The Best of Car Talk - #2565: I Hate Tanya

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

It’s bad enough showing up to the gym for your free trial membership after a few decades of ‘de-conditioning’, but to have a fitness dominatrix like Tanya cracking the whip seems doubly cruel. And after that humbling experience a few humbling car questions on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org. Hello and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the Fitness Center here at Car Talk Plaza. Here it is, folks. For my birth, I'm reading this, and it's from someone named Patty McGuire from Oakland, California. For my birthday this year, my wife purchased me a week of private lessons at the local health club.

Those still in great shape from when I was on the varsity chess team in high school, I decided it was a good idea to go ahead and try it. I called and made reservations with someone named Tanya, who said she's a 26-year-old aerobics instructor and athletic clothing model. Sounds great already. My wife seemed very pleased with how enthusiastic I was to get started. They suggested I keep an exercise diary to chart my progress. Day one, started the morning at 6.30 a.m., tough to get up,

but worth it when I arrived at the health club, and Tanya was waiting for me. She's something of a goddess with blonde hair, and a dazzling white smile. She showed me the machines, took my pulse after five minutes on the treadmill. She seemed a little alarmed that it was so high, but I think just standing next to her

and that outfit of hers added about 10 points. I enjoyed watching the aerobics class. Tanya was very encouraging as I did my sit-ups, though my gut was already aching a little from holding it in the whole time I was talking to her. This is going to be great. This is like the seafood diet. Day two.

It took a whole pot of coffee to get me out of. of the door, but I made it. Tanya had me lie on my back and pushed his heavy iron bar up into the air. Then she put weights on it, for God's sakes. My legs were a little wobbly on the treadmill, but I made it the full mile. Her smile made it all worthwhile. Day three. It's deteriorating.

The only way I could brush my teeth was by laying the toothbrush on the counter and moving my mouth back and forth over it. I'm sure I've developed a hernia. and both pectorals. Driving was okay as long as I didn't try to steer. I parked on top of a Volkswagen. Tanya was a little impatient with me and said my screaming was bothering the other club for me.

Day four. Tanya was waiting for me with her vampire teeth in full snarl. I can't help it. if I was half an hour late. It took me that long just to tie my shoes. She wanted me to lift dumbbells, not a chance. The word dumb must be in here for a reason. I hid in the men's room until she sent Lars to get me.

As punishment, she made me try the rolling machine. It's sake. Day five, I hate Tanya more than any human being on the planet. If there was any part of my body, not an extreme pain, I would hit her with it. Day six, I got Tanya's message on my answering machine wondering where I am. I lacked the strength to use the TV remote so I watched a little. 11 straight hours of the weather channel. Day 7.

Well, that's the week. Thank God it's over. Maybe next time my wife will give me something a little more fun, like a gift certificate for a root canal. I hate Tanya more than any human being. It all starts out. You're just like the diet. One Oreo cookie, the rest of the bag.

He graduated to the cheesecake. eating right from the freezer. I had a similar experience recently. Just recently. Only it was one day. My wife decided that it would be a great idea if I went to the gym with her. My wife goes to the gym every day.

She goes to the gym every day. She goes like four days a week. I don't know what she does there. And so she says to me, well, you'll do my workout. She figures, I'm a guy. Sure. I work at the shop all week. Right, hefting transmissions in the life.

Sure. She almost killed me. And I didn't, my pride kept me from saying, uncle. Well, that's what happens. I mean, can you let your wife lift more weight than you? Well, we would, we were sitting, she shows me how to use all these machines. I sit there and she says, okay, you're going to do 15 curls. So I do, she does 15 and shows me how they're done.

And I remember roughly, so I do 15. And then I get off the machine. She gets on, but before she gets on, she adds weights to the thing. She does another 15 So, and effortlessly So, being The guy, I Do 15

How'd you feel when you get to 12? I'm dying now And then she does another set of 15 With even more weight Amazing My body, the whole body I felt like, you know, if you had been run over by a truck

I felt like that for five days I remember you've known and groaning I used two tubes of of Bengay. I was rumming it on my eyes. My eyes even hurt. Did your hair hurt? Everything.

Everything. I know. I never ever went back and I'll never go again. It's barbaric. God. Anyway, if you want to talk to us about your car or anything else, our number is 1-888-car talk. That's 888-227-8-255. Hello, you're on car talk.

Ciao, regazzi. So no Luigi. Hey, Luigi, so do masso, qui. How are you? All right. Hey, Les. Don't get it. Don't see mal.

How are you? I'm fine. Thank you. Listen, guys, I want to know if a recent problem with my 85 Volvo 740 is related to a recent repair. Yeah. Okay. The cars failed a smog test. And I was told that I had to replace the catalytic converter, which I did, along with the second muffler.

Is that called a resonator? You have two mufflers on this car? Yes. Are you from California, Luigi? Well, I'm from New York, but I live in California. Yeah, I knew you were from New York. Oh, could you tell? I don't know. It was a funny thing.

A wild guess. So within just a short time a couple of weeks after replacing the rear muffler and the catalytic converter, the engine began fluttering at idle, and sometimes it would stall. And occasionally, at cruising speed, the same thing would happen, the revs would go down, it was like the engine was getting choked, and it would come back again very quickly. I replaced the fuel filter about six months ago, and I don't think it's the fuel pump because that would have failed already, I think.

So could it be a clogged catalytic converter or muffler? No. Oh. Well, they just replaced both of those. And if they were clogged, there would be no intermittency to it. The faster you tried to drive it, the word. worse it would be, and it would never clear up. Because once it's clogged, it's clogged.

Oh, I see. So it wouldn't, it wouldn't vacillate between good and bad. Well, when I said clogged, perhaps I should have said defective. You could have said that? You could have said that, but that would have been meaningless. Yeah. I mean, are we just, we want to stretch a point here so we can blame these guys in any way necessarily? No, no, no, really. I thought it was related. I just thought that deep.

Yeah, well, I thought it might have... It is related in time. You know why? Because we all like to have cause and effect in a nice little bundle. And when things are related in time, the way these two events are... It makes you feel good. Causality jumps to the fore, but... Right. So what could it be? It certainly could be the fuel pump. Uh-huh. Because the fuel pump won't necessarily fail in the manner you think it would fail. Oh. Fuel pumps can be erratic. Oh, I I see. I thought they were either working or not working. No. No.

The fuel pump can put out way too little pressure from time to time, and that would affect the performance of it. Okay, I guess I better have that check. You could also have a bad air mass meter. The air mass meter is the thing that measures the mass of air that goes through the filter and through it and winds up inside the engine. Uh-huh.

And is this air mass meter a difficult or costly thing to replace? It is very easy to replace, but it is very costly. Oh, God. Several hundreds of dollars. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, but before you'd replace that, you'd want someone to test it. I see.

Okay, but first I should just check the fuel pump. I would check the fuel pump pressure. Absolutely. And you must have 150,000, maybe more. 169. Oh, more. 173-4. Yeah, it was close.

Yeah. Well, you did the right thing to move from New York to California because it was lousy in the snow, wasn't it? It certainly was. But thanks a lot, guys All right, Luigi Okay, has Doug the subway Fugitive Berman shown up yet?

No, no, no. He's still missing. He's still missing. I suggest to look for him on the home plate in Yankee Stadium. Ciao, Benbini. Ciao. Okay, we're going to try a little word association

to get you to remember last week's puzzle. You're ready? Yeah, I'm ready. Airplane. Lift. Cindy Crawford. Uh, yeah. Do I have to say what I was thinking?

No. Well, that's the whole idea, but... I'll have the answer. Just to that. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. I just talked to comic, actor, and podcaster Mark Marin about grief, cats, his early stand-up, and why he's often guarded in relationships, but on his podcast and in front of an audience, he's open and vulnerable. I'm very open, parted when people are going to leave. Find my interview with Mark Maron,

wherever you listen to Fresh Air. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers. Here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's puzzle. And here it is. Yeah. You're paying attention? I'm listening. A lone hijacker, commandeers a jetliner.

Ah, the three parachutes! On its way from Boston to L.A. At gunpoint, he instructs the pilot to land the plane at O'Hare in Chicago, whereupon he further instructs the pilot to call the authorities and tell them that the hijackers. wants a million dollars in cash, Cindy Crawford, and three parachutes. If they do this, he'll let half the hostages go. They negotiate. He drops the Cindy Crawford demand, and the money in the three parachutes are delivered.

The hijacker sets half the hostages free. The plane then takes off, headed for L.A. After an hour or so, he tells the pilot to drop down to a lower altitude. He opens the door, attached to one parachute is the suitcase with a million bucks in it. attached to the other parachute is he, and he jumps out over the wilds of Montana someplace where he's intending to meet an accomplice. As luck would have it, he gets hit by a speeding motorist. Yeah.

The question is, what's with the third parachute? I mean, he clearly needed one parachute for himself. He clearly needed one parachute for the money. why a third parachute Cindy Crawford Well no they had already They had already Unnegotiated to Cindy Crawford thing

Oh they did Yes Well the authorities knew That he needed one parachute for the money And they knew that he needed one parachute for himself And they had to assume The third parachute was for a hostage Therefore

They could not run the risk of rigging The parachutes Otherwise they'd give him two parachutes That had holes in them Of course. And he'd put the money in one and himself and the other and plunged to his death. But they couldn't take the chance. That's why he asked for the extra parachute.

They didn't know who would get it. Yes, he won't. And wasn't it bad luck? Did he go run over? Tanner Driver. Hey, some. Wacked him on the highway. It just goes to show you that sometimes reasonable and prudent is not reasonable and prudent.

And who's our winner this week? Our winner is John Mountford from Boston Lake, New York. and for having his correct answer chosen at random this week, John gets a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk Shameless Commerce Division with which he can procure. Ha! Our brand new book of puzzlers called A Haircut in Hors Town and other great car talk puzzlesers.

Or he can get faces made for radio, the Car Talk video, our first ever video starting... And last... And last video. Oh, yeah. It stars us, other famous brothers like the Smothers Brothers. brothers, the Flying Karamatov brothers, and Dr. Joyce brothers. It's got a U-17 rating, by the way,

contains ugliness that may not be appropriate for anyone wearing fewer than 17 bags over the head while watching. Anyway, John, you just call the shameless commerce division at 888 car junk or visit it at the Car Talk section of cars.com, our website, and pick whatever you want, 25 bucks worth. Go crazy, John. Knock yourself out. Knock yourself out is right. Anyway, we will have another new puzzler coming up later in today's show in the third

half, I believe, of today's show. In the meantime, we'll take your calls at 1-888-8-8-8-8-8-5. That's 888-227-8-25-5. Hello, you're on car talk. Hi, this is Linda from Purcell, Oklahoma. Hi, Linda. Purcell. Percell.

Jeez, you know, you just reminded me when I lived in Texas, I lived in a neighborhood that had a bunch of streets named after towns in Oklahoma, and one of them was Purcell, and there was Arsell, and there was Ardmore and a bunch of other towns they had never heard of before, but I guess they just read out of street names. Was one of the streets, Oklahoma City Street? No. I didn't think so. But Prissel was one of I had forgotten about it until this very moment.

Was it a nice street? Not really. No, I lived on it. How night's going to be? What's up, Linda? I have a 1991 Chevy pickup. 91? 91?

And it's got 132,000 miles on it. and it likes to munch batteries. Really? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Really? It's an unusual thing. How does this battery munching manifest itself?

Well, about a year ago, a battery died sort of a natural death. It was time for it to die. Uh-huh. And I put in a new battery, and about six months later, it was dead. And I thought, well, I got a bad battery. And that's what the people down at the Chevy dealership told me. They had put it in for you? No, I got it at another store.

I don't know if I should be able to say. Like, J-Mart? No, no, it's a store that sells batteries that have a name very similar to a Bruce Willis movie. Oh, Sears and Robux. Yeah. Die-hard, too. Yes. Okay.

Die hard with a vengeance. It did. Well, did you go back to Sears with your little die-hard battery? It's guaranteed. Yes, and they proclaimed it. dead on arrival. They did? Uh-huh.

And so they put in a new one. Yeah. And about five months later, that battery was dead. Hmm. And went to the Chevy dealership and said, what's wrong with my truck? And they looked at the alternator and everything and proclaimed my truck to be in splendid health. And I marched back to Sears with the battery, and they proclaimed it dead on arrival and put

in new one. When these batteries were found dead, did anyone pry off the covers to look inside? How did they test them? Are you there when they tested them? They put them on some kind of machine. And I didn't actually see the machine. But we did pry off the cover, and there was water inside of them. It was, huh?

Uh-huh. Okay. Continue the narrative. Well, there is no more, huh? Now we're down to four months, and the last one has died. Well, I mean, I have to say that the likelihood, I mean, the likelihood of the batteries being defective is getting to be very, very, very small. Right. And the likelihood of the Chevy dealer being wrong is getting to be very, very big.

