Ray and Tom Magliozzi, MIT 1999 Commencement Address [video]

Grew up listening to Car Talk with my dad.<p>When I was 19 I attended summer school in Cambridge, and right in Harvard Square there was a window on the top of a building painted “Dewey, Cheetum, and Howe”. Fans will recognize this as the name of their fictional lawyers in the credits. I tailgated someone leaving, took the elevator up and knocked on the door.<p>A middle-aged woman answered, and I gee-golly’ly asked if this was Car Talk. She—Louie “Cronan the Barbarian”—said “Yes!” and invited me in.<p>She generously showed me around, apologizing that Tom and Ray weren’t in at the moment—my guess was Ray was at the garage, and Tom was exploring the cafe standards of the greater Boston area. She smiled.<p>On my way out she asked if I liked ice cream and pointed to a Ben and Jerry’s branded freezer right at the entrance. “They just come by and refill this for free, if you ever want some, you’re always welcome to come by, say hi and grab yourself a pint.”<p>I went back three times that summer. Never did meet Tom (RIP) or Ray, but sure got some good ice cream, and some welcome comfort as an awkward kid in a big new city for the first time.<p>I still look forward to their twice&#x2F;weekly reruns.

For those who may not know, Tom and Ray are mechanics who were the hosts of the Car Talk radio show that aired on NPR from 1987 to 2012 (edited past episodes are still aired online weekly I think). The radio show would take listener calls about their car problems, and Tom and Ray would help them solve these issues. However, that is a very reductive description that does not capture the unique explosive humor, rapport, and varied conversations and observations about the minutiae of everyday life and the human condition.<p>The HN crowd may enjoy the weekly puzzlers that are presented every week ranging from car puzzles, logic &#x2F; mathematics puzzles, and historic folkloric puzzles.

One of the best moments in car talk was when Astronaut John Grunsfeld called in to complain about how his government vehicle, a &#x27;Rockewell van kind of thing&#x27; was running. Ray and Tom finally caught on when Grunsfeld admitted he was going 17K MPH while a couple hundred miles north of Hawaii. ;)<p>The banter between them included memories of an unpaid bill and references to the &#x27;small technical institute&#x27; nearby (&quot;Oh, <i>that</i> place!&quot;).<p>Great stuff all around. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=moAqzM4ptm8">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=moAqzM4ptm8</a>

My favorite puzzler:<p>100 prisoners are each locked in a room with three pirates, one of whom will walk the plank in the morning. Each prisoner has 10 bottles of wine, one of which has been poisoned. And each pirate has twelve coins, one of which is counterfeit and weighs either more or less than a genuine coin. In the room is a single switch which the prisoner may either leave as it is or flip. Before being led into the rooms, the prisoners are forced to wear either a red had or a blue hat. They can see all the other prisoner’s hats, but not their own. Meanwhile a six digit prime number of monkeys multiply until their digits reverse. Then all have to get across a river using a canoe that can hold at most two monkeys at a time. But half the monkeys always lie and the other half always tell the truth. Given that the nth prisoner knows that one of the monkeys doesn’t know that a priate doesn’t know product of two numbers between 1 and 100 without knowing that n+1th prisoner has flipped the switch in his room or not after having determined which bottle of wine was poisoned and what color his hat is. What is the solution to this puzzle?<p>This was played on the July 18, 2009 edition of Car Talk on NPR and attributed only to “Alan”. If you download the podcast, the puzzler starts at the 36:00 minute mark.

As a grad student at MIT in the mid 90s, I took my elderly Toyota to Ray&#x27;s garage to get worked on several times. I was amazed to find out that often as not Ray would be the one working on my car. He was as funny in person as on the show and was talented at figuring out the least expensive way to get the old blue thing back on the road (I think he remembered what it was like to be a grad student financially speaking :).<p>Really appreciated that he was still providing that service. When I graduated, I celebrated by getting the Blue Plate special done - where they went over the vehicle and enumerated all the work you needed done, ought to get done, and could do if you really wanted to. The only mechanics I&#x27;ve ever really trusted to go on that sort of fishing expedition...

They were the ultimate example of how one can make any topic engaging.<p>I bet a pretty significant part of their listener base had little interest in learning to repair cars. But it didn’t matter. They were so engaging, hilarious, and you could sense the strong brotherly love.<p>I also read once that they had started a thing in their garage where you could bring your car and they’d walk you through fixing it and you could do it yourself with their tools. So you paid more to rent the space and tools. Seems like a dream to me and the HN crowd I’m sure. Like a car based maker space.

I still remember the time I found Car Talk (late 80s?): I was driving from Arlington MA to Lexington with the radio on NPR, mindlessly listening to some call-in talk show. A caller was asking why there was blue smoke coming out of his car&#x27;s tailpipe: The smartass who answered said that was exactly what you would expect from red shift.<p>It was such a high-level quip that it woke me out of my driving trance. &quot;Who are these guys?&quot;<p>Several years later in grad school, I used the Good News Garage (which was about a mile from the MIT campus?) to replace a radiator. It was a little odd to be talking to Ray in person because I had grown used to him being only a voice. Nevertheless, he was a good enough guy.

Great show, I could not care less about car maintenance back when I listened to this show religiously. Years later, my kids loved Pixar&#x27;s &quot;Cars&quot; and what a delight to see (hear I guess) them make a cameo.

I grew up listening to these guys with my dad on the radio. They called themselves Click and Clack. I never knew when I was a kid that I’d be able to watch these guys live streamed from my internship at the MIT Media Lab years later.

This was my grad school commencement. One thing that really stuck out was how many folks I knew where either themselves or their families complained about the Car Talk guys giving commencement instead of some head of state or what have you. Ray and Tom’s speech was thoroughly entertaining and humble.

