BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm legendary newsman Bill Kurtis...
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: ...filling in for Carl Kasell. And here's your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thanks everybody. Thank you so much. We got a great show for you today. The great baseball announcer Jon Miller will be with us to talk about the boys of late winter.
But first, to start the show, well, we got this great idea from the Oscars last week, and as it turns out, Bill Kurtis here, filling in for the vacationing Carl, is not only a legendary newsman, but a song and dance man. So we thought we'd do it up, Seth MacFarlane style...
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SAGAL: ...but with an NPR twist.
KURTIS: Peter, I'm sorry, but there is no way I'm singing a song called "We Heard Your Boobs."
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SAGAL: Well, while we work out our creative differences, please give us a call. The number is 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!
ERIN PACK-JORDAN: Hi, this is Erin Pack-Jordan from Eastland, Texas.
SAGAL: Eastland, Texas, am I correct in assuming that is in the eastern part of Texas?
PACK-JORDAN: Oh, no, it's in between Abilene and Fort Worth, so west central.
SAGAL: So you were making sure that no one could find you.
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SAGAL: Well, Erin, it's great to have you. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, a comedian and host of the Who's Paying Attention podcast, Mr. Alonzo Bodden right there.
ALONZO BODDEN: Hello, Erin.
(APPLAUSE)
PACK-JORDAN: Hello.
SAGAL: Next up, a comedian and now the head writer of "Inside Amy Schumer" premiering April 30th on Comedy Central, it is Jessi Klein.
(APPLAUSE)
JESSI KLEIN: Hi, Erin.
PACK-JORDAN: Hi.
SAGAL: And finally, a correspondent for "CBS Sunday Morning," the host of "My Grandmother's Ravioli" on the Cooking Channel and the busiest man in show business, Mr. Mo Rocca.
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MO ROCCA: Hi, Erin.
PACK-JORDAN: Hi.
SAGAL: So, Erin, welcome to the show. You're going to play Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis, filling in for Carl Kasell, is going to read you three quotes from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain just two of them, you'll win our prize, Carl Kasell's voice on your home answering machine. Are you ready to go?
PACK-JORDAN: So ready.
SAGAL: Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: The Senate should get off their ass and do something.
SAGAL: That was House Speaker John Boehner. He was urging the Senate, over on the other side, to solve what impending crisis?
PACK-JORDAN: The sequester.
SAGAL: Yes, sequestration.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Oh, no, it's the worstest thing with the boringest name.
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SAGAL: The word "sequestration" comes from the Greek root "seque," meaning part or partition, and castration, meaning being utterly without balls.
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SAGAL: This is the latest, as everybody knows, in a series of horrible fiscal disasters that seem to keep happening every month or so. You know, there's the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling. It's like an action movie, but instead of defusing the ticking time bomb, the hero just hits the snooze button.
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BODDEN: Peter?
SAGAL: Yes.
BODDEN: It is a little known fact that the sequester was actually forged in the deep fires of middle earth.
SAGAL: Was it?
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: And can only be stopped if we find a hobbit brave enough to carry it into the fires of Capitol Hill.
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: I don't know if we're finding a willing hobbit here.
SAGAL: I know.
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: It does seem very Indiana Jones. Like the debt ceiling is lowered, and he makes it out just in the nick of time, but then there's the fiscal cliff and then...
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: ...sequestration. And I'm waiting for like a big deficit boulder to come towards him.
SAGAL: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well, President Obama, he apparently came up with the idea of the sequester a couple of years ago. He spent the week traveling around the country campaigning against it. His idea was that the budget cuts were so severe and indiscriminate Congress would have to be crazy to allow them to happen.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: You could see the miscalculation right there, couldn't you?
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ROCCA: I thought this was all about the cancellation of "Sea Quest."
SAGAL: Sequestration.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: "Sea Quest DSV" with Roy Schneider.
ROCCA: Yeah, with Roy Schneider.
SAGAL: Yes.
ROCCA: If Roy Schneider were still around, this wouldn't be happening.
