. You took that and ran with it. I've never done it directly to fool you.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  This is not what you said during our therapy session last week.

• 38:22Josh Clark?

  Well, Dr. Krantz said that, um...

• 38:24Speaker 03

  Dr. Katz, that's who we should have gotten.

• 38:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Dr. Katz said that I needed to make more stuff up, so...

• 38:30Speaker 03

  That's right. We're not in therapy together, by the way, everybody. That was a joke. But if we did, we'd get the guy who, uh, therapied Metallica, right?

• 38:38Josh Clark?

  Oh, I forgot that they were in therapy together.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:41Josh Clark?

  I guess it worked.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  That's a, that's not, I'm not knocking it at all. I mean, we haven't had to do it, but I think that's a great idea for any kind of partnership, you know?

• 38:49Josh Clark?

  Agreed.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Okay, good.

• 38:51Josh Clark?

  Was that the therapist that talked Metallica out of their emo phase?

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:56Josh Clark?

  Cause hats off to that, that therapist.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 39:00Josh Clark?

  Uh, we were talking, oh yeah, we were talking about what was going on with this transition to, uh, music.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:07Josh Clark?

  Uh, one of the reasons why AM radio transitioned to music and away from things like soap operas and all that stuff was because those things ended up on TV.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:17Josh Clark?

  The older people followed those. Remember, they're like radios, the pits now, because the golden era is over. And then they turn on their TVs and they're like, oh, the golden era is over here now. Let's just keep going and, and watching now instead of just listening. And that left the kids, um, to fill this vacuum, which was AM radio. And like you said, the top 40 format started there, the, like, big internationally known DJs started there. And, um, it just kind of took off little by little, uh, but really picked up steam when a few things kind of came together. And one of them you already mentioned, which was transistor radios. So now you didn't just have to sit at home with the oldsters to listen to your favorite hits.

• 39:59Josh Clark?

  And then also AM radio started to show up in cars essentially is not even an option after a while. Like you got the AM radio whether you wanted it or not.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think more than half of American cars had AM radio receivers factory installed by the 1950s. And that was a huge, huge deal, obviously.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  And, you know, it was, it was the dominant paradigm for music until 78. And there was that period from kind of the, the early 70s to the early 80s. Little under 10 years where that, you know, sort of yacht rocky AM mellow gold stuff really, really took over.

• 40:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  You had to kind of watch what you put on the radio because FM was playing. You know, they were playing the, the AOR, album oriented rock, stuff that had a little more machismo and testosterone fueled like, you know, rock bands.

• 40:56Josh Clark?

  Big hair.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Big hair, long hair. Not a mustache in sight unless it was part of a beard probably, but wasn't the case on AM with yacht rock. They were mustachioed dudes generally, sensitive guys. The songs weren't about usually like conquering women. Most of them were about getting dumped by women, a lot of sad sack music coming out.

• 41:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  On AM radio in the 1970s. I still listen to a lot of that stuff.

• 41:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And a lot of the, the constraints, I found this to be true throughout my life. The, when you put constraints on something, it automatically fuels creativity. Cause it doesn't mean you don't still want to get across, you know, subversive ideas. You just have to cloak them within the confines of these constraints and it makes you more creative than just saying the idea out loud. Right? Which is why album rockers are typically dumb compared to yacht rockers as far as the artists go.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like if you're a songwriter and you're like, I'm a yacht rocker, I'm not gonna sing about, you know, teenage girls, I'm gonna sing about things I like, like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.

• 42:06Josh Clark?

  Man, that guy. I think he's one of the most reprehensible songwriters of all time.

• 42:11Speaker 03

  I hate that song.

• 42:12Josh Clark?

  Not just that song, the pina colada song. Have you ever heard the song Him, his song Him?

• 42:19Speaker 03

  I don't know. I don't know it by name. Would I recognize it, you think?

• 42:23Josh Clark?

  I don't know. It's a, it's considered yacht rock, but it's, it's a really despicable song about this, this guy whose girlfriend is sleeping around on him, so he's got to teach her a lesson to basically bring her back to heal. And how he's not heartbroken or hurt, he's just mad that this guy, he says like, nobody should get it for free.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:45Josh Clark?

  That's what he's upset about. It's a nutso song. Go listen to it. But yeah, Rupert Holmes, I don't think, he like embodies the, the seven, like the worst part of men in the seventies, I think.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I really don't like that song at all, but I do love most yacht rock. And I know we've probably talked about it briefly at some point as a recommendation, but the yacht rock documentary that came out last year is really, really good.

• 43:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  Uh, and we do definitely want to say that, that term was not coined until the 2000s, when a comedy web series spoofing the genre, uh, made up the name yacht rock. Before that, I think like, you know, Time Life put out those, the AM Gold series of CDs, I think AM Gold or Mellow or Easy Listening. That, that sort of, uh, is what we called it, right? Isn't that what you called it?

