Sheplives

Last Summary Update: 09-17-2026

Meaningful Relationship
Airdate: Wednesday - September 15, 1971 (Airdate Confirmed)

WOR Show
Original Airing

audio

(NOTE ABOUT TIME REFERENCES: Since there are many different copies of shows out there from different sources, all time references are from the beginning of one single recorded copy, since various copies, depending on when the recordee started recording, had news at the beginning or shortened themes. The times would vary from copy to copy.)

First Spoken Line After Theme Ends

We are lost, the Captain shouted

Show Description

[ Courtesy: GROK - - ]   
  This is a typical midweek Shep broadcast: loose, meandering, and full of asides, trivia challenges, listener letters, and jazz interludes. He opens with a mock-dramatic shipwreck bit and a disclaimer that the program contains "indescribably bad taste."

Highlights include:

A book-signing story from Morristown, New Jersey, featuring two kids holding signs that read "Excelsior" and "You fathead."

A sealed tube given to him at the signing that he opens on air; the contents prove disgusting and are quickly removed from the studio.

Promotion of his upcoming appearance at the Morristown Bookshop (Morristown Mall, New Jersey) the next day for Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories.

Comic-strip trivia: "Glorioski Zero" (Ella Cinders), a cartoonist who looks like Mandrake the Magician, and the line "shrimpers and rice is very nice" from the song "Hold Tight."

An anecdote about Louis Armstrong having to give up red beans and rice.

A long, mock-scholarly listener letter describing the "mating habits of the Americana slobis" (teenagers in Parsippany, New Jersey): girls perched on cars, boys gunning engines at McDonald's or Geno's, compared to moose courtship.

A satirical "salute" to the 1970s cliche of the "meaningful relationship."

A letter about the documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle being undercut when the same actor appears in a commercial.

The hour ends with more music, a plug for the Morristown signing, and a handoff to news. The tone throughout is conversational, irreverent, and full of Shepherd's trademark mix of nostalgia, trivia, and cultural observation.

Comments

• Shep mentions being in Morristown at The Bookshop and Exclusive Shop - see article below about the appearance

WOR ID

Time	Station ID (All times approximate)
13:06	Speaking of the lost and gone, the beautiful and the damned, this is WOR New York. . .

Commercials (All times approximate)

Time	Sponsor	Notes
	No Commercials or Commercials Cut

Music (All times approximate)

Time	Music Title	Notes
02:06	Unknown - William Tell Overture - 2
13:19	Basin Street Blues
15:41	Shiek of Araby (3)
18:14	When The Saints Go Marching In

Engineers, Staff, and Guests in Booth

Time	Engineer, Staff or Guest
03:16	Bruce Eliot
03:50	George
07:11	Marty

Instruments and Special Effects Played During the Show

Instruments Played

Jews Harp
Kazoo
Echo Chamber

Related Plots / Story Lines and Other References Used

Time	Category	Date	Title	Comments
03:58	Books		Booksigning - "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories..."	Last Night
05:13	Books		Booksigning - "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories..."
11:17	Books		Booksigning - "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories..."	Met Mandrake the Magician artist

Photos:

September 1971
Daily Record article

Courtesy: Dave Somers

Airdate History ' - Original' date is earliest known broadcast)

This Show

		Date	Title
		September 15, 1971	Meaningful Relationship	Original Airing

More Ways To Hear or Buy It

Show	Replay Date
Dustbin of History	September 17, 2026

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"Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you're not even a memory?
Think about it, friends. It's not just a possibility. It is a certainty." - Jean Shepherd - 1975