carry the program. Lassiter had no intention of doing their job for them. Occasionally, though, he would reward callers who annoyed him with absolute silence: in fact, on the night of August 2, 1996, Lassiter kept a caller on the air at WFLA without saying a word for 12 full minutes. On the other hand, despite his unsparingly caustic demeanor and complete frankness, radio with Lassiter was in many respects a kind of free-for-all. At least once a week, Lassiter would do "open phones", letting people call in with whatever they wanted to talk about. At times, he would even bypass the call screeners and answer the phones himself—a format he called "Chat With Bob"—letting prank callers, and anyone who wanted to be on the radio at all, speak (although he would censor them if necessary). This would lead to an inordinant number of people calling in and flushing toilets or holding the receiver up to the radio to hear the show on the six second tape delay; Lassiter would frequently respond to these calls by mocking the lengthy period of time they would wait on hold (typically forty minutes to an hour) just to do something completely trivial. Monologues Although he was unpleasant and pointedly controversial, Lassiter was a careful and engaging orator, building his monologues and telephone harassment with masterful diction, phrasing, and dynamics. It was a strategy that worked: he himself often noted that the secret of his success was that even the many people who despised him couldn't help but listen night after night, year after year. Lassiter was not shy about airing his personal life on the air: he shared extremely intimate details of his own childhood (including his parents' divorce and his subsequent estrangement from his father); his first marriage, including stories of an abortion and infidelities by both parties; his own history of recreational drug use; and the ups and downs of his radio career. "You probably know more about me than you do about your own spouse, unless you have a better-than-average marriage", he once informed his listeners. Listeners were also frequently treated to present-day anecdotes about himself and his second wife Mary (the former Mary Toensfeldt—nicknamed "Muffy" — who had been the business manager at WPLP during his tenure there), or his hobbies of astronomy, birdwatching, futures trading, and fiddling with his home computer. Often these were subjects he defaulted to