NPR's "Car Talk" Glides To a Halt

stevegee58 writes "After 25 years on the air, Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers) are calling it quits in September. With their nerdy humor, explosive laughter and geek cred (both MIT alums) Tom and Ray will be sorely missed by the average NPR-listening Slashdotter." How many garages have names as cool as "Hacker's Haven"? I've long thought that someone should assemble a compilation featuring nothing but hours of their laughter. (Which will be available for sampling, since they will continue to play archived material for a long time yet.)

Comments

Shit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nooooooo! These guys were brilliant!

Sad day

[Igorod]

Sad day indeed.

Re:Sad day

[icebike]

Sad.

I'm often seen walking down the street listening to their podcast grinning like a total idiot.
I have several years worth to catch up on. Maybe I better order something from their Shameless Products division before those disappear as well.

Sadness.

[iiii]

This makes me feel sad. They were a great part of Saturday mornings. I know they are up at retirement age, but I hope they find some other projects that help them share their wit and wisdom. Click and Clack Rock.

Re:All the anti-NPR vitriol this story incites

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we stop using "mouth breathers" as a euphemism for low intelligence? There are plenty of people that actually do breathe through their mouth due to problems with their noses, but are otherwise quite intelligent.

Thanks,
An intelligent mouth breather

Re:About bloody time

[geekoid]

It's a show about a couple of guys having a good time while talking about cars.

It hits the nail on the head. I'm sorry people laughing cut's you so sharply. really, you should see some one.

HAHahhahahahahahaha hahaha

Re:About bloody time

[geekoid]

He's just bitter because he has forgotten how to make people laugh.

Shearer hasn't been really funny for a long time.

Re:All the anti-NPR vitriol this story incites

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen brother!

And NPR is probably the closest thing to unbiased reporting we'll ever get in this country. The have stories that I never see anywhere else in US based media. And I don't know why it called "Liberal". On any hot topic, they make an effort to get both sides - and they don't have crackpots representing the other side either. When they cover an issue, by the time the segment is over, I very rarely have a definite opinion either way because when they've finished, I can understand both sides and either sides reasoning. They constantly have Conservatives on stating their views, opinions and their side. And on many occasions on some issues, I have taken the Conservative's side because of NPR's reporting; which I can't say that about any other US based news outlet.

NPR - "Liberal" indeed.

Re:They Were Actually Frauds

[fermion]

This is a perfect example of fact based reporting and opinion based reporting, and the sad state fo the world in which random opinion is considered equivalent to fact. For instance, the opinion that Rush Limbaugh is a child molester based on the fact that he had a sex party in a country that at the time trafficked in young boys for sex is considered a fact by the large percentage of Americans who believe opinions not fully supported by facts. Of course there is no real for us to know this is true, so a legitiimate new organization is not going report it, yet opinions as spurious as these are reported as news every day, in a false attempt to be fair and balanced.

I am sure this is done like every other show. People are screened, a number of recordings are made, and the best are broadcast. The show is edited to fit the hour timeline, and of course the calls that don't work are not broadcast. They probably use old calls as fillers. Those who listen to the show also know they have had callers call back to see if the diagnosis is correct, and at this time they include situations where diagnosis was wrong.

This is pretty typical. I watched a taping of Wait Wait, and it is also heavily edited. Not all the answers are given at the time of the question, and it is edited for time. There seems to a general attempt to show that NPR and PRI are not fact based using minor incidents of non disclosure. For instance, there is a great brouhaha over the work of humorist David Sedaris. Now, I understand that are some sad people who believe that every word in the biography of Ronald Reagan is true, but reasonable people among us know that any story, not matter how based on fact, is to some degree apocryphal. Recollections are based on reconstructing memory, which is highly unreliable. We get a realistic point of view by listening the recollection of many people.

What we have here is the proposition that a live unedited show based on personal opinion is more valid that a semi-scripted researched show based on fact.