SAGAL: I know.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: The thing is like sequestration is being blamed on so many things that you can blame it for anything. It's like your frozen entrée doesn't look like the picture on the box, sequestration. Anne Hathaway, sequestration.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Girl you met on J-Date, not actually a J, damn you, sequestration.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now, according to Obama this week, post-sequestration America will be a horrible dystopia. We will not have the TSA, so we're going to have to pat down each other down when we get on planes.
(LAUGHTER)
KLEIN: That already happens if you fly Southwest.
SAGAL: That's true.
(LAUGHTER)
KLEIN: That's part of, like, their deal.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right, very good, here is your next quote.
(SOUNDBITE OF HORSE NEIGHING)
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
BODDEN: Now that was good radio.
SAGAL: Yeah, it was amazing. You got a whole stable in there it sounds like.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: I got a million of them.
SAGAL: So that was the sound of the Ikea kitchen this week, where it was discovered...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: ...what's been making its way into their meatballs.
PACK-JORDAN: Horse meat.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: The furniture store Ikea announced they had found horse meat in their famous Swedish meatballs, which frankly, we should have seen coming because it always came with a side of hooves.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Or when the funny Ikea name for the dish was Hurse-Meat.
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SAGAL: And it was advertised in their cafeterias as Grade A Triple Crown Winning Beef.
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ROCCA: So wait a minute, so the meat in those meatballs is actually from the horses.
SAGAL: Yeah.
ROCCA: Oh gosh, I hope those lingonberries don't come out of the horse.
SAGAL: That would be bad.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: You know what's interesting though? You have to order 17 plates of the meatballs and you get an Allen wrench, you can reassemble the horse.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: But there's always one meatball left over, right?
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BODDEN: I find it hard to believe that there would be horse meat in the meatballs in a place that would build such high quality furniture.
SAGAL: You'd think.
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: Do you know how bad it is when you get to the point Taco Bell can make fun of the meat you're using?
SAGAL: That's true.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: We should just embrace eating horse.
ROCCA: Yeah.
SAGAL: We should be like, hey, great for you to come over for dinner. Here, try my delicious sea biscuits.
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: I don't know. We embrace eating horses, the dogs are going to get nervous.
SAGAL: That's true.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And all the news outlets kept using the phrase, well, the horse meat found its way into the burgers. Found its way?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: What, the horse just wandered in and the horse is like "Hey, what are those cows all in line for?"
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: "It must be something good. I'll join up."
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right, very good, here is your last quote.
KURTIS: I am just a pilgrim, ending his pilgrimage on this earth.
SAGAL: That was someone who ended his pilgrimage this week by taking a helicopter to a Mercedes to his new private castle in Italy.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Who was it?
PACK-JORDAN: The Pope, the former pope.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed, Pope Benedict.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Very good, yes, very good.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: You see, the pope's last week in office. He left the Vatican in a helicopter and went to Castel Gandolfo, home of Gandalf.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So the pope's - or I should say the former pope's life on out from here is still a mystery. At least we know what he's going to be called. They decided his title would be Pope Emeritus. They would have just gone with calling him "The Old Pope," but that's applied to every pope ever.
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SAGAL: But Pope Emeritus, it's pretty boring. We came up with some other suggestions. Bill?
KURTIS: O-P, The Original Pope-sta.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: The Pontiff Formerly Known as Pope.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: Ex Pope-Oh Facto.
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ROCCA: I think the trickiest thing is he's going from being infallible to being fallible, which has got to be difficult, because I wonder if a lot of the cardinals, you know, that he sort of supervised are just going to be contradicting him all the time now, just for the heck of it.
SAGAL: Yeah. No, that's not right.
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: You're wrong.
SAGAL: You're wrong, sir.
ROCCA: You're fallible. You're not infallible.
BODDEN: Do you think he starts prayers with "Hey, remember me?"
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Bill, how did Erin do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Erin was unbelievable. She got them all right.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well done, Erin, congratulations.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thanks so much for playing.
PACK-JORDAN: Thank you.
SAGAL: Bye-bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.