Personally, I love AM radio. I love the poor sound quality, uneven reception, bizarre unexpected squeals and other indescribable noises that pierce your ears right as you’re trying to navigate a careful driving maneuver…but most of all, I love how wacky it can be if you get it just right.
At first, the lover of the strange and abnormal may be a little disappointed by their local AM programming. After all, it seems like it could be so much more subversive and alternative than it actually is.
In addition you get programs that often discuss helpful, esoteric, entertaining, and even information information. Take for instance I was listening to the other day. It had to do the the sports medicine doctors that work with professional, college and high school athletes to keep them healthy or to diagnose and treat sports’ injuries. I learned about a Dr. Bob Donatelli who has worked with such professional players as Michael Barrett (Chicago Cubs), Tony Armis (Montreal Expos), Terrance Newman (Dallas Cowboys), Matt Stenchcome (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Brian Jordan (Atlanta Braves), Tyronn Lue ( Orlando Magic) Dahntay Jones (Indiana Pacers), Tayshaun Prince ( Detroit Pistons), David Riske (Milwaukee Brewers), Marcus Banks (Toranto Rapers), and Al Harrington (New Knicks) among others, as well as with numerous college and high school athletes. If you go to the good doctor’s webste you will find out that one of his specialties is treating stress He also diagnoses and treats hamstring strains, knee pain, hip problems, foot and ankle instability, shin splints, and/or foot pain, but he has been treating elbow pain, wrist pain and shoulder pain associated with tennis elbow, and golfer’s elbow for the past 25 years. Inevitably he developed a rehabilitation program that utilizes state-of-the-art technology to successfully treat patients. Since I live in the Las Vegas, I’ve decided to check him out for my own elbow pain. So thank you AM radio for turning me on to this doc.
My brother lives and works in New Orleans. He was in a pretty serious accident very recently while working on an oil rig and landed in the hospital. I just happened to hear a story about a New Orleans maritime lawyer who handles just such cases on consignment – where he only gets paid if he wins a settlement. I’ve heard of injury lawyers before but never realized there were specific legal teams handling maritime cases like this, but this is exactly what my bro needed. I called the radio station and asked for more details about the story I just heard and they put me in touch with the firm in question. They handled my brother’s case and got him all his medical bills paid, plus a nice amount to cover his pain and suffering. Thank god for lawyers (can’t believe I just wrote that!).
Hang in there, however, and you’ll see the rare and wonderful flowers of AM weirdness come to vivid bloom like a flower in the desert after unseasonable rainfall. Which reminds me of the single best reason to like AM radio if you’re weird: Coast to Coast AM.
Coast to Coast has featured so many fascinatingly loony things over the years that it seems a shame to simply call it a show about ‘the paranormal’. So is Ripley’s Believe it or Not, but you’d never hear Dean Cain taking 2am calls from a woman whose cat was possessed by alien terrorists who provided Tesla coil anti-gravity plans — which, of course, the government is now trying to steal from her. And that’s just one call!
Sure, the show was at its best when Art Bell was at the helm, but Noory is more than capable of maintaining the same level of calm encounters with the bizarre. At its worst, Coast to Coast is usually far more entertaining than nearly anything else on the radio.
However, there are plenty of completely surreal moments to be had from any number of other talk shows. The more mainstream right-wing shows are generally boring, so you can probably safely dial past anyone whose name is familiar. When you find a truly extreme conservative who does a call-in show, hang in there — you’re sure to hear something bizarre and unbelievable before too long.