BILL KURTIS, HOST:
From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm the man they call the Bill of right - Bill Kurtis. And here's your host at the Filene Center at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va., Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thank you everybody, great to be here at this beautiful place. Later on, we're going to be talking with the surgeon general of these United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy.
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SAGAL: Now, we are going to pretend to be interested in his job and stuff, but all we really want is that he gives us our very own surgeon general's warning.
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SAGAL: Something like this...
KURTIS: Public radio may cause extreme drowsiness.
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KURTIS: Before listening to public radio, make sure your doctor says you're healthy enough to have sex, not that it will matter.
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SAGAL: We ask you to defy the risks and give us a call. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME!
DAVID CURBOW: Hi, Peter. I'm David Curbow from Sunnyvale, Calif.
SAGAL: Hey, beautiful Sunnyvale. That's in Silicon Valley, is it not?
CURBOW: It is.
SAGAL: It is, and are you some sort of young millionaire?
CURBOW: I'm a geek like most people here. I'm a special kind of geek. I'm a user experience designer.
SAGAL: A user experience designer - that's the person who actually cares about people like us.
CURBOW: Well, yes. I kind of help people, designing...
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UNKNOWN PERSON: Smarter people than us.
CURBOW: ...Apps that are easy to use rather than, you know, most of them.
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SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, David. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's a features writer for The Washington Post. It's Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Hello.
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CURBOW: Having fun yet?
ROBERTS: We are having fun.
SAGAL: Next, it's a writer for HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher," Mr. Adam Felber.
ADAM FELBER: Hi, Dave.
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SAGAL: And finally, it's a comedian you can catch at Humphreys Concerts By the Bay in San Diego, Calif., on September 11, it's Paula Poundstone.
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PAULA POUNDSTONE: Hey, Dave.
SAGAL: David, welcome to the show. You're going to play Who's Bill This Time? Bill Kurtis right now is going to start us off with three colorful quotations from the week's news. Your job, of course, identify or explain two of them if you can. If you do that, you'll win our prize - the voice of Scorekeeper Emeritus Carl Kasell on your voice mail. Are you ready to do this?
CURBOW: I'm excited. Let's do this.
SAGAL: Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: I know I'm better than anybody.
SAGAL: That humble statement was offered by somebody who astoundingly enough still leads the polls for the GOP nomination.
CURBOW: That would be the Donald.
SAGAL: Yes, Donald Trump.
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SAGAL: According to the latest polls, Donald Trump still the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, despite doing more than the rest of the Republican field combined to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump.
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SAGAL: Just to catch you up, this week he said John McCain isn't really a war hero, quote, "I like people that weren't captured," unquote. And then he called Lindsey Graham a lightweight and gave out Graham's personal phone number.
POUNDSTONE: Oh, I forgot about that.
SAGAL: All right, that one - that one was actually kind of fun because we got to watch Graham constantly answering his phone and saying yes, my refrigerator is running. Why are you people obsessed with my refrigerator?
FELBER: It's astounding to me. I no longer believe in the reality I used to believe in 'cause, like, Donald Trump imagined he would announce his candidacy for presidency and immediately go to the top of the polls and that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard.
SAGAL: Right.
FELBER: But it has happened, so we're not living in what we thought we were. This is, like, some kind of Trump matrix.
SAGAL: We're living in that.
FELBER: Yeah, yeah, like Laurence Fishburne's going to come out at any moment and let us know that the world is not what we thought it was.
SAGAL: I know, it's like, we took the wrong pill, Adam.
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POUNDSTONE: How are these polls done?
SAGAL: Well, what they're done - this is a good question.
FELBER: They call Trump Tower.
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SAGAL: No, Donald Trump himself has bought up all the phone numbers, so when they answer it...
POUNDSTONE: No doubt.
SAGAL: ...It goes no, I love Donald Trump. No, there...
FELBER: No, I think he's the finest, bestest, most luxurious, high-quality first-class candidate I've ever heard of - goodbye.
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SAGAL: They're done by professional polling firms. They call hundreds...
POUNDSTONE: And by the way, I'm Hispanic.
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ROBERTS: You didn't mention - you didn't mention that he wants to build the wall between - on the border...
SAGAL: Oh, there's so much dimension. We could do the whole hour on...
ROBERTS: And he wants Mexico to...
SAGAL: Wants Mexico to pay for it.
