Car Talk as part of the science curriculum?

Why not? This Saturday morning NPR call-in car repair show has over 150 times more fans on Facebook than Science Friday, NPR's science show - and they demonstrate, one caller at a time, how to apply the scientific method to everyday problems (most often, but not limited to, car repair and relationship advice). Science Friday will always, for obvious reasons, be a better place to go for science news but if you want to hear the scientific method executed equisitely, I suggest tuning in. It even seems to be really popular with the college professor crowd (either that or college professors' cars break down more often!)

Firstly, the breadth and depth of their knowledge is enough to rival any botanist or other taxonomist. (Yes, I realize there are many more species than makes of car but you get the point.)

Secondly, they gather up as much evidence as they can from the caller (in comedic fashion too I might add) and formulate a hypothesis. Ray, the younger brother, even has an ability to tease information out in a distinctly House MD-esque fashion.

Lastly, and here's the best part, when possible they devise simple binary experiments (with yes/no answers) to test their hypotheses so the caller knows what they're talking about when they go in to get it fixed.

This is just a tongue in cheek suggestion with the bigger point that we don't have to look to the chemistry or physics lab to teach the scientific method (not that there's anything wrong with those two, just that they're not for everyone). We are surrounded by an often less formalized but maybe more palatable form of it, which should be used so we can get through to everyone!

Catch me listening to Car Talk

I have a new favourite radio show and, in all honesty, my realization of the strength of my break with the past has left me reeling. If you were to tell me in 2003 that in five years I would find myself putting aside time every Saturday morning to listen to Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers, for one hour of call-in car repair radio on Car Talk, I’d have a hard time believing you. My skepticism would be based more on your claim of time travel, but I digress.

Car Talk is neither your run of the mill call-in or car repair show. The diversity of listeners it attracts rivals the tropical rainforest both in quantity and in distinctiveness. Just this past weekend there was a guy calling in saying he was a long time listener but, his main skill set being music, he new nothing about cars. Long-time listener? Excuse my simplemindedness but to listen to a call-in radio show about cars, don’t you have to not just like cars, but have some idea of how to fix them? The guy was a musician! I mean, I don’t mind gardening but I consider the gardening show on CBC just short of torture. Shouldn’t an alto-sax aficionado be listening to John Coltrane on Bose earphones that cost more than my weekly paycheck? Surfing over to their Facebook page, I discover that they have 12,175 fans and that, don’t forget, is only within the demographic that actually uses Facebook which I’d estimate to be only a fraction of their entire listening base. But even within that demographic, they still manage to have more fans than indie favourites Broken Social Scene or Chromeo. Taken at face value, that still means that more people feel the urge to make public their love affair with Click and Clack than two bands I’d consider famous. What’s happening here?

Truthfully, I’m not sure. I don’t even have a car to fix. I hadn’t even been interested in cars at all before. And, believe me, there are many things I find more pleasant than the call-in format for a radio show. The Tappet brothers, with their almost hyperbolic Boston accents have managed to breath life into a subject that I wasn’t even aware possessed the apparatus to blow into and they’ve been doing it for over 20 years! Is it their self-depricating charm or their almost House M.D.-esque ability to diagnose car troubles based simply on a caller’s questionable ability to imitate odd sounds made by their car over a poor phone connection on national radio? Whatever it is, I want to find out because I have my own discipline to breathe life into.