BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: 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 PJ O'Rourke, Alonzo Bodden and Faith Salie. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
(APPLAUSE)
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you Bill. In just a minute, Bill tears the rhyme off the sucka 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. Right now panel, some more questions for you from the week's news.
SAGAL: PJ, a company in St. Louis is helping single people avoid awkward questions at family gatherings or at other situations by allowing them to go online, and using their online app or the app on their phone to create and commute with what?
O'ROURKE: Gee, you can create an avatar that will...
SAGAL: No, no. You go home, say, to visit your parents. And they're like so, when are you going to meet a nice girl?
O'ROURKE: Right.
SAGAL: And you're tired of the questions so you go online and what do you do?
O'ROURKE: It will give you responses for those questions? Speak them out loud?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Yes. Hang on a second mom - beep, beep, beep, beep. None of your damn business.
(LAUGHTER)
O'ROURKE: You go for it. Alonzo, you go for it.
SAGAL: PJ defers to Alonzo.
ALONZO BODDEN: A fake boyfriend or girlfriend or significant other.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Exactly right. You create a fake significant other. Let's say you're somebody who's just too shy or, you know, just too invested in your career in public broadcasting to have a relationship. Well...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well, the app will provide you with text conversations, voicemails from your made up significant other and actual letters to, quote, "give you the real world social proof you're in a relationship," unquote. So when your mom asks you when she can meet your girlfriend, you just say that's not possible without a significant extra charge, mom.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So just look at these texts from her on my phone.
FAITH SALIE: What's the app called? I'm not gay?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Yeah, well...
BODDEN: I think the problem with that is it's a generational thing. So the grandmother's going to be wondering where's the girl? And then you show her the text. Then you have to explain to her what a text is.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Faith, a new study from the CDC suggests that parents might be wrong in thinking what is a healthy food for their kids?
SALIE: Pizza.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SALIE: Don't tell us bad things about pizza please, Peter.
SAGAL: I'm afraid that the CDC requires me to do so. According to the Centers for Disease Control, on any given day, one in five kids is eating pizza and the other four are going, come on, Jeremy gets to have it. Why can't I?
Scientists took the data from the CDC. They counted up the calories, they published a paper saying so much pizza is not good for the little children. This was published in the prestigious journal, the New England Journal of Stuff You Should Already Know.
(LAUGHTER)
SALIE: Why should we already know that? I reject this study. And I want the people who perpetrated this study and funded this study to sit down with my 2 and a half-year-old who won't eat anything else.
BODDEN: Well, Faith, you just got the Papa John's gig.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Alonzo, as you know, Kickstarter and Indiegogo, those are the websites where you go for funding when you have a great idea that no one would actually want. Now a man, though, is using Indiegogo to raise money to pay for what?
BODDEN: His Kickstarter campaign?
SAGAL: That would be brilliant, but no.
BODDEN: Give me a hint.
SAGAL: I'll give you - well, your donation pays for dinner, a movie, and two separate cab rides home.
BODDEN: Oh, for his dating?
SAGAL: Yes. He went to Indiegogo to raise money so he can go out on dates.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
BODDEN: But couldn't he just go to the app and get the fake date?
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: And just - I don't know - stay home, smoke some weed and eat some pizza.
SAGAL: He wants to raise $2,400 to pay for several dates for him and to be determined and to be disappointed women. The guy mentions he loves thunderstorms, fine film, and he has all these adorable pictures of himself with sleeveless vests so you can see his sleeve of tats and his beard and his Warby Parker glasses and his little biker cap. And the only problem with this whole thing after watching it is it's so difficult to send him a donation when you've already punched a hole through your computer.
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: Has anyone donated?
SAGAL: That is a good question. He's got about $500, but the competing Indiegogo to have him sterilized has raised $2,000. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.