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Panel Round Two

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

All right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Amy, after visitors complained that it was just too hard to get up there, a tour group is considering installing a ladder where?

AMY DICKINSON: Oh, come on. Like, Mount Everest?

SAGAL: Mount Everest, yes.

DICKINSON: No.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

DICKINSON: A ladder?

SAGAL: This week marked the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Thousands have followed in their footsteps since then, but what about those times when only one set of footsteps appeared? That, my son, was when the Sherpas carried them...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...because they paid to be carried. So here's the thing. There's this one part - there's so many people going up on Everest, which is mostly a very high-altitude hike, but there is one place where you have to climb up this rock face. It's called Hillary's Step.

DICKINSON: Well, god forbid.

SAGAL: God forbid you should have to climb.

DICKINSON: It's Mount Everest, yeah.

SAGAL: And there's actually a huge backup there during the brief climbing season because everybody waiting to climb up. So they're like, let's just put a ladder there, speed things along. The only problem is now the food court up at the summit is going to be so crowded.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Ken, this week we learned about a North Carolina couple headed to Hawaii to have their baby. They're headed there because they want their baby to be delivered by what?

KEN JENNINGS: I did see this. They want the baby delivered by dolphins.

SAGAL: That's correct.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It's dolphin-assisted childbirth.

(LAUGHTER)

JENNINGS: Wow.

SAGAL: The couple will stay at the Sirius Institute, a group organized with the purpose of, quote, "dolphinizing" the planet and taking money from crazy people.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The idea is that the couple will swim with a dolphin pod, they'll be there in the water and when the time comes for the baby to be born, the dolphins will help with the birth. How will they do this? Presumably by being just as useless as every husband is at that point.

DICKINSON: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

BILL KURTIS: No. I happen to know about dolphins a little bit, which is that's how they - you have a midwife dolphin that swims along with the...

(LAUGHTER)

KURTIS: ...no seriously, expecting dolphin. And when the - because they breath air, dolphins, you know.

SAGAL: I know that, yes.

KURTIS: So when the baby comes out, the midwife dolphin flips it up in the air so it's first breath is of air and not water. Now how they do it with a baby I don't know.

DICKINSON: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So you're telling me like this woman's going to give birth in the water and the dolphin's going to flip the infant...

(LAUGHTER)

DICKINSON: Now, wait.

SAGAL: So they'll know the baby is born watching from the shore when all of a sudden it's like, oh there she goes.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Newborn infant. Like a Polaris missile headed for the top of the water.

(LAUGHTER)

JENNINGS: Do you guys remember back in the '50s when the dolphin would just have to swim back and forth in the waiting rooms...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It was terrible.

JENNINGS: ...smoking cigarettes? I mean...

SAGAL: And the dolphin hadn't shaved in like three days. It had like the five o'clock shadow, yeah. But a dolphin is going to be a terrible birth coach for a human, though. It's like, OK now, breathe deeply through the top of your head.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: No, the top of your head. What's your problem?

(LAUGHTER)

JENNINGS: You got to get the shark in to cut the cord and then everybody's happy.

(LAUGHTER)

JENNINGS: And do the circumcision.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: A shark mohel.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here comes a little shark with a yamaka. I love that.

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

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