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| “Car Talk” hosts bring
down the house by Amy Tannenbaum Editor in Chief “My wife didn’t come in because she didn’t think she could take it ... where are you, honey?” asked “Car Talk” co-host Tom Magliozzi. “She’s at Williams,” replied the show’s producer. “Car Talk” is a humorous weekly National Public Radio show devoted to cars. Presented by hosts Tom, father of Alex Magliozzi ’03, Tom’s brother Ray and producer Doug Berman ’84, attendance to WESeminar 24 achieved fire hazard status with people sitting in the aisles. “My husband’s going to be so ripped when he finds out about this crowd for public radio,” said Midge Bowen Bennet to the hundreds who were able to make it into Science Center 150 before the organizers began telling people that they’d have to listen to it from the speakers set up in the lobby. “I grew up without TV so I’d listen to NPR all the time. These guys are like my heroes...they were just as hilarious in person--even moreso,” said Evan Newell ’02. Despite its name: “Car Talk: How Not to Produce a Radio Show,” the seminar’s guests decided that their take on this topic probably wouldn’t apply to most people. They therefore decided to go through a list of the lessons they’ve learned during their years on air. Lessons one through three restated this simple law: “Don’t pick on large corporations with “oversized legal staffs.” According to Ray, Tom made a series of on-air comments against the Chrysler Corporation and General Motors, basically declaring that both institutions were “crap.” “My brother draws these conclusions unencumbered by the thought process,” Ray said. According to Berman, legal conflict could have been avoided had these comments been prefaced with “in my opinion.” “There are probably about 100 lawyers here today and you know that,” Tom said. They later found out that this preface did not work all the time and should instead be replaced with, “I don’t have any hard evidence but I wouldn’t be surprised if…” Ray joked that this basically translated into, “I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about so I’m just going to make this up…” Their fourth lesson was to never mix water and expensive electronics. After a series of water-gun incidents, the in-office conflict culminated in the destruction of $5000 worth of equipment. Their fifth lesson was to keep in mind that you never know who’s listening. Before Ray began to explain, Tom declared, “Wait, how are you going to clean up this story?” Tom just smiled and began. During a meeting in their new office, the three presenters began to talk about what sleaze balls insurance salesmen were. At the same time, a small, hunchbacked man was painting in the room. He slowly climbed down from his chair and exclaimed, “My brother was an insurance agent and he screwed EVERYBODY over.” “Thanks for cleaning that up,” Berman said. Their next lesson was to never assume knowledge on the part of the caller. A woman once called up while her husband was away. She wanted to fix her car before he returned home because she feared he would blame the damage on her. After Ray and Tom devoted 20 minutes to explaining how she should go about it, she asked, “How do you open the hood?” The presenters next opened the floor up to questions. “How can your brains be that big to hold all the knowledge you have about cars?” the first audience member asked. “We distilled [our responses] one day down to about nine answers,” Ray joked. “I have two sons who are jocks, as well as students, how do I get rid of the smell when I turn on the air conditioning?” the next person asked. “There’s only one thing that will work – a flame thrower…actually we don’t know anything about cleanliness, we’re guys—we’re like dogs,” Tom said. He then went on to relate how his son’s room is so messy that the pile of laundry on his floor is about four feet high. Ray thought that maybe it was there for cushioning, should he ever fall out of bed. “You can’t fall up!” Tom replied. In response to the next question about how it’s possible to stay up-to-date on the latest car technology, Ray joked about the unfortunate nature of the situation. “Yeah cars are getting pretty complex and pretty soon we’ll be out of business—we’ll be reduced to coming here,” he said. The next person asked whether it would be okay for him to give his son a car without an airbag. “Well whenever you were driving it, it had an airbag,” Ray joked. “Actually, we don’t have any ready stats but my brother would be happy to make some up…if your son’s going to drive the car it should really have an airbag, there’s nothing more dangerous on the road than a teenager…there’s nothing more dangerous anywhere.” Both Ray and Tom attended MIT. Berman graduated Phi Beta Kappa, from Wesleyan in 1984, as a West African Drumming major. Berman joked that he never knew that he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. “I could have used that to get a real job,” he said. Linda Secord, director of Alumni Relations, helped organize the event. “This is not something they do often so we feel very privileged that they did agree to do it for this homecoming/family weekend and we’re delighted and thought that it was a wonderful program…but it’s not something we would ask them to do on any kind of regular basis or again soon, it’s something very very special.” Audience members were also rather pleased with the presentation. “It was incredibly entertaining. I’ve listened to them for years so it was great to finally get to see them in person,” said Margaret Murphy-Haglund ’03. “They were so clever and so funny, and so cynical and sarcastic…I wonder if his son’s that funny; I’d go out with him,” said Julie Glickman ’04
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