Uh-huh. Well, what should I tell them to look at since they claim my alternator is fine? Well, your alternator isn't fine. I don't think so. I mean, I think it's putting out current, but not enough. Oh, I think it's putting out too much. Too much. That could be. And if the alternator, in fact, is fine. It's the voltage regulator part of it that's not fine. I think once in a while this thing is putting out too much juice and it's cooking the battery. Have you ever noticed any preclude your... But that would suggest no fluid when she looked in the little walls.

Well, that's why I asked, but not necessarily. That's why I went for the low charge. Yeah, I know. But that was the easy way, but it wasn't the cowboy way. And when it dies, the very first time the vehicle won't start, the battery is gone. Monzo, dead, never to be retrieved, or does it ever get jump started? Well, actually, right before it dies, the truck manifests some unusual behaviors.

Yeah, speak to us. The windshield wipers just started doing sort of stochastic behaviors. Going fast, real fast, boom, boom, boom, boom, fom, fom, fom, fom, fom, fom. Not turning off and... Overcharging. Overcharging. Overcharging. Yep.

Absolutely. So the Chevy dealer is not correct. Something is definitely wrong. with the charging system. And I agree with my brother. It's overcharging, not undercharging. Yeah, if your wipers exhibited that spastic behavior, then it was getting too much juice, too many volts.

And that's cooking the battery, so you need to replace the alternator. Replace the alternator. I think so. The voltage regulator is in it. Okay. Yeah. It's all one piece. Built it in, as they say.

Built it in. Built it in. And when this fixes it, uh-huh uh you're going to have to go back and pay sears for those three batteries that they gave you because they were not at fault no they weren't in all good conscience it would that would be the cowboy way right i was according to our pals riders in the sky that would be the cowboy way i think you just slide a couple of hundred bucks under the door of the automobile department anonymously yeah because they gave you three batteries that they should

shouldn't have had to give you. Yes. So get out and get a new alternative before it's too late. Better yet. Better yet. The Chevy dealer should give the money to Sears. Now, I like that idea. I don't think anyone should hold his breath on that one.

See you, Linda. Thanks a much. Bye, bye. But in a perfect world. Yes. That's how it would be. The Chevy dealer would say, you know, we made a mistake here. We cost Sears three batteries because of our incompetence,

or our sloppiness or negligence or whatever, but it would be really nice. And if the Chevy dealer down there in, where is she from, Purcell, Oklahoma, would like, Oklahoma, yeah, would like to do that. We would be happy to give you the Click and Clack Award. Yes. For the year.

For bravery and honesty. Bravery, honesty, truth, justice, and the American way. Here, here. Wow. We'll have to go down there personally. to present. And we will. Is there a train?

Yeah, there sure is. All right, it's time to take another short break. Time to make the donuts. No time to leave the donuts, actually. We'll be back in a minute. Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a Right. Learn more at

RWJF.org. Support for NPR and the following message come from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help NPR be the model for high-quality journalism in the 21st century.

Ha! We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the, the, new puzzler. I noticed you didn't make any promises about the puzzle, like scintillating, exciting, automotive, folkloric, brilliant. Puzzler. Oh, I'm going to use. Okay. Did I do the one with the poison wine glasses? Not recently. Here it is. Well, you have one. Well, yes, I do. Of course. Of course I

I have a puzzler. All right. Everyone, almost everyone remembers from his, his or her days in school, the Pythagorean theorem. Yes. A squared plus B squared equals C squared. And there are numbers like 3, 4, and 5, 12, 13, which satisfy that little equation. Yeah. And many hundreds of years ago, a French mathematician by the name of Fermat said, this only works for squares. He said, if you take A, B, and C, integers, A, B, and C.

Yes. Okay, and there is some A squared plus B squared that will equal C squared, and we believe that. We know we have verification of it. Yeah, we got real numbers that fit it. We got real numbers that work. Right. He said if it isn't squared, but it's something else, like cubed or to the fourth power or to the fifth power. Forget it.

It doesn't work. So, for example, there is no A cubed plus B cubed, which equals C cubed. That's what he said. There is no A to the fourth plus B to the fourth that equals C to the fourth. As luck would have it, a young mathematician issues a statement that he has three numbers, which prove Fermat's theorem is incorrect. He calls a press conference. Now, he doesn't want to divulge everything right away.

He wants the drama to build a little bit, does he not? Going to give him one number. He gives him all three numbers. He doesn't tell the power. Ah! He's going to give him A, B, and C. Here are the numbers. You ready?

