Stuff You Should Know - How Commercial Jingles Work

Episode Date: October 23, 2012

You probably can recite five right now. Commercial jingles are designed to hijack your working memory and implant a product or service and they really work. Learn about the history of these insidious and catchy advertising vehicles with Chuck and Josh. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Have you noticed that Jerry has a more aggressive countdown since we're shooting video now? Yeah. We're shooting video now. Yeah. For those of you not watching and just listening, like old school. Yeah. We have these on video potentially. Yeah. Jerry's

like drastically counting down now. Yeah. He just yelled at us 3-2-1. And I keep, you know, we do two of these at a time. Yeah. And I always bring a shirt and I always forget to change into it. Oh yeah. Yeah. I feel like a jerk. No, I did change once the first time. Well, today you have on your Mystery Science Theater 3000 shirt. I sure do. Shout out to Kevin and Bill. Yeah. Guys, if you're listening. You know everybody. Mike, Joel, anybody who ever had anything to do with that show. TV's Frank, who's now a successful tweeter. Yeah. I don't know if you follow him. No. He's pretty liberal. You know, Joel went out and did his own thing as well. Like they're both doing similar versions of their previous job. Oh,

what is it? Cinematic Titanic is Joel's and then Rift Tracks is Mike's. Yeah. Yeah. I'm all aware. You know, Robert Lam interviewed Joel Hodgson. Oh yeah. And there's like a really awesome lengthy blog interview on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind blog. Cool. Check it out. Yeah. So that's the intro for commercial jingles, which is what we're talking about. That's right. I really don't have anything except Chuck. Have you ever heard of a little songwriter named Lynn Duddy? Nope. I hadn't either. Apparently Lynn Duddy wrote the I Love Bosco jingle, which I've never heard before, but it's listed as a famous jingle. So I feel like I'm missing out. Yeah. I didn't know half of these actually. The I Love Bosco jingle. That's the one that we list. What's with this? And

Barry Manilow wasn't in here. No, which let's just get that out of the way. Manilow, who I love. Sure. You mean I've seen him, Front Row Center in Vegas? Yeah. It was an awesome show. Did he, he looks a little scary now. Uh, I, I, I, he's a great guy. I don't know if I want Front Row is all I'm saying. He, uh, it was cool. He said something to me. I had to go to the bathroom and I like went and left in the middle of one of the songs. And while he was singing, didn't miss a beat, he says to my back, don't leave now. It gets better. And they just like went into the song. Yeah. And he was like, Barry Manilow, just wow, Josh. Yeah. Did you hear it? Did you know what was directly? No, I didn't hear it. I came back and she was still like, Oh my God, did you hear?

Wow. Yeah. But Barry Manilow, in addition to his incredible singing career. Yeah. Also is, um, one of the better, um, commercial jingle writers of all time. Yeah. Performed and co-wrote, uh, jingles like, like a good neighbor, state farm is there. That's a big one, man. They're still using that stuck on the Band-Aid because the Band-Aid stuck on me. That's huge. Uh, grab a bucket of chicken. I haven't heard that one. Grab a bucket of chicken. It was like seventies. Yeah. Yeah. And that was for KFC, obviously. And, uh, you deserve a break today at McDonald's. Yeah. Big one. Yep. And he apparently recently did one for Dodge. I saw. I haven't heard it either. Yeah. Randy Newman, obviously he writes whatever pays the most right. He wrote a bunch back in the day.

And then this guy, Jim Brickman, who, uh, made quite a name for himself with ads like, we are Flintstones kids. Oh yeah. Yeah. For the vitamins. I used to love those, but, um, every once in a while, my mom would just buy the cheaper knockoff ones and the difference in taste was awful. So there is a spell where like she would find like sticky knockoff Flintstone vitamins, like in my Lincoln logs, just stuck to things because I'd just be like, yeah, I just put it in my Lincoln logs cause I guess throwing it away was too difficult. Yeah. That's pretty good. But yeah. And then of course, Lynn Dutty and Lynn Dutty and Brickman's other big one was, uh, GE. We bring good things to life. Do you know how rich these people must be if they had even just

