I have to admit, when my ex-girlfriend first told me about Car Talk, I was skeptical. As she was the consummate driver, we were probably in the car when their show came on the radio, and she was probably, in her undeniable wisdom, telling me how great Click and Clack were. And I probably said something like, “A show about cars?”
But I listened, and she was right (she would say I was often wrong). It was more than a show about cars.
Tom and Ray Magliozzi, or Click and Clack, as they call themselves in honor of aging cars, are brothers who have been solving people’s car dilemmas on the radio since 1977. They became mechanics in 1973, originally opening a do-it-yourself garage that became The Good News Garage, a more traditional garage. Says their NPR biography:
In 1977, Tom and Ray were invited to the studios of NPR member station WBUR in Boston, along with other area mechanics, to discuss car repair. Tom accepted the invitation, and when he was invited back the following week, he asked, “Can I bring my brother, Ray?”
The show is a combination of commisseration about cars — from brand names to mechanical quirks — to real problem-solving. Their advice is human and opinionated, and often the brothers disagree with one another. More than once I’ve heard them settle bets between spouses and friends. And my own personal favorite part of the show is the Puzzler. For example, this one from July 28 of this year:
There is a series of nine numbers: 335 443 554 __ followed by a blank. What’s the blank, and why?
Give up? Here’s the answer.
Thanks to Doug at Car Talk who was kind enough to write back to me with what Tom and Ray were reading! Authors themselves, Tom and Ray have a new book out: Ask Click and Clack - Answers from Car Talk.
Ray is reading a book by one of the guests on Car Talk, a book called Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt.
Traffic is something I think about frequently, and at great length. I think (and speak) in phrases punctuated by expletives worthy of my Bronx childhood, as I address other drivers from the safety of my vehicle, which is invariably crawling along I-5 or SR-520.
Mary Roach from The New York Times says of Traffic, “My solution to the nation’s vehicular woes would be to make this good book required reading for anyone applying for a driver’s license.”
The driver of this book has a blog, How We Drive, that’s worth checking out, too.
The book Tom is reading, The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil, held me hostage. I looked it up on Google Books, and I found there were a good number of pages available to me. Within minutes I had lost track of the task at hand, and I was convinced that our destiny was to become human-computer hybrid beings.
The Singularity, as Kurzweil describes it, is the consequence of the speed with which technology is advancing. He predicts that technology and biology will merge. On page 9, Kurzweil says, “There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine, or between physical and virtual reality.”
Futurism of this sort is perfectly familiar to us — in the realm of the fantastic, books and movies that we categorize as science fiction. But this is not a novel, and it’s not sci-fi. There is a Singularity Summit happening this October 25 in San Jose. Speakers include representatives of MIT, Berkeley, Intel, and IBM. It’s put on by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, whose mission is: “In the coming decades, humanity will likely create a powerful artificial intelligence. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) exists to confront this urgent challenge, both the opportunity and the risk.”
Bill Gates said of Kurzweil that he is “The best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.” And Janet Maslin in The New York Times says the book “is startling in scope and bravado. Mr. Kurzweil envisions breathtakingly exponential progress, and he is merely extrapolating from established data.”
It does not escape my notice that Tom is reading a book by an author named Ray, and Ray by one named Tom. Even in their reading material, Click and Clack are inseperable.