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Opening Panel Round

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

We want to remind everybody they can join us most weeks back at the Chase Bank Auditorium in Chicago, Ill. For tickets and more information, just go to wbez.org, or you can find a link at our website, waitwait.npr.org. Right now, panel, it is time, of course, for you to answer some questions about the week's news.

Tom, a former CEO of Trader Joe's is trying a new kind of grocery store. Soon, you'll be able to shop at a supermarket that only sells what?

TOM BODETT: This is the guy who started Trader Joe's, so it's - it only sells unseasoned nut products.

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: Nut products with nothing on them at all, just like...

SAGAL: It's a crazy departure for Trader Joe's, I will admit.

BODETT: It's a food store, though.

SAGAL: It is.

BODETT: That sells only...

SAGAL: A certain kind of food. I'll give you a hint. It's like, let's get this one, it only has a little mold on it.

BODETT: Oh, old food from Trader Joe's.

SAGAL: Well, not necessarily from Trader Joe's but old food, expired food.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: You know those "use by" and "sell by" dates on your food cartons, bags and boxes, it just confuses customers; and they're really just guidelines in the same way salmonella and E. coli are really just pretty words.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So this new chain, it's called Daily Table, will sell expired goods at deep discounts, saying you should save your hard-earned money to spend on stuff you really need like stomach pumps and antibiotics.

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: You know, they used to just send that food to Alaska. That's what we ate there for 25 years.

SAGAL: And you're fine.

BODETT: Yeah, now what are they going to eat there?

SAGAL: According to Doug Rauch, who's the guy we were talking about, the guy who started this, Americans throw out 40 percent of their food unnecessarily, which is crazy that we were able to get this fat eating only 60 percent of our food.

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: Well, I - so when they say that we throw out 40 percent of our food, but this food that they're selling is not stuff that we've bought and thrown out.

SAGAL: No, presumably the idea is, like, you have a case of green beans, and the green beans say sell by March 5th.

BODETT: Oh, the American stores throw out 40 percent...

SAGAL: Yeah, and they're like, we can't sell this stuff. And it's like, we'll sell it. And, you know, everything will be - because it says March 5th.

BRIAN BABYLON: Is that legal?

SAGAL: If it isn't, we just screwed it up for him big-time. Big time.

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: Yeah, this is a...

SAGAL: Sorry.

BABYLON: But I can see there being like - because if you start eating old stuff, that's how you're getting high.

SAGAL: This is - the story of this guy and his illegal, expired food store is going to be the star of the new AMC show called "Going Bad."

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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