M: Hello, and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio! I'm Mike-

S: Do we have to do these infantile nicknames?

M: Of course.

S: . . and I'm Shirley. Which is way worse than "Mike" - at least yours is a bloke's name. People assume I'm named after Shirley Temple -

M: - and together we're the Holmes Brothers, broadcasting this week from our studio in London. First up on the line we have Molly Hooper, also from London, how are you, Molly?

Caller: Oh, um, I'm fine. Hi. Wow.

S: Hi. Let me guess - transmission problem?

Caller: That's . . . wow. I mean, I know you can do that, you do it every week, but wow.

M: Care to give us more detail, Miss Hooper?

Caller: O - okay. Fine. It's a grey 2003 Ford Focus. I've had it since 2005.

S: Less than fifty thousand kilometers, right? You barely use it except for - I'm going to say going home to visit your parents, probably about once a month. Your accent says you grew up a good ways north - not Scotland, not quite, but close.

Caller: Yes, that's it exactly.

M: Play nice, 'Shirley.'

S: Go stuff your face with a cheesecake, 'Mike.' So Molly - transmission problems.

Caller: My car has started making strange noises. Kind of a loud growl. And - what made me call - last week when I tried to turn left, it dropped into neutral.

M: . . . it's not supposed to do that.

S: Obviously.

Caller: What should I do?

S: Grow a spine, clearly.

Caller: [pause] Pardon?

S: Aging car, driven the same way for most of its life. Your speech patterns suggest you're a naturally timid person - what do you do, Molly? Something solitary - writer? Artist?

Caller: Pathologist, actually.

S: Same thing. Either way, you're not an aggressive enough driver, especially for London - part of the reason you don't drive in town even though you clearly have a car. Nearly a decade of tentative stop-and-starts when you're turning on red - plus never getting up enough courage to actually merge when traffic is heavy - has put more than the usual toll on the transmission.

Caller: Can I fix it?

M: Yes, most likely. Get it looked at - by someone other than who you usually go to, that shop is almost certainly overcharging you - but chances are it's going to be more than the car is worth to fix.

S: And take public transportation more often.

M: Yes, thanks for that. Good luck, Miss Hooper.

Caller: Thanks.

M: Well believe it or not, it's now time for this week's puzzler!

S: Thank God.

M: You may remember our last week's puzzler, sent in by DI Dimmock of our very own law enforcement brigade here in London. Care to remind everyone, Shirley?

S: Not really, but since you insist: DI Dimmock laid out a hypothetical serial suicide killer, in which four totally different people committed suicide by the same method at approximately the same time. Our question was, why?

M: And you all had theories.

S: Most of which were terrible.

M: But a handful of you actually got the correct answer. Who do we trust even though we've never met them? Who hunts in the middle of a crowd?

S: If you said 'a cabbie,' you were marginally less stupid than the rest.

M: And congratulations to Mrs. Martha Hudson, who was randomly selected from among this week's correct answers. You won - what has she won, Shirley?

S: Let me guess: something utterly useless?

M: Well that goes without saying, but I was hoping you'd read off the paper that's sitting right in front of you.

S: In that case, it's a boxed set of our show. So you can hear me and my brother bicker any time you like.

M: You'll be just like our mother.

S: But a better cook. It's not possible to be a worse cook than our mother is.

M: Be nice.

S: If you should wish to prove it, send Mike a cake. He likes cake. In fact, all of you out there should send Mike cake. The look on his face should be hilarious.

M: You can't hear it over the radio, but I'm glaring at my brother right now. It's very intimidating.

S: If you say so.

M: Well it's happened again - you've wasted another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk.

S: But I didn't get to present next week's puzzler! There's a green ladder-

M: It's a short program today, Shirley. Mostly because our writer couldn't be bothered to do a whole 10K of us bickering like this.

S: The insults write themselves, mostly.

M: Yes, I suppose they would. In any case, I'm Mike-

S: And I'm, apparently, 'Shirley'-

M: And we're reminding you to get out there-

S: And both see and observe.

M: Until next time!