• 43:33Josh Clark?

  Easy Listening? Yeah, that's what I was first introduced to it as.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  My, our mutual friend Allison, who we used to work with, um, my friend Eddie's wife, uh, calls it, uh, carsick music. Cause it just brings back days of like riding backwards in a station wagon and being carsick and that stuff just droning on and on.

• 43:50Josh Clark?

  That's a perfect name for it.

• 43:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's good.

• 43:52Josh Clark?

  But when you know, when you're familiar with the idea that they had to kind of cloak subversive ideas in, like a non-obvious terms.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:03Josh Clark?

  And you go back and listen to some of this mellow gold stuff, it's like, whoa, they were really, it's a little crazier than you thought. Like for example, um, love grows where my rosemary goes, is code for, um, let's smoke some D N T.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:20Josh Clark?

  That was the only one I turned up.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  I mean, what do you think Ride Like the Wind is about? Come on.

• 44:26Josh Clark?

  That's about DMT as well.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. All right.

• 44:29Josh Clark?

  But he's talking about what it's like to be on DMT, not just inviting you to smoke DMT.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  Well, you know what's funny? I think Christopher Cross wrote Ride Like the Wind when he was on LSD.

• 44:40Josh Clark?

  I believe that.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  I think he said that in the Yacht Rock doc.

• 44:44Josh Clark?

  Did he really?

• 44:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:45Josh Clark?

  It's a great song.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  It's a great song and has one of the like most, uh, one of the greatest guitar solos because he's a killer guitar player, but it's so buried in the mix. And there's all kinds of YouTube videos now where they're like, yeah, let's bring it up in the mix and talk about this solo and like how amazing it is.

• 45:02Josh Clark?

  That's kind of like those, um, videos of Van Halen with nothing but David Lee Roth's vocals. Have you heard those?

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, but those are, those are very funny. Uh, and, and to be clear, it's a rip and solo, um, for Yacht Rock. It's no, so it's not like the solo for My Sharona or anything, but it's still good.

• 45:21Josh Clark?

  I don't, yeah, neither of the solos stand out to me. I can't bring either one to mind.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  Oh, man, the My Sharona solo is a top five guitar solo of all time for me. And you gotta listen to the, the radio version cut out a full minute. It's like 90 plus seconds, the full version.

• 45:37Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  And they cut out two thirds of it for the radio version. So you gotta listen to the real full version. It's like, it's way better than it should be for that song.

• 45:45Josh Clark?

  That would be the album edit, right?

• 45:48Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I guess so. It's killer.

• 45:50Josh Clark?

  Or the 12 inch version?

• 45:52Speaker 03

  I don't know about the 12 inch.

• 45:54Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, regardless, go listen to some Mellow Gold. It'll make you happy.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  For sure. Uh, but where are we these days with AM radio?

• 46:03Josh Clark?

  Well, um, there's this battle over it, just like absolutely every single other thing that people, more than one person talks about in America. AM radios actually managed to become politicized. Um, a bunch of car makers, from what I can tell, led by Tesla. I think they were the first ones to announce this back in 2020, that they were going to discontinue AM radios in their cars.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  Boo.

• 46:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And now I think now you can kind of imagine why it's a politicized idea. But the ostensible reason is that the AM stereo is interfered with by the EV. Long story short, AM waves are much more susceptible to noise because of electrical interference. Well, an electrical vehicle is lousy with electrical interference. And so the whole car industry is like, we're going to have to spend a bunch of money just to keep this AM radio in there. And the US government is pretty adamant that AM radio needs to stick around.

• 47:09Josh Clark?

  Again, not just for the public good thing, the nostalgia factor, but also because if you are going to get an alert that, you know, the Cubans have invaded, you're going to probably get that alert over an AM radio station because that's what the whole system is set up to do. Not because it's antiquated, but because AM radio does all sorts of things. Those, they could, the waves can travel very far, so it reaches a lot of people. Rural people listen to AM radio still today, like it's just part of rural life. So it's, everybody is reached by AM one way or another. And I didn't know this, but you can make a type of radio, a crystal receiver radio

• 47:53Josh Clark?

  that can play AM radio broadcasts without any battery or power source. The crystal manages to take the energy in the radio carrier wave and That's amazing. And use that alone to basically reproduce the sound. So for all those reasons, AM like radio really makes a lot of sense to put all of your eggs in that basket as far as getting like emergency broadcasts out. So the government said, long story short, you need to keep AM radios in cars. And they're trying to figure out how to get that mandated.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's called the Emergency Alert System now. It used to be the EBS, the Emergency Broadcast System. And if you're thinking like, man, I get my Amber Alert. So like, all that stuff comes through my phone now. And this isn't like, Gen X are saying like, oh, you're too reliant on your phones. But like, if you expect that phone to always work in all cases for the rest of time, you're sorely mistaken because if that system is taken out, then you're going to rely on something like AM radio to get important information out. You know, I mean, that's why it's still there. That's why they're, you know, going to the carmakers and saying like, hey, like, you may not listen to it, you may think it's old fashioned,

• 49:11Speaker 03

  but there are still 4,000 AM stations and 80 million listeners a month that some of them rely on this stuff to get information. And you can't just say like, well, it seems old timey. So we don't, it interferes with our stuff, so we don't want it anymore.