ROBERTS: He's convinced Mexico will pay for it.
SAGAL: Right.
POUNDSTONE: OK...
FELBER: Well, we're definitely going to need them to build it.
SAGAL: Well...
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POUNDSTONE: Wait, I apologize. I interrupted, which is so not like me.
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POUNDSTONE: But I just think - don't you think that maybe they're asking people too early and people are just irked and so they just say - I mean, I just - it can't possibly be that people really think, well, there's a good idea. It just can't be.
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SAGAL: Well, if this is true, Paula, that...
POUNDSTONE: 'Cause I like my fellow man, but this is putting me off.
SAGAL: Pursuing...
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FELBER: And can these polls - can these polls correct for sarcasm?
SAGAL: That's true, yeah.
FELBER: Oh, Donald Trump's my choice for president.
SAGAL: Yeah, I know.
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SAGAL: All right, very good. David, here is you next quote.
KURTIS: Welcome home, President Obama.
SAGAL: Now, that was a sign that President Obama hoped the locals would take down before he arrived where at the end of this week?
CURBOW: He's in Africa - Kenya.
SAGAL: Yeah, that's exactly right, David, Kenya.
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SAGAL: In the second half of his second term, President Obama has started the make the conspiracy theorists's head explode tour with state visits to his ancestral birthplace, Kenya, his mosque in Afghanistan, the secret facility where he's researching ways to breed an army of Beyonces to seize the guns of Texans.
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SAGAL: Now, he was talking about the trip with the press. And he said he was looking forward to going back to Kenya. He's been there before, but he thought it wouldn't be as much fun as when he went as a private citizen - right, because it's so annoying when you have a whole plane all to yourself with a bedroom.
FELBER: Yeah.
SAGAL: He just can't wait to get his first post-presidency trip in coach.
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SAGAL: Joe, Michelle, can you guys get up? I got to use that little bathroom they have in the back. Isn't this fun?
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POUNDSTONE: So they said welcome home on this sign.
SAGAL: Yeah, they had a sign saying welcome home.
POUNDSTONE: Oh, well, I think they meant it in more of a global way.
SAGAL: Yeah, he was descended from a Kenyan.
FELBER: They're proud of him, yeah.
SAGAL: Yeah.
POUNDSTONE: Where does Biden go to get a welcome home sign? Where does he go? Where's his - what's his ancestral...
FELBER: Everywhere.
SAGAL: He goes to a Chucky Cheese in Scranton, Pa.
FELBER: How you doing? Hey, Joe, you're back.
SAGAL: Your skee ball record still stands, they say.
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SAGAL: All right, very good. David, Here is your last quote.
KURTIS: Look over there, said my sister Kay. We can go home with a rabbit today.
SAGAL: That is a line from a new book that - somewhat to everybody's surprise - we got from a beloved children's author. What author?
CURBOW: Dr. Seuss.
SAGAL: That's right.
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SAGAL: Turns out, contrary to what you've heard, the publishing industry is not dead, just the authors are. For the second week in a row, the big hit book is by a writer who hasn't written a book in decades. It's a great lesson for struggling new authors. The keys to success - write every day, write what you know and if you can, die.
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SAGAL: The new book by Dr. Seuss was written before his other famous books back when he was still just pre-med Seuss.
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SAGAL: It's called "What Pet Should I Get?" If this is successful, we can expect future undiscovered Seuss works - works that he left in his files unpublished when he died - stuff maybe he did late in life like "What Medication Should I Take Today?" and "If I Ran My Own Estate."
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FELBER: Oh, the places you'll go to pee because you can't wait.
SAGAL: Yes.
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ROBERTS: I'm really torn about this because I always feel like if they didn't get published there's probably a reason they didn't get published.
SAGAL: Yeah, yeah. I mean, first there was Harper Lee's book, which she didn't want published and has now been published and now a Dr. Seuss. If this trend continues, we might see new releases of mediocre books that authors put aside in their day, like George Orwell's "1983."
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SAGAL: "Slaughterhouse-Four."
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SAGAL: F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Meh Gatsby."
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SAGAL: And of course, "The Da Vinci Code."
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SAGAL: Bill, how did David do on our quiz?
KURTIS: David did perfect.
SAGAL: David, thank you so much for playing.
CURBOW: Thank you, bye-bye.
SAGAL: Bye-bye.
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POUNDSTONE: Bye, David. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.