Car Talk is the humorous work of "Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers", Tom and Ray Magliozzi, on automobile repair. Originally, Car Talk was a radio show that ran on National Public Radio (NPR) from 1977 until October 2012, when the Magliozzi brothers retired.[2] Since their retirement, the oeuvre now includes a website[3] and a podcast of reruns that is currently hosted by Apple Podcasts, NPR Podcasts, and Stitcher.[4] The Car Talk radio show was honored with a Peabody Award in 1992,[5] and the Magliozzis were both inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2014[6] and the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2018.[7]
Premise
Car Talk was presented in the form of a call-in radio show: listeners called in with questions related to motor vehicle maintenance and repair. Most of the advice sought was diagnostic, with callers describing symptoms and demonstrating sounds of an ailing vehicle while the Magliozzis made an attempt to identify the malfunction over the telephone and give advice on how to fix it. While the hosts peppered their call-in sessions with jokes directed at both the caller and at themselves, the Magliozzis were usually able to arrive at a diagnosis. However, when they were stumped, they attempted anyway with an answer they claimed was "unencumbered by the thought process", the official motto of the show.[8]
Edited reruns are carried on XM Satellite Radio (now Sirius XM) via both the Public Radio and NPR Now channels.[9][10][11][12]
The Car Talk theme music is "Dawggy Mountain Breakdown" by bluegrass artist David Grisman.[13]
Call-in procedure
Throughout the program, listeners were encouraged to dial the toll-free telephone number, 1-888-CAR-TALK (1-888-227-8255), which connected to a 24-hour answering service. Although the approximately 2,000 queries received each week were screened by the Car Talk staff, the questions were unknown to the Magliozzis in advance as "that would entail researching the right answer, which is what? ... Work."[14]
Features
The show originally consisted of two segments with a break in between but was changed to three segments. After the shift to the three-segment format, it became a running joke to refer to the last segment as "the third half" of the program.
The show opened with a short comedy segment, typically jokes sent in by listeners, followed by eight call-in sessions. The hosts ran a contest called the "Puzzler", in which a riddle, sometimes car-related, was presented. The answer to the previous week's "Puzzler" was given at the beginning of the "second half" of the show, and a new "Puzzler" was given at the start of the "third half". The hosts gave instructions to listeners to write answers addressed to "Puzzler Tower" on some non-existent or expensive object, such as a "$26 bill" or an advanced DSLR camera. This gag initially started as suggestions that the answers be written "on the back of a $20 bill". A running gag concerned Tom's inability to remember the previous week's "Puzzler" without heavy prompting from Ray. During a tribute show following Tom's death in 2014 due to complications of Alzheimer's disease, Ray joked, "I guess he wasn't joking about not being able to remember the puzzler all those years."
History
In 1977, radio station WBUR-FM in Boston scheduled a panel of local car mechanics to discuss car repairs on one of its programs, but only Tom Magliozzi showed up. He did so well that he was asked to return as a guest, and he invited his younger brother Ray (who was actually more of a car repair expert) to join him. The brothers were soon asked to host their own radio show on WBUR, which they continued to do every week. In 1986, NPR decided to distribute their show nationally.[33][34]
In 1989, the brothers started a newspaper column Click and Clack Talk Cars which, like the radio show, mixed serious advice with humor. King Features distributes the column. Ray Magliozzi continues to write the column, retitled Car Talk, after his brother's death in 2014, knowing he would have wanted the advice and humor to continue.[35][36]
In 1992, Car Talk won a Peabody Award, saying "Each week, master mechanics Tom and Ray Magliozzi provide useful information about preserving and protecting our cars. But the real core of this program is what it tells us about human mechanics ... The insight and laughter provided by Messrs. Magliozzi, in conjunction with their producer Doug Berman, provide a weekly mental tune-up for a vast and ever-growing public radio audience."
Hosts
The Magliozzis were long-time auto mechanics. Ray Magliozzi has a Bachelor of Science degree in humanities and science from MIT,[47] while Tom had a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from MIT, an MBA from Northeastern University, and a DBA from the Boston University School of Management.[48]
The Magliozzis operated a do-it-yourself garage together in the 1970s which became more of a conventional repair shop in the 1980s. Ray continued to have a hand in the day-to-day operations of the shop for years, while his brother Tom semi-retired, often joking on Car Talk about his distaste for doing "actual work". The show's offices were located near their shop at the corner of JFK Street and Brattle Street in Harvard Square, marked as "Dewey, Cheetham & Howe", the imaginary law firm to which they referred on-air. DC&H doubled as the business name of Tappet Brothers Associates, the corporation established to manage the business end of Car Talk. Initially a joke, the company was incorporated after the show expanded from a single station to national syndication.[49]
Adaptations
The show was the inspiration for the short-lived The George Wendt Show, which briefly aired on CBS in the 1994–1995 season as a mid-season replacement.[57]
In July 2007, PBS announced that it had green-lit an animated adaptation of Car Talk, to air on prime-time in 2008.[58] The show, titled Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns, is based on the adventures of the fictional "Click and Clack" brothers' garage at "Car Talk Plaza". The ten episodes aired in July and August 2008.[59]
Car Talk: The Musical!!! was written and directed by Wesley Savick, and composed by Michael Wartofsky. The adaptation was presented by Suffolk University, and opened on March 31, 2011, at the Modern Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts.[60] The play was not officially endorsed by the Magliozzis, but they participated in the production, lending their voices to a central puppet character named "The Wizard of Cahs".[61]
Further reading
External links
References
- BJ Leiderman, NPR Biography National Public Radio (NPR), retrieved 2007-04-25^
- Tom Magliozzi dies at 77; co-host with brother of NPR's popular 'Car Talk' Los Angeles Times, November 4, 2014^
- Official Car Talk website^