• 49:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I do kind of have the feeling that there is like a certain scorn toward the nostalgic factor of AM radio.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:32Josh Clark?

  And that that's part of maybe what's driving it, which really ticks me off because who are carmakers to decide whether AM radio sticks around or not? Congress says, no, we're, we actually have come up with a law called the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act that basically says if you sell a car in the United States, it has to have AM radio as a feature, not even an option. And a lot of carmakers are like, sure, fine, we're, we're on board with that. Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar, Kia, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Solanta, Subaru, Toyota, all said, we're keeping AM radio. Ford had said they weren't and they said, okay, we didn't realize AM radio was so popular. We're going to keep it too.

• 50:15Josh Clark?

  So I guess if you want to show your support for AM radio, everybody should just go out and buy a Jaguar.

• 50:22Speaker 03

  Well, Tesla, Rivian, Polestar, BMW, Volkswagen and Volvo dispensed with AM radio and some of their new car models, I don't think completely across the board for each of those manufacturers. But that, that every AM for every vehicle act failed in 2024, unfortunately. It was reintroduced this year in 2025, just, I think, recently in September, and has a lot of support, like, on, you know, both sides of the aisle. So, but, you know, if the 119th Congress ever decides to do anything at all, perhaps that will be reconsidered.

• 50:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It's got legs, like an intern carrying coffee back to the office, is how they put it in Washington.

• 51:06Speaker 03

  That's good. That was the original ZZ Top line, but it was a little baggy.

• 51:11Josh Clark?

  Don't forget, the ZZ Top eliminator video trilogy were feminist.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 51:18Josh Clark?

  You got anything else, man?

• 51:20Speaker 03

  No, I think that was, that was good. Support, support AM radio. It's not a relic. It's still important.

• 51:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well put, dude. If you want to know more about AM radio, start listening to AM radio. And since I started to sign off this episode like it was one of the OG episodes, that means it's time for listener mail.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  This is from Cara, just kind of a thank you. Cara started listening in 2008 when she was sick at home from high school with pneumonia. Yours was the very first podcast I ever listened to, back when hardly anyone knew what a podcast was. Been an avid listener to a lot of shows since, but you have been a constant in my life, through the end of high school, college, grad school and beyond. Your voices have always been a sense of comfort and familiarity when things in life got really difficult. I went to see you live in Boston three times.

• 52:09Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  Always on my own, and each show felt like a small celebration for myself of something that had carried me through so many years.

• 52:16Josh Clark?

  I wonder if that's the, the person who had the laugh that we called out in Boston every time.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't know. Maybe. I think Cara would have mentioned that, probably.

• 52:24Josh Clark?

  Probably.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  One rule with Stuff You Should Know from me, though, is I could not listen to a new episode until I could really pay attention. Like, other shows were background podcasts for me, but not yours. The only downside was that I fell further and further behind unless I had the focus to listen. This year, I've had to do a lot of driving, though, and things have settled down some, so I made it a goal to catch up in time to listen to the 2025 Halloween special on Halloween.

• 52:52Josh Clark?

  Oh, neat.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  I also told myself if I did it, I'd finally write in and tell you how much I appreciate the information, banter, humor, and movie recs and stuff like that. So, this is the day before Halloween email coming from Kara or Kara, K-A-R-A.

• 53:10Josh Clark?

  That's awesome. Thanks, Kara-Kara. You're obviously very goal motivated, and I appreciate that. And thank you for listening to all of our shows for so long. That means a lot, that we have friends who are travelers like you, you know?

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, we've said it before. If there weren't the Kara-Karas, then we would not exist as a show anymore.

• 53:31Josh Clark?

  Absolutely. That's, that sounds like a T-shirt, if you ask me.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. And Kara-Kara sounds like, I don't know, like a food?

• 53:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like potato patata.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:42Josh Clark?

  If you want to get in touch with us, like Kara-Kara did, and let us know what we meant to you, we love those emails. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to [email protected].

• 54:00Speaker 04

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:16Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for. Holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolaire, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 55:00Speaker 00

  Zolaire 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolaire, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolaire. Zolaire may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolaire should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolaire is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolaire.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolaire.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  This is an advertisement for Zolaire paid for by Genentech and Novartis. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.