a halfway decent agent? Well, it points out on this article. I don't know if it's still the case, but if you wrote the jingle, you own the rights to it. I know. I don't know if that's still, it seems like it should be. I guarantee you Manolo owns the rights to the ones that he wrote. He didn't need to do it. No, but he still does. Although he likes to cancel once in a while. He just came, I had tickets for his Atlanta show. Oh really? He's canceled it. Canceled. I'm not playing. Sorry. Huh. Day off. Oh really? Yeah. That's pretty lame. Yeah. I thought so too. Well, I hope he's all right. I was really into Barry Manlow when I was a kid. I know. For someone who ended up being like fairly cool with my music taste. Hey, I've got great music taste too,

and I love Manlow. Oh yeah. No, I'm just saying. All right. Let's get into this. Okay. So Chuck, what is a commercial jingle? It's one of these things that, you know, anybody can define it, but it's actually a little specific. Yeah. Well, it is a song or a snippet of a hopefully memorable melody written about a product. Right. And that's the original jingle. We'll get into how it's changed over the years. Right. So it can have just about anything in it, like a slogan, like a good neighbor state farm is there. Yeah. It can have a phone number like 805-82300 Empire today. Yeah. Good going. It can have call letters like NBC. Yeah. That is, I looked into that. That is what they now call audio branding or an audio logo. Okay. Like the sound your computer makes when

you open it. Oh yeah. You know, Apple has theirs, PC's have theirs, or the ding ding ding from NBC, like you just said. But that's a big business now. Or CBS. That jingle. Like who can ever get rid of that one once it's in your head? But that's a new thing. Like that's even more specific now than jingles are what they call audio branding. Like every time I hear the word branding, a little piece of me dies. But the dude from the human league, remember that band? Yeah. Yeah. He has a company now that's like getting rich doing this. Oh yeah. Yeah. Basically, it's a little more complex than a jingle because they're trying to capture like the essence of your brand with a few notes maybe, or in the case of like an LG dryer instead of hearing

it. At the end, it plays this little melody. It's like longer. No, no, it's a little melody, like a little dinging, chiming melody. Who did? Who was it that wrote the Yahoo one? Yahoo. Oh man, who was that? We were just talking about that recently. Oh, it was the guy who wrote, uh, oh man, I can't remember. Sorry. Oh, well, somebody right in. It was in a previous podcast. Yeah. That's less than two months old. Yeah. It's all gone now. All right. So anyway, that's audio branding. But oh, we left out one other, uh, one other part of a jingle that can also tout the benefits of a product. Yeah, especially back in the day. That was huge. Like you'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with

peptidine. Really? You're not familiar? No. Oh yeah. I remember the crest, um, the crest patrol. Yeah. We make holes in teeth. Remember that? No. The, the, oh man, I wish I would look this stuff up. In the 70s, that was the cartoon of the crest. I remember that. Yeah. And then there were the, the, the, the up mouse who were the, the bad people in that. I don't remember that. The enemies were the ones we make holes in teeth. Oh, okay. To the cavity creeps. I know they're the cavity creeps. Nice. Wow. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of

marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's your boy Michael Kaya, world famous, often talked about

alleged comedian. Some of y'all know me as Mr. Whitaker from Martin. Some of you know me as showboat from house party three. And yes, I have told Jim crackers for everybody. And some of you don't know me at all. But you can come find out who I am on my new podcast called Michael talks to everybody. That's right. They gave my own show y'all will will will. Michael talks to everybody where every week we'll be interviewing some of the greatest artists in the game. Also, we'll be talking to ordinary people with extraordinary ideas. It's gonna be off the chain. We're gonna be covered all sort of topics. You ain't heard of nowhere else. We're gonna be doing a lot of laughs and a lot of talking. Most importantly, we're gonna have a lot of fun. It's gonna be off

the chain. So please check us out. Everybody I'm telling you, it's crazy. It's bananas. It's Michael talks to everybody. I'm talking about everybody. We got TI. We got Michael Jackson. It's gonna be just a comeback. He's just gonna be in for a minute. Everybody, we gonna be talking to him. We're gonna be talking on this show. Listen to Michael talks to everybody on December 5th on the iHeart radio Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. All right, I'm firing on also, you know, I remember being in like third grade, I think, and we got a bunch of promotional materials from the Crest Patrol and it included a play of which I was, I think a toothbrush. Oh, really? Talk about infiltrating schools. Yeah, seriously, like we put on a play about the Crest Patrol

in school. Wow, that is weird. It's a little weird. So Chuck Jingles, they've been around since the Egyptians, as I understand it, that is not true. Technically, it is true because the Egyptians were around in the 1930s. Funny guy, Christmas Eve 1926, they have credited the the Wheaties Quartet was singing about the Wheaties breakfast cereal as being the first appropriately first ever jingle. And apparently, Wheaties was in pretty bad shape and they're even going to get rid of it. Right. Until they noticed that in markets where they were playing this song on the radio, Wheaties picked up and they said, Hey, maybe this jingles, maybe he's got something to it. And they probably didn't call it a jingle at the time. Yeah.

