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 Tom Bodett, Kyrie O'Connor, and Brian Babylon. And here again is your host, at the Baton Rouge River Center in Baton Rouge Louisiana, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl.
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SAGAL: In just a minute, Carl says Laissez le bon temps rhyme in our Listener Limerick Challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. But right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Brian, one leading venture capitalist out in Silicon Valley says it is official, we are in another tech bubble. And he cites what as his evidence?
BRIAN BABYLON: I need help.
SAGAL: Well, suddenly pocket protectors have gotten a lot sexier.
BABYLON: Oh, because nerds are back to sexy again?
SAGAL: Yes, because the hot girls are hitting on the nerds.
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BABYLON: Whoa.
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SAGAL: This is his evidence. Sam Altman is the CEO of Loopt or one of those other stupid named companies. He says we're probably in another tech bubble. The evidence? Soaring salaries in Silicon Valley and, quote, "the number of hot girls roaming bars trying to chat with any guy that looks like he might be an engineer," unquote. And we should be clear, he is talking about computer engineers. Do not go to the singles bars dressed like you're ready to drive your choo-choo.
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SAGAL: Kyrie, a male gorilla at the Dallas Zoo is being sent to South Carolina for special one-on-one treatment to help him get over what?
KYRIE O'CONNOR: Sexism.
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SAGAL: You're exactly right.
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BABYLON: Wow.
SAGAL: Patrick is a 430-pound western lowland gorilla who loves humans, famous among visitors there for his outgoing, gregarious personality. Unfortunately, he is horrible and sexist towards the female gorillas in his enclosure.
BABYLON: I don't like that, man. I'm tired of these academics getting into monkey life and thinking they know how monkeys think.
SAGAL: All right. I need to say this because otherwise we will get a thousand emails, gorillas are not monkeys.
BABYLON: All right. Primates, whatever.
SAGAL: Believe me. I made that mistake.
BABYLON: You know what? This is the second time I've done that on this show.
SAGAL: All right, yeah, don't do that.
BABYLON: So, I'm sorry. But I don't like when these smarty know-it-alls get into animals and think they know how they think because they don't.
SAGAL: Well, here's the question, is like how would a gorilla be chivalrous? What does he do? May I throw that poop for you, my dear?
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BABYLON: Or he just, you know, unpeels a banana with his pinky up.
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BABYLON: Well, did they give any real bullet points on what are the things that this gorilla was doing that was sexist?
SAGAL: Well, I assume that, you know, you want the gorillas to get along with the female gorillas for the, you know, for the sake of the peace in the enclosure. Maybe for mating. You want to make more gorillas, right? They're endangered. And apparently he was mean to the ladies in a way that he wasn't mean to the other men.
BABYLON: But maybe...
SAGAL: Or males.
BABYLON: ...maybe that female gorilla was telling him to go be better with his life and stop sitting around the gorilla cave laying around and making him feel like he was a loser and not being the full gorilla he could be. I want to do my gorilla thing...
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TOM BODETT: You hear that all day long?
BABYLON: All that nagging.
SAGAL: Wait a minute. Are you saying to me that maybe he was being mean to the female gorillas because they were just getting up in his grill? Is that what you're saying?
BABYLON: Yes, I am, Peter. Yes, I am.
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O'CONNOR: There's a lot of hostility here.
BODETT: Well, didn't they replace him with a gorilla that breakdances? Didn't I read that?
SAGAL: I did not know that. Is that true?
BODETT: I think that's the second part of the story.
BABYLON: Because everyone knows that's what lady gorillas like, breakdancing.
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O'CONNOR: Well, it beats having him sit around all day, scratching himself and watch ESPN.
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SAGAL: Whoa. Somebody else might need to go to South Carolina.
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SAGAL: Little training there. Kyrie, the Houston Astros set a record just this last week when how many people watched their game on TV on Sunday?
O'CONNOR: None.
SAGAL: Exactly right.
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SAGAL: Zero people watched the game. Just like with Woodstock, years from now people will insist they were one of the people who were not there when the Houston Astros played the Cleveland Indians in late 2013. It got...
O'CONNOR: It was the kindest thing I could possibly have done.
SAGAL: Yes. It got a Nielsen rating of 0.0, a score industry analysts refer to as a goose egg or a PBS. Now...
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BODETT: Wow. It seems like somebody would have it on just by accident, you know, where you just - like they're...
SAGAL: Like they're flipping through channels and they had a stroke and they were lying there paralyzed and couldn't help but watch the Astros game. That might have happened.
BODETT: Or "Cops" were on early in the day and then you went out to work in the garden and just left the TV on. You know...
BABYLON: Let me get this straight. You mean to tell me that somebody was watching those crappy reality shows, but no one was watching the ballgame?
SAGAL: No one was watching the ballgame.
O'CONNOR: Honestly.
BABYLON: We're in trouble.
O'CONNOR: The Houston Astros is the crappiest reality show in the entire world.
(LAUGHTER) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.