Departments include Classical Music, The Jazz Spectrum, The Blues Hangover, Sports, News, The Darker Side, and Record Hospital.

Orgies (the term is a registered trademark of the station) are consecutive presentations of the entire musical output of composers, record labels, or genres, sometimes running 24 hours a day for a week or more.

Station legend has it[5] that these began when an exuberant undergraduate in 1943 decided to celebrate his passing a difficult exam by broadcasting all nine Beethoven symphonies in order.

Orgies continue to take place during exam periods, allowing the station to be run with a reduced on-air staff at these busy times.

Harpsichordist Igor Kipnis, New York Times critics John Rockwell and Jon Caramanica, New Yorker writers Alex Ross and Kelefa Sanneh, pianist and composer Robert D. Levin, author and critic Douglas Wolk, ZDNet founder Michael Kolowich, Justin Rice and Christian Rudder of Bishop Allen, Karl Rove's personal attorney Robert Luskin, visual artist Alex Kahn, record producers Thomas Blanchard Wilson Jr. and Jim Barber, and the members of the chimp rock band Fat Day have been on the station's staff.

Mentor to these alumni for almost the last 60 years, and to everyone else who worked at the station, was David Elliott, a constant WHRB presence who filled a wide range of roles since his student days, from savvy and precise classical and opera curator-broadcaster to orgy mastermind, from board chair to eminent adviser.