AM radio is a good way to stay connected and up to speed with current events. One of the issues with AM reception is having a decent radio, the other is having a better antenna. The nice thing about AM radio is that it propagates really well at night (after the sun goes down) and you can receive radio stations from a great distance. During the day it’s another thing entirely so you need a better antenna for improved reception:

One antenna that seems to work well with AM radios can be fabricated out of relatively common items.
How to build a Milk Crate AM Broadcast Loop Antenna

So you make one of these milk-crate antenna’s and then what? Put the (in my case battery powered, portable) AM radio inside the crate (which is laying on its side), use the capacitor to “tune” the antenna to whichever station the radio is on (listen as you adjust the capacitor), and then orient the crate to optimize signal gain of the loop. The antenna couples to the radio inductively — essentially, the ferrite rod antenna couples to the loop milk-crate antenna for increased signal gain.

If you’re interested, there are better explanations on the web.