I can't. this down. A equals 91. Yeah. B equals 56. I know the answer already. Wait a minute. Yeah. I'm going to tell you what C equals. I'm going to tell you what it is. Go ahead. 147. Right. C equals 121. So it just so happens that at this little impromptu press conference,

There were all these science reporters from all the po-dunkey little newspapers around this town. And one of the guys, one of the reporters, has his 10-year-old kid with him because it happens to be a holiday. He's off from school. And the kid very sheepishly stands up and raises his hand and he said, I hate to disagree with you, sir, but you're wrong. The question is, how did he know that he couldn't. With these numbers. That the guy couldn't possibly dispute Firmat with these three. With these three numbers.

Now, if you think you know the answer, write that answer on the back of a new $20 bill where there's plenty of blank space on the backside. Turn it over at the backside, all that room. Plenty of room. And send that $20 bill to Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. Matt, 022.2. 38. You know, I can only assume that our audience has gotten much more sophisticated that they're on to us. Because back in the old days, they were a couple of numskulls and used to send

the 20 bucks. We actually used to get $20 bills. Yeah. Not that we ever really saw them because Berman opened the mail. Yeah, and lately it's been Rogers. Rogers opens the mail. Petootie, Catherine opens the mail. But do you notice at Christmas time, we always get $20 bills? Yeah. For presents. With writing on. Anyway, or you can do it electronic funds transferring and email your answer on a $20 bill to us from the car talk section of cars.com. If you'd like to talk to us, the numbers 1-88888-227-8255. Hello, you're on car talk. This is Laura Rose in Burlington, Vermont. Laura? Laura? Laura Rose is all my first name. Laura Rose. I love it. All one word? It's all, it's hyphenated. Yeah, yeah, Laura Rose. Hyphenated. Hyphenated?

Yes. A hyphenated first name. In fact. Boy, that's a new. usual, isn't it? No, I'm not terribly. Well, name somebody else, you know, with a hyphenated first name. Uh, hey, Ashbury? I don't know. Burlington, Vermont? Burlington, Vermont.

Yeah. Anyway, what's on your mind, Laura Rose? I have a 1993 Toyota pickup. Yeah. In the spring, I had about 90,000 miles on my truck, and I was going to do a bunch of preventative maintenance, and I had some friends that recommended that I switched to super unleaded gasoline to kind of kind of. keep things running clean.

Yeah. So I did this, and I've been driving it on Super Unleaded for the past six months. Last week, I decided I wasn't noticing any difference in performance, and I was going to go back to regular unlead it. Good, good move. I'd heard from a couple people that my car might act funny for the first tank. It might not like this switch initially. Sort of like switching to decaf.

Right. You might have palpitations. That's balpidation, but go ahead. I tend to run my tank down pretty low, and I was down at it. empty tank, filled it up with regular unleaded gasoline, about a half a mile down the road from the gas station, my truck starts jumping and shaking and bucking like just crazy. I love it.

Don't you? Don't you love it? Thank God for all these disasters. Otherwise, we wouldn't get any phone calls. Isn't this great? Yeah. Continue. Now I'm running to the problem that pretty much every time I take my foot off the accelerator,

it stalls. And while I'm driving, it continues to jump. Now, did you buy this tank of deviant gas? At a very reputable gas station. And is it the same gas station from which you have been buying the super unleaded all these months? No, it is not. It is not. But very reputable, meaning brand name? Meaning brand name.

Starting with a T? And that I have... An S? An E! An S. Ending with a vowel. Are a consonant? Ending with a vowel.

Ooh. Soho gas. I know it well. So everyone tells me, get rid of this tank of gas. Drive it off. Yeah. So I spend the next day driving back and forth from Montpelier to Canada. Excellent.

And then I went to a station that I do go to on a more regular basis. Starts with an S? With an M. An Neds. Anyway, I filled up with this wonderful gasoline, super unleaded. Oh, you went back to super. Yep. Went back to super.

And I'm going to tell you what happened. Okay. It does the same thing. Yeah. You know why? You know, bucking and shaking, stalling, everything. Yeah. Why?

Well, you just told me you knew why. I didn't say why. I said I knew what. You knew what? He doesn't know who, he doesn't know how, where, when, and none of those other things. Well, I knew what. Because I knew that switching from super unleaded to regular would have no effect whatsoever on the drivability of the vehicle.

