Skip to footer

Car Talk hosts, Tom and Ray, to avoid all radio work

Car Talk hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi say they will retire in September. 'My brother has always been 'work-averse,' Ray Magliozzi said. 'Now, apparently, even the one hour a week is killing him.'

|
REUTERS/Richard Howard/Car Talk/Handout
Car Talk hosts, the brothers Tom (right) and Ray Magliozzi, in an undated photo. The Magliozzi brothers are retiring, but the show will continue in reruns on NPR.
  • By Ros Krasny Reuters

| Boston

Tom and Ray Magliozzi, hosts of National Public Radio's popular "Car Talk" program, plan to retire in September after decades of dispensing automotive repair and driving advice laced with a side of wicked humor.

The pair, in their guise as Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers, have been taping the weekly show at WBUR, Boston's public radio affiliate, for 35 years.

Elder statesman Tom Magliozzi turns 75 this year.

RECOMMENDED: 10 most expensive car repair mistakes

"My brother has always been 'work-averse," Ray Magliozzi said in a release. "Now, apparently, even the one hour a week is killing him."

NPR will continue to broadcast the show with material curated from the best of the more than 1,200 episodes recorded by the Magliozzis over the years, with occasional updates from the brothers.

Here's how the Car Talk brothers describe the next era of the show on their blog, entitled: "Time to get even lazier."

TOM:  The good news is that, despite our general incompetence, we actually remembered to hit the “record” button every week for the last 25 years.  So we have more than 1,200 programs we’re going to dig into starting this fall, and the series will continue.

 RAY:  Every week, starting in October, NPR will broadcast a newly assembled Car Talk show, selected from the best material in our archives.

 TOM:  Sorry, detractors, we’re still going to be on the air!

 RAY:  But to our fans, don’t be sad. We’ve managed to avoid getting thrown off NPR for 25 years, given out tens of thousands of wrong answers, generated lawsuit threats from innumerable car companies, and had a hell of a lot of fun talking to you guys"

"Car Talk" was first broadcast in Boston in 1977 and picked up nationally by NPR 10 years later. It is heard weekly by an audience estimated at more than four million listeners.

(Editing by Gunna Dickson)

RECOMMENDED: 10 most expensive car repair mistakes

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Car Talk hosts, Tom and Ray, to avoid all radio work
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0608/Car-Talk-hosts-Tom-and-Ray-to-avoid-all-radio-work
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe