BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We are playing this week with Amy Dickinson, Greg Proops and Luke Burbank. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thank you so much. Right now it is time for the WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAITWAIT to play our game on the air.
Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
DAN FLANNERY: Hi, this is Dan from Honesdale, Pa.
SAGAL: Honesdale, Pa. Dan, what do you do there?
FLANNERY: I work for Highlights magazine.
SAGAL: You do not.
AMY DICKINSON: Yay.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Really? Has Highlights changed since I was reading it as a young boy? Do you still have Goofus and Gallant, for example?
FLANNERY: Yeah, there's still Goofus and Gallant, hidden pictures.
DICKINSON: Love.
SAGAL: Have Goofus and Gallant been updated? Like, Gallant sends very nice texts to his friend. Goofus sends pictures of his junk. I mean, does that...
(LAUGHTER)
LUKE BURBANK: Goofus is on the spectrum.
FLANNERY: No comment.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Dan, it's nice to have you with us. You're going to play the game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Dan's topic?
KURTIS: Now you tell me.
SAGAL: Sometimes we learn things too late. The girl that you like back then liked you, too. Those Rocky Mountain oysters you enjoyed were not seafood.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This week, we read a story of someone getting news a little bit too late. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Pick the one who's telling the truth, you'll win our prize, Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
FLANNERY: I am.
SAGAL: Well, first, then, let's hear from Luke Burbank.
BURBANK: To say the 10 reality show contestants who recently staggered out of the Scottish wilderness after a year in isolation had a lot to catch up on would be an understatement. For instance, they had no idea Britain had voted to leave the EU or that Donald Trump had been elected U.S. president. Or that the TV show they thought they were starring in, called "Eden," had been canceled after just four episodes.
That's right. A year ago, 23 strangers were dropped off in the middle of nowhere in Scotland and filmed to see what would happen. What did happen was that they were very hungry, very tired and there was a lot of, quote, "sexual jealousy going on." Eventually, more than half of the contestants quit, but not the final 10. Somehow they pushed through against the odds, and their reward was that they were literally the last people on earth to learn the network had stopped airing the show due to low ratings.
According to a spokeswoman for Channel 4, quote, "'Eden' was a real experiment. And when filming began we had no idea what the results would be." Those results appear to be that the network now has made mortal enemies out of 10 hardened survivalists...
(LAUGHTER)
BURBANK: ...Who, like Rambo, can strike and then disappear into the wilderness indefinitely. So good luck with that.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: The contestants on a British reality show stumble out of the wilderness to discover that their show had been canceled months before. Your next story of someone left in the dark comes from Greg Proops.
GREG PROOPS: The Steinbachs (ph) from Frankfurt, Germany wanted to buy a summer home in Tuscany. They met Aldo (ph), who sold them a charming villa for dirt cheap. And when they arrive the next summer Aldo's there. He's forever taking them on day trips to wineries and Etruscan ruins, long lunches, extra dessert and always bringing them back to the villa after 6 p.m. Por que? Because three years before the house had been sold as a museum and Aldo is the caretaker. He was keeping the Steinbachs out so they wouldn't see the other German tourists tramping through their house five days a week.
(LAUGHTER)
PROOPS: (Imitating German accent) And that is the end of the story.
SAGAL: Apparently.
(LAUGHTER)
PROOPS: (Imitating German accent) You will stop paying attention now and shift your attention to the small man.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: A German couple buys a house in Tuscany not knowing that it was, in fact, already become a museum. Your last story of someone who didn't get the news comes from Amy Dickinson.
DICKINSON: Casey Moore (ph), a Canadian birder, was alarmed by reports of the cute little puffins near extinction along the coast of Greenland. She launched a passionate pennies for puffins campaign, standing on street corners dressed in a puffin suit, shouting, preserve the puffins, collecting spare change and pennies from schoolchildren for her trip to Greenland. After 15 years, she had finally collected $25,000.
And so last month she made the grueling 2,000-mile trip aboard military transport and kayak. I got there at night, but early in the morning I was awakened by is strange scuffling and tapping sound on the little cottage where I was staying, she reported in the journal Bird World. When I opened the door, I was shocked to see a huge colony of puffins surrounding the house. They were honestly quite aggressive and many were much larger than they were supposed to be. A few of them were the size of Labrador Retrievers but far less friendly. Moore was only able to locate five human villagers because the rest of the human population had been driven off and/or killed by the puffins. Villagers live together and exist entirely on a diet of puffin meat. The one village street was coated with puffin poop. Trying to walk through it, she said, was like sliding through hummus.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: When Moore went back to Canada to report her alarming find, she was further shocked to learn that the original research that sent her on this journey was not from 2002 but from 1902. A typo made the research 100 years out of date. She told the CBC, the good news is that the puffins are back. Yay.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: The bad news is that they are scary bastards.
SAGAL: All right, here are your choices.
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SAGAL: One of these stories is true. Is it from Luke Burbank, the contestants on a Scottish reality show who spent a year in the wilderness only to come out and find out their show had been cancelled months before; from Greg Proops, a couple who had bought an inexpensive villa in Tuscany only to find out it had been made into a museum three years earlier; or from Amy Dickinson, a woman who devoted her life to saving the puffins only to find out the puffins were doing just fine and also were not worth saving? Which of these is the real story of someone who found out key information too late?
FLANNERY: Wow. I think I'm going to go with A.
SAGAL: You're going to go with A. You're going to go with Luke's story of the reality show contestants.
FLANNERY: It seems most plausible, yeah.
SAGAL: It does?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right, that's your choice. Well, to bring you the correct answer, we spoke to someone quite familiar with the real story.
CHRISTOPHER MELE: Twenty-three people isolated in the wilds of Scotland came out after a year only to discover that the show was canceled after four episodes.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: That was Christopher Mele, a reporter with the Express Team of The New York Times, talking about the doomed Scottish reality show "Eden," in which everybody knew it was canceled except the people in it. Congratulations, Dan, you got it right.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: You earned a point for Luke. You've won our prize. Carl Kasell will record the greeting on your voicemail. Well done, sir.
FLANNERY: I feel so proud.
SAGAL: Yes. And give my best to the guys at the magazine.
FLANNERY: I will. Will do. Thank you.
SAGAL: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SECOND HAND NEWS")
FLEETWOOD MAC: (Singing) I'm just second hand news. I'm just second hand news. Yeah. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.