Funny. I was at that graduation because my little brother was class of &#x27;99. My primary memory was that Tom and Ray were nearly incomprehensible over the PA system. At least from where I was sitting. I heard a lot of their trademarked guffawing but not much else.

As I head into my mid-60s I can look back on a pretty good life. Regardless of whatever else I did, for me my all-time greatest achievement was getting on Car Talk and posing my question - a real-life problem I was having that they solved almost immediately.

I remember quite a few people annoyed that we weren&#x27;t getting some more famous speakers, but I grew up listening to Car Talk and I was over the moon.

The loss of <i>Car Talk</i> (as well as <i>You Bet Your Garden</i>) from my local NPR broadcast are both still felt sharply.

I interviewed at a startup in Palo Alto about ten years ago, my last round was with the CEO who had a question that sounded like it came straight out of a Car Talk puzzler. Being a regular listener, I of course solved it right away, and got an offer a few days later. (I turned them down because my would-be supervisor was talking about 60 hour weeks being standard, but of course sometimes they had to put in a little extra).

Not being from the US, I only heard of them because one of the two brothers did a podcast with The War on Cars. The funny twist is that both of them only liked cars as engineers, but otherwise hated car culture and what traffic did to cities. One of them only had an old beat up car just so he can say he has one, but they both preferred public transit and bicycles. Heh!<p>Here is the link <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thewaroncars.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;18&#x2F;the-war-on-cars-meets-car-talk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thewaroncars.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;18&#x2F;the-war-on-cars-meets-ca...</a>

The amazing thing was that they actually diagnosed mechanical failures <i>over the phone</i>. And in later years, they&#x27;d call back some earlier callers to ask whether they had been right or wrong, and they actually had a pretty good track record.<p>My favorite piece of advice was that if you had a car with an actual old-school carburetor, you should make sure to select a mechanic with at most one tooth, because only the old, grizzled mechanics really had a feel for them.

Listened to a series of reruns on a recent trip across the U.S. Still funny.<p>The familiar banjo intro, some carefully crafted fan mail, and the first call.<p>They were in the process of doing battle with Melissa Peterson. That little twerp.

I haven&#x27;t listened to Car Talk in years, but I can still remember the number listeners would call. I&#x27;m going to go back and listen to some reruns. I imagine it&#x27;s aged gracefully.

&lt;sniff&#x2F;&gt; I miss those guys terribly.<p>Here&#x27;s one of my favorite pages: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cartalk.com&#x2F;radio&#x2F;letter&#x2F;wisdom-supermodels-0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cartalk.com&#x2F;radio&#x2F;letter&#x2F;wisdom-supermodels-0</a>

I miss Car Talk dearly and have wished for a reboot&#x2F;modern version of it on more than a few occasions. Anyone have recommendations for a contemporary show with a similar bent? The fact that it was a car show hardly mattered, I just loved listening to those guys riff.

I did a project at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media on building a hyper-local radio platform, and we&#x27;d always use Car Talk as an example of the kind of interactions we wanted to enable. Like, what if you were a vet in rural Uganda, and you wanted to have a show for farmers to describe their problems and get expert help. Call it Goat Talk, and we&#x27;d descend into bleats and baahs.

Cah Tawk. Their lawyers were Dewey Cheatham &amp; Howe

As a teenager, on one very cold New Year&#x27;s eve I drove for about a minute in L (low gear) to get the car warmed up faster.<p>My Dad didn&#x27;t believe me that driving in low gear would warm the car up faster and told me I should write to Click and Clack to ask if what I did actually worked.<p>I laughed at him. (It&#x27;s obvious that if you rev up the engine for a minute you&#x27;ll warm up the heating system very fast.)

I grew up listening to them. Started with my Dad but I kept listening as I grew and moved away.<p>I even wrote a blog post about one of their episodes &quot;ode to a monte carlo&quot; forever ago. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iancollmceachern.com&#x2F;single-post&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;31&#x2F;ode-to-a-monte-carlo" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iancollmceachern.com&#x2F;single-post&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;31&#x2F;ode-...</a><p>They were so wholesome, it&#x27;s hard to find public figures like this anymore. Truly good people. Good for me to listen to them. They made me a better human.<p>We love you Ray and Tom. I can&#x27;t imagine Ray&#x27;s loss, he lost one of his best friends, but also his business partner and job all at once. Loss is so hard, when it compounds its even harder. Sending as much love, compassion and respect as I can through the ether to both Ray and Tom.

They were the very best anti-depressant. You didn&#x27;t even have to listen to the show. Their cachinnation alone, like two stoned hens, would do it.<p>Tom&#x27;s irrepressible laughter was side-splittingly funny, giggling so hard at times that he&#x27;d break into piggy-sounding chortles.<p>I still love those guys and always will.

Transcript: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.mit.edu&#x2F;1999&#x2F;clickclackspeech" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.mit.edu&#x2F;1999&#x2F;clickclackspeech</a>

Deleo&#x27;s Autobody was down there near the Good News Garage, that guy was ALSO a character, and Mr. Deleo had a very distinctive voice. I was hoping that one day they&#x27;d have him on to answer autobody questions.<p>Had my &#x27;72 Plymouth Fury (&quot;The Boat&quot;) fixed at the GNG once or twice. And post-graduation &#x27;85 Toyota fixed at Deleo&#x27;s after a fender bender on the SE expressway.

Tom Magliozzi daily drove a 1963 Dodge Dart (convertible) which his brother routinely harassed him for.<p>Two years ago, son #3 bought a 63 Dart (hardtop) out of someone&#x27;s weeds and got it road worthy. It&#x27;s his daily driver.

I love vintage NPR, Car Talk defined my childhood. NPR used to be so amazing.

Obligatory: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;582&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;582&#x2F;</a>