Tom and Ray Magliozzi are the brother mechanics who have run the radio talk show “Car Talk” for the last twenty-five years. The show is broadcast weekly on NPR and has a listenership of about three million each week. The Magliozzi brothers intersperse car advice and solving callers car repair problems with wit and charm. The show works because the brothers really know what they are talking about and can diagnose car problems from some pretty sketchy evidence. One caller I remember complained that after her work, when she drove home, her car would always stall over and over again and often not restart. Numerous trips to different mechanics meant only large repair bills and no solution. One of the brothers asked her if she was a teacher and left her car during the day in an unattended lot. Sure enough she was and it was determined that students were putting foreign substances in her gas tank as a kind of practical joke.
A show like Car Talk could never exist in the stamp world even if there were enough listeners to support it. There are dealers and collectors with enough knowledge to figuratively pull the philatelic rabbit out of the hat as the Magliozi brothers pull their car mechanic answers each week. What we lack among philatelic experts is not knowledge but humor and most of all the quality of being self effacing. Car Talk is scheduled to end the production of new shows later this year. But it will be broadcast in reruns for many years and the topics are timeless. If you have never heard it, you should give it a listen if only to see how much someone can know about a subject without making a big deal about it.