And then they put it nationwide and Wheaties was saved. Yeah. Did you listen to it? No, is it pretty bad? No, it's great. It sounds like the B sharps. You know, it's Barbershop Quartet. It sounds like baby on board. Yeah, except they're singing about Wheaties. So that whole Wheaties thing is pretty well established, but some still dispute it. And it depends on how you look at what a jingle is. Yeah. Whether that's the first one or not. But there's a song that was written in 1905 called In My Mary Oldsmobile by Gus Edwards and Vincent Bryan. And I didn't realize that people were named Vincent back in like 1905. Does that seem like a modern name to you? Seems more like 1940s to 1970s, maybe. Maybe. You know, there's a website that charts popularity of names

in a graph. I believe that. I betcha Vincent's pretty low back then. But those two guys made In My Mary Oldsmobile and Oldsmobile used it in the 30s, but it wasn't originally recorded or written for Oldsmobile to use. I think the guys just really like their Oldsmobile. Oh, really? And so the author of this article, Tim Faulkner, points out that you probably more accurately call it the first pop song licensed for commercial use. Okay, that makes more sense. So it's technically not a jingle. So the Wheaties quartet still stands. Right. Christmas Eve, 1926, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Is there any place more desolate then? Hey, it worked. Yeah. Because we still have Wheaties today. So the whole reason jingles came about too is because, you know,

I'm all about my 1930s consumer history. Yeah. And in the 30s, consumer protection was way stronger. And one of the things was direct advertising was very strict. That's so funny now. Yeah. It's so like no holds barred now. You know, Australia is going to town preventing direct marketing to kids. Oh, really? Yeah, they're really protecting their kids. Oh, cool. It is very cool. Plus beer. You can only market beer. Exactly. Do you remember when there used to be like cigarette ads? Oh, yeah. Cutty Sark ads and things like that. It's funny to look through if you go like to antique places and they have old life magazines and stuff. You just look through the ads and it's like these happy people slowly killing themselves with merits.

So but in the 30s, like if you wanted to get an ad on the radio, you pretty much had to buy some time. Yeah, like a half hour or an hour and put on a program. And hence we have things like the King Biscuit flower hour. Oh, yeah. You know, or the General Motors car thriller mysteries, right? You know, whatever. And at first, I think it was really boring and dull and dumb. And they figured out that consumers were a little more savvy. And we're not really willing to share their time for something that's just an ad like an infomercial. Right. So they started to make things like the shadow and the Laura Fnani and they made them so they could advertise. But eventually it gave us radio programming and then ultimately TV programming. As we understand it

today, we're basically born out of this desire to advertise to radio listeners in the 30s. Pretty cool. Yeah. And I didn't realize this or I realized, I guess, but it's just hard to imagine these days because it's so advertising is so all over the place. But back then you had direct to consumer sales one on one, you go to a store or you have a traffic salesman come to your house to sell a vacuum cleaner or whatever. And the ads back in the day kind of bore that out. They were basically real matter of fact and kind of dry and really just bullet, bullet pointed how our product is better than the other. Right. Exactly. Very boring, very dry. Like our spats are better than our competitor's spats because they're made with virgin baby goat skin. That's right. But

with the popularity of radio, things changed and they realized that jingles could make a real impact. And they did because it's music as the Wheaties Quartet proved pretty early on. And just right out of the gate, people started really paying attention to this and they brought the field of psychology in and psychology started cranking out books that basically guided advertisers and companies on how to reach these audiences, like who's listening when and like how to talk to them. And yeah, but they just basically exploded overnight and it was all largely thanks to the jingle. Yeah. And you know, the early on, and I think it still holds true today, if you want to be a successful jingle, it's got to be very simple. Yeah. You got to have repetition. Yeah. You got

