See You on the Radio

October 4, 1999
Osgood is known as a winning, whimsical humorist of the airwaves, and if these 100-odd commentaries (often culminating in verse) recorded for CBS Radio over the past eight years are any indication, that reputation is well deserved. The mini-essays touch on such topics as the "Lightning Strike Convention," attended by people struck by lightning whose lives have been changed in ways undetectable by science, the Wash Your Hands effort by Massachusetts doctors to get people to save lives and stop the spread of diseases by lathering up on a regular basis, and a 7-Eleven manager who was fired for catching a thief in his store, a violation of company policy. Osgood generally works from a small wire story--usually one that exhibits what he calls HPF, or Human Perversity Factor--or a scientific/medical study that proves the glaringly obvious. Sometimes, though, he weighs in lightly but sensitively on current events, such as when he meditates on the difficulties involved in deciding what should be put into the history books, or when he laments the ways political correctness can distort the English language. Written as they are for the ear rather than the eye, some of these pieces are slight on the page, without Osgood's delivery to add flavor. But those that contain verse remain Osgood's best and most memorable work. Discussing angry drivers, for example, he posits: "There's a name unscientific for those who act this way./ I will not tell you what it is, but it starts with an A." You can almost see it on the radio.