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Panel Round Two

CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Peter Grosz, Roxanne Roberts and Brian Babylon. And here again is your host, at the Coronado Performing Arts Center in Rockford, Illinois, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Carl.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: In just a minute, Carl channels his favorite member of Cheap Trick, Limerick Nielsen in our listener limerick challenge.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. Right now, panel, of course, it is your turn for some more questions from the week's news. Roxanne, get ready to welcome a new country to the world community. On April 11th, the U.N. will designate what as a state.

ROXANNE ROBERTS: Disneyworld.

SAGAL: No.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I'll give you hint. The president of this new country is Oscar the Grouch.

ROBERTS: Sesame Street.

SAGAL: No.

ROBERTS: Oscar the Grouch.

SAGAL: What does Oscar the Grouch famously love?

ROBERTS: Oscar the Grouch loves garbage cans.

SAGAL: He loves - how does the song go - I love?

ROBERTS: Trash.

SAGAL: Trash. They are giving member state status to a big floating island of trash.

PETER GROSZ: Oh, no. Oh, no.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: And not just one of them either. Five floating trash islands, all around the world. The new UN recognized state known as Garbage Patch is an attempt to bring attention to the problem of these garbage vortexes. These are places in the oceans where currents bring together these massive piles of discarded plastic that stay there forever.

The flag of Garbage Patch is the color blue like the oceans they are polluting. The official language is, of course, trash talk.

(LAUGHTER)

BRIAN BABYLON: So wait a minute, who lives here? Garbage Pail Kids? Like who...

GROSZ: I think Lindsey Lohan lives there. She's pretty trashy.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Well that's the problem. I mean if trash is now a country, then being trashy is an ethnicity.

GROSZ: Yeah. And then they're protected.

SAGAL: Exactly, so you just called Lindsey Lohan trashy, you're a racist.

GROSZ: I'm a racist.

SAGAL: You're terrible.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: I thought I was just being sexist. Dang it.

BABYLON: How big is this place?

SAGAL: They're enormous. They're square miles of trash floating in the middle of the ocean.

BABYLON: They're like Texas...

SAGAL: Yeah.

GROSZ: One of them is as big as Texas.

SAGAL: The one in the Pacific is famously called as big as Texas.

BABYLON: Can we make this a tourist destination? That would be...

SAGAL: Well yeah, Sandals has actually opened a resort on the one in the Pacific.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: It's just a bunch of sandals, too.

SAGAL: Yeah. That's why it's called sandals.

(LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: And don't be surprised if Carnival cruises doesn't make this one of their stops.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: When the toilets don't work, just get off and go to the garbage patch.

SAGAL: Brian, a new study finds that employees who are the most positive about their companies and most excited to work for them are also what?

BABYLON: Stoned.

(LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: No. All right, give me...

GROSZ: I love it here, man.

BABYLON: Give me the hint.

SAGAL: Remember how the seven dwarves whistled while they worked. They hardly mined anything it turns out.

BABYLON: Oh, people who are most happy at work do crappy work.

SAGAL: Exactly right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: That seems to be the case.

BABYLON: I got it. I got it.

(APPLAUSE)

BABYLON: There we go.

SAGAL: According to the oxymoronic research firm Leadership IQ, the happiest workers are often the low performers. It's like that old song, if you're happy and you know it, you're incompetent.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It makes sense, because if you think about it, the high performers, the guys who get all the work done - you know this - they're the people staying late. They're doing the work other people should have done in the first place. They end up tense and bitter, like Carl.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Low performers are happy and stress free because nobody ever asks them to do anything. Right? That's no problem. Think about it. Ikea meat testers, never meet a happier bunch.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Kim Jong Un, a delight to be around. Joe Biden, look at that smile.

(LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: So, for example, a person who gets in at 10 and they leave at 2 and they take a four-hour lunch. You're talking about somebody like that.

SAGAL: Yeah, and they love their job. What's not to love?

BABYLON: Exactly, OK.

SAGAL: See what I mean?

ROBERTS: And then during the 15 minutes they're supposed to be working, they're going around collecting for somebody's birthday.

SAGAL: Right.

ROBERTS: Can you sign the card?

BABYLON: Yeah. There's cake in the lunchroom. The cake coordinator, that's the person.

SAGAL: Exactly.

Peter, we have heard about the nightmares on some cruise ships recently. Well, a travel company released some of the complaints they've gotten from cruise ship passengers, and among the complaints they got was what?

GROSZ: Too little land.

(LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: That garbage island was horrible.

SAGAL: Yeah.

GROSZ: So not something that happened like toilets not working.

SAGAL: Yeah, like the ship slowly filling with sewage.

GROSZ: Yeah, exactly.

SAGAL: No, that was not one of the complaints they got.

GROSZ: Wasn't told this would be sewer ship. One of their complaints is too rocky, the water too rocky.

SAGAL: It was about the water.

GROSZ: Too blue.

SAGAL: Not too blue.

GROSZ: Salty.

SAGAL: Well, they...

GROSZ: Cold.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: They couldn't sleep...

GROSZ: Wavy.

SAGAL: Apparently, this woman couldn't sleep at night. She kept banging on the floor to get it to quiet down.

GROSZ: Oh, it kept running.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: Loud. The water was too loud.

SAGAL: The water was too loud. The sea was too loud.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

GROSZ: Oh.

SAGAL: One passenger couldn't sleep at night and went so far to ask if her stateroom could be soundproofed from the ocean.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So there are reasons you go on a cruise: endless buffets, backed up toilets, Somali pirates. The last thing you want is the relaxing sound of ocean waves. The next thing you know, the sunsets will be full of annoying colors.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: This is all true. Other cruse ship passengers complained about not being able to get an impressive tan on a cruise to Alaska.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And the woman who went on a trip with the Celebrity Cruise Company bitterly complained that there were, in fact, no celebrities on board.

(LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: Wow.

GROSZ: I do not consider Erik Estrada a celebrity.

(LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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