to have rhyming is good. It is help sticking your head a little more. And before you know it, it's become part of your consciousness for life. Yeah. Like they point out here in the article, the Oscar Meyer Bologna song, like anyone who grew up in the 70s can sing that word for word today, unless you just weren't paying attention as a kid. Do you want to sing a little of it? Well, no. Do you? No. My Bologna has a first name. It's O-S-E-A-R. Yeah. And the plop plop fizz fizz, what a relief it is. These things get burned into the collective consciousness. What's that? From Seinfeld. Remember, George gets a girlfriend because he associates his name with that by men. Oh, really? But he goes, C-Stanza. And the woman doesn't even like him, but she can't get

him out of her head because that C-Stanza is in there, which you would call an earworm. Yeah. Which we've talked about, it feels like before, right? I think so. But we may as well talk about the oarworm. Is that how you pronounce it? In German, it's oarworm. Yeah. And everyone knows it, what an earworm is. It's when a song or a part of a song gets stuck in your head, sometimes inexplicably. Inexplicably. Something weird gets stuck in your head. Like you wake up in the morning and the song is in your head. You hadn't heard it in weeks, months, years, who knows. But it's just there. And they don't really know how it works, either. No, but a couple of very smart guys in the 70s got together. Their names were Alan Badley

and Graham Hitch. And they, I think they're responsible for coming up with the idea of the working memory. Badley and Hitch sounds like a 70s pop group. It does. It sounds like researchers. Well, they went on to write the hustle. Okay. But the Badley and Hitch first, I guess, investigated working memory and they came up with this thing called the phonological loop, which is an earworm or a snippet of music or a sentence, whatever. It's running around. You can almost see it tracing this track in your head over and over again. That's the phonological loop and it's made up of two parts. The phonological store, which is your inner ear, which hears it. And then the articulatory rehearsal system,

which is you driving yourself totally insane by saying it over and over. Yeah, repeating it. It's how we learn to talk. Right? Or learn a foreign language. And they think that this phonological loop is basically an earworm hitching a ride on this neurological process that we have naturally and basically exploiting it for commercial purposes. Wow. Happens more in women, supposedly. Yeah. More in musicians, supposedly. And if you have OCD, it might really present a problem with you. That was a really good episode of ours, if you ask me. OCD? I remember you talked about David Sedaris licks light switches, I think. Yeah. And his book he did. I don't know if that's real. Yeah. I think it is, though.

How to get rid of an earworm. There's all kinds of things you can try, like actually hearing the song in full. Like if you can't get a call me maybe out of your head. Right. Just go listen to call me maybe. Sometimes singing it yourself all the way through can do it. You could sing call me maybe. You could vanquish it from your mind. Yeah. But there's really no surefire way that those are just little tricks. Yeah. I heard someone say something about listening to Rush. We'll get rid of it. Rush Limbaugh. Is that what it was? Because you just get so mad. Right. Who's Professor Calaris? So he's the one who's basically he's a University of Cincinnati professor. He's in the earworm article. Okay. And he has dedicated his career to basically

exploring earworms. Figuring out how they work, why they work. I think he's made a name for himself in it. All right. He appears in not one, but two house stuff works articles. So yeah, true. He's arrived. So what he's done through surveys, he said it's obviously all up to the person is very individual as far as what songs get stuck in your head. But he put together through some surveys what he calls the playlist from hell. And I would have to agree. I'd like to see this updated because it's a little dated. A little bit. I mean, I'm sure that one party rock is gotta be at the top of the list. I don't know that party rock is in the house tonight. I don't know that at all. There's it's literally impossible that you have not heard party. Is it a song? Yes. I have not

heard it. I will play it for you. You'll be like, Oh, okay. Is it like a pop song? Yeah. It's not a commercial. It's everything. It's inescapable. It is the alpha and the omega. Yeah. It's just not possible. You haven't heard it. All right. But his playlist from hell includes the baby back ribs, Chili's jingle, which we won't even say out loud. The Bahamans who let the dogs out. That's a good one. Queens. We will rock you. That's another good one. That's a good one. But I don't I don't know that doesn't strike me as particularly earwormy. Give me a break. It's a good one. Kit Kat bar. The Mission Impossible theme. I think it's funny that this is on here because I had an experience with that when I lived in New Jersey. It was when I think the first

