You can teach someone how to talk on the radio, Jason Allen will tell you, but you can't teach chemistry.
Well you can – the elements and all that – but not the personal interaction.
For Allen and his co-hosts Mark Borrelli, Richard Bute and Amanda Arnold, it's chemistry, not broadcasting experience that holds their weekly "Anarchy Radio" show together.
Nine months ago, none of them had ever been on the radio. Now, they fill a four-hour time slot every Thursday night.
"And most of the time, we don't even get to everything we planned to say," Allen said, laughing.
You won't find the show on your radio dial, however. It's streamed live over the Internet only, broadcast from a dim studio tucked into a warehouse in Southeast Portland.
That gives the amateur broadcasters a lot of creative freedom – especially with their language – and the show a unique, local flavor.
Allen, Borrelli and Bute grew up together in the same Oak Grove neighborhood and still live in the area. Though their on-air conversations cover anything and everything, they often like to bring on guests of local interest – even though the mix is unpredictable.
One week, they'll chat about light rail with Milwaukie Mayor Jeremy Ferguson. The next, they'll host local industrial metal band Amerakin Overdose, who sported their black and white face paint.
It's fitting for a show named "Anarchy Radio" to stray from the norm, but with an Internet radio show, Allen and Borrelli say, there's no rules to begin with. And that's what the "Anarchy" in "Anarchy Radio stands for: no rules, no commercials, anything goes.
"People perceive the name to be a political statement, but it's not," Borrelli said. "Terrestrial radio is hemmed in by Clear Channel, Entercom and the FCC. We're live, and what goes out is it. We can't clean it up later."
Their foray into radio began when a friend told Allen about House of Sound, a freeform Internet radio station that broadcasts from a warehouse at the northern tip of the Moreland neighborhood.
"It was kind of a knee-jerk reaction. I sent off an email one night, never expecting them to get back to me," Allen said.
For years, Borrelli and Allen dreamed of being on the radio. Growing up in the same Oak Grove neighborhood in 1980s, the two consumed a steady diet of talk radio: Coast to Coast AM, Bubba the Love Sponge, Howard Stern and sports talk.
In the past decade, Internet radio listenership has exploded. A recent study found 42 percent of American's with Internet in their home listened to Pandora or another other service in 2012, up eight percent from the year before. House of Sound offers live streams or archived shows of their 24 programs, all original programming from the Portland area, for free while their DJs pay a small membership fee.
A reply came to Allen's inbox few days later, suggesting he come down to the studio, sit in on a show and get a feel for what a live broadcast was like. "After the show they asked me what I thought. I said I loved it," he said. "'Do you want to do it?' I said, 'Sure, why not.'"
The midnight to 2 a.m. Saturday slot was open, if Allen was willing. He agreed.
With no budget or radio experience, Borrelli and Allen sat down across from each other in the dim House of Sound studio on an April night a month later, nervously preparing for their first show.
The clock hit midnight, but for nearly 30 minutes no sound came through the system.
"We had no idea what we were doing," Allen said, laughing. "We couldn't figure out the switches."
The first shows were a headache. It was a tiring time slot. Guests were hard to book. And, much to their own surprise, they would sometimes run out things to say.
When the opportunity came, they moved to a 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday time slot, and then to their current slot, 8 p.m. to midnight Thursdays.
Slowly, they recruited friends to join the show: Richard Bute, local comedian Amanda Arnold, Borrelli's nephew "T-Rex" and James Mitchell, the show's producer.
Arnold – the only female in the bunch – brings a dynamic that was sorely needed, Borrelli said. "We needed a girl that could handle us and do battle," Borrelli said. "She's great."
All the while, they booked nearly anyone they could get – reality TV stars, professional wrestlers, local musicians, authors and actors – and built a Facebook page with an active following.
But no matter who the guest might be on any given week, it's often the hosts' competing personalities that make the show humorous.
"We're constantly throwing each other under the bus," Allen said. "We've known each other for so long, there's no worry that if I say something they're going to get hurt."
Each week, the show begins with a clip of the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK" and an off-the-wall introduction by Allen.
"You are listening to the four-hour show that is more uncomfortable than a colonoscopy," Allen said, opening the Jan. 31 show.
That's when Allen becomes "The Bald Guy," Bute becomes "Buddha" and Mark, well, just becomes "Mark." For next four hours, they'll interview guests, take live phone calls and crack their fair share of dirty jokes.
"I think one of the coolest elements of our show is that you can tune in and feel like you're part of a conversation," Allen said. "It's not cold like, 'we're eight minutes past the hour, 1-5 is clogged.'"
Later this month, the show will broadcast live from Comic Con, a popular comic book and popular culture convention, at the Oregon Convention Center.
It's a step in the right direction for the show, the hosts say, because they're always looking to build a bigger audience.
Allen's happy where the show is, even though it's just a hobby. But he still dreams of what it'd be like to do it for a living. "The sad and sorry truth is, we diss on terrestrial radio, but we'd love to be on terrestrial radio," Allen said.
"If you gave us a studio and an engineer, we could take the show tomorrow to, let's say, the Brew and clean it up," Borrelli said. "I think if there was a program director out there who'd say, 'Instead of going for canned and corporate, let's put on some local boys with local music and local flavor."
But in the end, it really wouldn't matter if they never make a dime from their show.
"We get to come down here every week and live out a little part of our dream," Allen said. "It's a labor of love."