And so switching back, therefore, should have no effect also. Okay. Why did it happen? How should I know that? What do you think I am? Some kind of a genius? Don't answer that. Well, with 90,000 miles on it, you are susceptible to all kinds of things that could

go wrong. The trouble is that you are most susceptible to suggestability. Yes. This would never have happened had that person told you to expect it to happen. You know, when you switch from super unleaded to regular, awful things are going to happen. You should expect that the vehicle is going to have to take a little time to acclimate. Yeah. And you fell for that. Had you talked to us first and we had told you that nothing would have happened, one of two things, either nothing would have happened or nothing would have happened. Well, let me ask you this, because nobody told my truck about it. What is he talking about? What is he talking about?

No, either nothing would have happened, either nothing would have happened or when this thing did happen, you wouldn't have done the cause and effect thing, see? Exactly. Okay, I'm with you on that. Now, what's wrong with this thing is you have a bad distributor cap. Bad distributor cap. That explains the drop in power, the performance, the stalling, the whole shabang. And the fact that this happened at the very moment that you filled up with regular gas is, believe it or not, a complete and utter coincidence.

Absolutely. Wow. That's why when you first described this little scenario, I said, isn't it great? which is exactly what I mean. Isn't it fantastic that coincidence could have operated in this way? And it is sad, and it's tragic, I might add, that we in the auto repair industry get blamed for all these coincidences. That's right.

When it comes to cars, there are far more of them than in regular aspects of people's lives. Oh, absolutely. And so we get blamed because all the coincidences of the world seem to be heaped upon people's vehicles. There's a doctoral dissertation. Your mother-in-law decides to move here with you. Blame it on your auto mechanic.

Wow. Yeah, no, you have an ignition problem, and I'm sure you're running on, it was just supposed to be a four-cylinder truck. It is. You're running on three cylinders, and you can drive that thing to the North Pole, and you ain't going to get it to run on four-cylators.

Isn't that something? So have someone open the hood. It'll be immediately obvious. I would be surprised if it cost you more than $165. If it's the distributor cap. Well, no matter what it is. it's going to cost you $165 if that's what it is. See you, Laura Rose.

Thanks very much. Thanks for calling. Bye bye-bye. Bye-bye. Well, it's happened. You spent another scintillating hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion, Berman. Our associate producer is Ken two-car garages.

Our assistant producer is Catherine Imelderet. McEle-Rae. Catherine and Melderay. We've lost to Marcos. Our engineer is Dennis DeMennis Foley and our technical spiritual and menu advisor. is Mr. John S. Lawler. Yes. Car Talk's poet laureate is Robert DeFrost.

Our customer care representative is Hayward Jabuzzoff. Collision repair is handled by Jesse the Body Shop. Our document expert from the island of Jamaica is Euripides Upman, who is not related to our tailor, Euripides, I mended these, or to our staff bouncer, Euripides, I break your face, or to the proprietor of our men's clothing shop, Euripides or you own a D's. Peekaboo Street directs our intensive care unit,

which is now known as the Peekaboo I, ICU, and our Leo Tolstoy biographer is Warren Peace, author of of Leo Tolstoy by Warren Peace. Our chief counsel from the law firm with Dewey Cheathamman Howe is Uly-Lewis-Dooey, known to the dogs in Harvard Square as Ui the Hydrant.

Thanks so much for listening, we're clicking clack. The Tappet Brothers, don't drive like my brother or my sister. Don't drive like my sister or my brother. We'll be back next week. Bye-bye. So long. And now, here is Kotok Plaza's very old rapmaster,

Mr. Vinnie. Taste tea, Goombats. If you're in this week's show, again, we'll put you in heaven. Order this week's Card Talk number 47. You can take it from me to Public Radio Hunk. You can get your taste by calling 888 car junk. That's good, Vinnie. What about the puzzler book, the video, what about all that stuff?

Or if you think you're seeing the ugliest faces you can see, then our smiling mugs have never been on your TV. A show that's exciting is 90210. It's Cat Talk's first and probably last new video. Take it from me, the Public Radio, Hung. You can get this stuff by calling 888 car junk. That's 888 car junk. I'll visit the shameless commerce division at the Car Talk section of Cars.com.

Thank you, Vinnie. My foot is still tap. Hey, tap this, pal. Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheatham and Howe and WBUR in Boston. And even though Joe Palker is looking into scientific remedies to prevent us from saying it in the future, this is NPR National Public Radio. Support for NPR and the following message, comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org.