Mission Impossible movie came out and you two did the update of the theme. That thing was stuck in my head for like three days. I was walking around just going done done done done and coming up on corners really quick like looking around doing a tuck and roll. It was crazy. So it didn't surprise me to see that on here. YMCA. There's nothing wrong with that. I kind of like this playlist. I wouldn't call it from hell. I'd call it maybe from heck at best. Okay. No, I do hate The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Oh, I hate that song. I think that's probably on there for the very famous. The Weem away. Yeah. Womp. There it is by Tag Team. Another good song. It's a small world. I guess that one because you go to Disney World and you just hear it over and over

and over. What ride is that? It's a small world. Is that the name of the ride to you? Yeah, I think so. It's been a while, but yeah. So there's still plenty of jingles out there. I'm trying to think of it of a new jingle. Well, they're they're all over sports radio. Oh, yeah, because I listened to a lot of sports talk and me and my lead guitarist Eddie, who you know, and I'm cheapo. Eddie Vedder. Eddie Cooper. We have been joking around about doing like a medley of radio jingles in our set because if you listen to sports radio, man, it's like the same ones. Oh, like what? Well, looky, looky, looky. Here comes cookie. Oh yeah. Cook's pest control. Alarm force. I haven't heard that one. Alarm force. Oh, man, I can't think of them. But yeah, I mean, there's just like,

if you listen to any kind of sports radio, it's like the same ones. The ad that always sticks out to me when I think of like sports radio talk radio is that one guy who's he's like trying to sell like some sort of refi. Like he's a refinance guy. He's like, it's the biggest no brainer in the history. Oh, yeah. I love that. Or if you've heard and this isn't even a jingle, but a full on song. Have you heard any of the Bluebell ice cream commercials? I don't know. It's pretty great. How does it go? Oh, I mean, they're all different. But it's all like this guy singing about like, you know, country morning and the sound of birds chirping. And it's like the sound of coming home is what you taste when you eat Bluebell ice cream. It's pretty funny, which is a lie.

But like you said, they sort of have gone out of fashion a little bit, at least from the heyday, even though they're still around. Yeah, they still they are viewed somewhat as hokey. I think if you stop and think about a commercial jingle or the concept of a jingle, it's hokey, even though you probably have 500 of them in your head that you could recall at any moment. Exactly. But yes, if you are say the company responsible for running VW's advertising campaign, you're probably not going to use commercial jingle. You're going to go the other route, which is to appropriate a pop song. Yeah. And in VW's case, they use Nick Drake, which great one song Pink Moon. Yeah, that's how I came to find out who Nick Drake was. That's how a lot of people came to find out. And that's what the

article points out is a lot of times they can resuscitate careers. Yeah. Although in his case, he passed away, but he definitely like was way more popular after that commercial than he was before. Yeah. Stereo lab was also VW. Yeah. Who else? I don't think they needed any help, but it was like a perfect fit. The Polyphonic Spree. Oh yeah. They had their, I can't remember the name of the song. It was like their huge hit. That was on a VW commercial. Like when VW first came out with the new Beatle. Hey, and shout out to Toby, right? Yeah, Toby. He was in the Polyphonic Spree. He's shooting a feature film right now. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. In Louisiana. Like he's shooting it. Yeah. Toby's a friend of Josh and Yumi's who was in the Polyphonic Spree.

Yeah. He played Theraman. And now he is a, oh, did he really? Yeah. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. He was like friends with a couple of them and said, Hey, you know, I want to be in the band. What do you need? And they're like, how about Theraman? And back then anyone could be in the Polyphonic Spree. And it was huge. It was extensive. And he went out and bought a Theraman and taught himself how to play it and came back and was like, Oh, I don't want to be in. He like went to Japan. It's crazy. Like toured the world with the Spree for a while. That's what the Spree. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. He's making a movie now. Yeah. Well, you know, they had that short. Yeah. He produced one with a South by South one. Yeah. Starring Bonnie Prince Billy. Right. That was

amazing. Now they're under something else. It's like a feature film. Same company. That's awesome. Yeah. Anyway, pop songs, getting back to that. They credit the Beatles 1987 Nike commercial when Nike famously used revolution. Do you remember that? Yeah. It's kind of starting this whole new wave of let's use, like pay a lot of money to use really popular songs because it's not enough anymore. You can't just say our brand is better than yours. You like you want to identify your brand with the public consciousness in a lifestyle. Right. Like that Cat Stevens song, Wind of My Soul and like the Timberlin ad that's kind of something to great song where it's like, put these shoes on and you will automatically. Yeah. I'm surprised he went for that. I am too.

I'd like to look into that. I wonder if he doesn't have the rights. It doesn't seem like something he would do. There's no way he doesn't have the rights for the song. Yeah, that's true. But it is kind of you raise a point like it is surprising that he would have gone for that. But apparently, if you work on artists long enough or just wait for them to grow old and need money, they will eventually cave or sting. He didn't need the money, but who sting? No, I doubt if he did it because he needed the money or loaded. I guess that's right. He has a castle. He did it for a reason though, and it was probably money. So in the 80s, when Sting was still because the police started out as a punk band. Yeah. And in the 80s, it was post-punk,

but Sting still thought of himself as a pretty cool dude. Sure. And apparently, I don't know the company, but they approached Sting and said, hey, we want to use, don't stand so close to me for our deodorant commercial. Awful idea. It's a terrible idea. And he very wisely said, no way. But then Jaguar said, hey, you know this terrible desert rose thing you have going on? We want to use that for our ag campaign. And Sting said, way. Right. Cheers to that. Yeah. And that's a big, you know, bands get accused of selling out less these days, I think, because especially smaller bands, you just, you know, people think music is free now. So they're not making money selling records like they used to. Yeah. They break even on tours, these small bands.

So I like, I've done a 180. I used to think like, ah, don't sell out. But now I'm like, dude, make whatever money you can while you can. Yeah. I know Band of Horses is one of my favorite and Jerry's favorites. They were kind of taken to the mat by some of their fans because they did, they licensed their movie to Chevy. And the dude Ben Bridwell came out and was like, no, you know, I drive a Chevy. It's old and maybe now I can get the AC fixed. Nice. You know, he drives an old pickup truck and he's like, what's, what's the problem? Yeah. Like we're trying to make a little dough here. Yeah. And it's a product I believe in. Yeah. You know, um, that part in the movie, The Doors, where like Tim Morrison is like off on

like whatever for a while and comes back and sees that like, um, Light My Fire has been losing its Chevy commercial. It's like the, the Ray Conif singers or something doing it. And he's like, it's catchy tune and then starts breaking stuff. That brings up my, my biggest pet peeve today is this new thing and it's not super new because they've been doing it, but it's like worse than it's ever been when they will take a great classic song and bastardize it and have some like lady session singer come in and sing like satisfaction by the Rolling Stones, but in a different way and talking about being like satisfied with your, you know, your new car. Right. And it's just, it's all over the place now. And it's just the worst.

Like I would rather hear someone license their real song than hear them remake it with some awful session singer and change the words to fit their product. You know what I'm saying? But then that corporation would take the Ben Bradwell stance and be like, hey, man, we're going to make our quarterly earnings. Yeah, that's true. No, it's not true. I was being totally facetious that it doesn't count. It's not the same thing. Or the other thing now that like the black keys are suing pizza hut right now, because what companies will do in Tom Waits is sue people a bunch of times, like every other year he's sue someone because they'll go in and they'll say, give us something Tom Waits-y or boy, listen to gold on the ceiling

by the black keys. Can you do something like that? And these dudes that write these songs basically rip them off and the black keys are watching pizza hut and they're like, wait a minute, that's my song in a different, slightly different way, selling Pizzones. And so we're going to see you and take you to court and that's when they get in court and like compare them side by side. And well, you know, Ray Parker Jr. famously got messed up because he apparently ripped off. I need a new drug, Huey Lewis song. That's right. And I never really heard it. And then finally it clicked and I was like, Oh, wow, that is really settle. He lost. I don't know if he settled or what, but he definitely lost that case.

I guess finally we should talk a little bit about product placement because well, we had a whole product placement episode. Oh, yeah, that's right. Well, obviously with Tivo and DVRs now people are speeding through commercials. So you are going to find some product placement in your shows quite possibly our own even. Yeah, it happens. But there are better ways than others to do it. And if you want a good laugh, go to the YouTube and Google soap opera cereal. Yeah. And just watch. It's great. That's all I'm going to say. I watched that the other day. Yeah. Did you? Yeah. It's so funny and awful. It's just, it's colossally bad. Yeah. But it's so bad that like it's earned a place in the pantheon of pop culture now. So it did its job. That's true.

And then some, yeah, I bet you there's a lot of hits on that on YouTube. Yeah, a lot of hits. Honey, what are you doing? Just having some delicious honey nut Cheerios. Yeah. Boy, these things really packed in fiber. The thing is like a seven minute long scene. Yeah. It was like, they just started talking about Cheerios the whole time. Yeah, it's pretty funny. And there was a little product placement right there for your Cheerios. So it was all over the place. Bonus. No, I mean, just now. No, but I'm saying, geez, all we did was talk about brands. Oh, yeah. Cook's pest controllers is a check. Yeah. We're just combined. Get the termites out of my house. It'd be nice. I want to check.

The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better

names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, everybody. It's your boy, Michael Kaya, world famous, often talked about alleged comedian. Some of y'all know me as Mr. Whitaker from Martin. Some of you know me as showboat from house party three. And yes, I have told you I'm crackers for everybody. And some of you don't know me at all, but you can come find out who I am on my new podcast called Michael Talks to Everybody. That's right. They gave my own show y'all. Woo, woo, woo. Michael talks to everybody where every week we'll be interviewing some of the greatest artists in the game. Also,

we'll be talking to ordinary people with extraordinary ideas. It's gonna be off the chain. We're gonna be covered all sort of topics you ain't heard of nowhere else. We're gonna be doing a lot of laughs and a lot of talking. Most importantly, we're gonna have a lot of fun. It's gonna be off the chain. So please check us out. Everybody I'm telling you it's crazy. It's bananas. It's Michael Talks to everybody. I'm talking about everybody. We got T.I. We got Michael Jackson. It's gonna be just a comeback. He's just gonna be here for a minute. Everybody, we're gonna be talking to him. We're gonna be talking on this show. Listen to Michael Talks to Everybody on December 5th on the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Let's see. If you want to learn more about commercial jingles, you can type those words into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and I said search bar, which means it's time for Listener Mail. I'm gonna call this. Remember you asked for good causes in the white collar crimes? Yeah. This is from Athens, Georgia. Oh, hey. So it made the cut. I've been there. Love the show guys and now a segue into a shameless plug right to the point. Yeah. For a non-profit in Athens, Georgia, I represent Free IT Athens, Frida. It's an all-volunteer non-profit and it is a grassroots organization dedicated to reclaiming discarded technology like computers, refurbishing it and distributing it to those in need. That's awesome.

That's great. Makes perfect sense too. I think, in fact, I have some old stuff I could donate. You know, there's gold in there. There's like all sorts of rare and precious metals that like if you combine them like a bunch of computers, you'd have a little gold nugget. Really? Yeah. Well, maybe I'll do that instead. Yeah. We serve mostly low-income populations that cannot afford the latest and greatest technology. We also aim to reduce e-waste through computer reuse and responsible recycling. We are currently in need of working laptops for a volunteer program. I know a whole room full of them. Seriously. Laptops are distributed to volunteers that complete our computer refurbishing program. We are interested in laptop computers that have been made

within the last five years with little to no damage. Donating your computer can change someone's life and imagine you can write that stuff off. You know, we really should see what they're going to do with this. See if we can get rid of these guys. Donating can change someone's life. I already said that, but it could really change someone's life. The petition. Financial donations are also welcome, so you can visit www.freeitathens.org. And thank you so much, guys. That is from Joel Isler in Athens. Thanks, Joel. Appreciate that. That is a very good cause. We'll see if we can help. If not, we're in addition to hopefully there's a lot of listeners in the Athens and Atlanta area

that can help. Agreed. Or people can mail them from all over. I'm sure you could. Or just gather and give them a little cash. Give them ten bucks. Oh, yeah. You could do that, too. What was it? Freeitathens.org. That's right. Nice. If you have a commercial jingle, we want to hear it. Send us a link. Sure. Some great forgotten commercial jingle. We want to hear about it. Or the worst one ever. Yeah. Let's just start talking about this. Let's get a conversation going. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com. You should know. And you can send us an email, too. Stuffpodcast at discovery.com. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with

absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? They just like pillaging. They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. iHeart radio presents IntraQuest, an adventure podcast. I'm ether and big guy is serious. I'm logo. I'm here to seek your services for a mission. Three adventurers face a dark force on their quest to return home. Winds approaching gale force speed. Sandstorm imminent. Storm coming. We have to keep going. It's the only way. Listen to IntraQuest February 3rd on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.