CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. And here's your host at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium at U.S. Cellular Center Asheville in North Carolina, Peter Sagal.
(APPLAUSE)
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl. Thank you. Hush now. Thanks, everybody. We've got a great show for you today. Later on we'll be talking to Charles Frazier, author of "Cold Mountain" and other books you've lied and said you read.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: But first, can I say what a pleasure to be back in Asheville, North Carolina, home of artists?
(APPLAUSE)
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
SAGAL: Home of artists and musicians and brewers, gateway to the Smokies and, of course, according to a state legislator, a cesspool of sin.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Carl, I've got to ask you, a proud son of North Carolina, a Tarheel. You've been away for a long time. Do you feel any different when you come back?
KASELL: Not even a Junebug smidgeon, Petey Joe.
(LAUGHTER)
KASELL: I'm as comfy as gravy on a biscuit, y'all.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Well, we're all down home this week. So 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 SCHWARTZ: Hi, this is David Schwartz from East Norwalk, Connecticut.
SAGAL: That's terrific, David. Welcome to our show. What do you do there in East Norwalk?
SCHWARTZ: Actually I'm an attorney in New York City.
SAGAL: Really?
SCHWARTZ: Yeah. Surprise, surprise.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOOING)
SAGAL: So you just say you're from - please.
BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: David, you have so many fans here in Asheville. You have no idea.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right, David, great to have you with us. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, a comedian and a host at Vocolo.org, Mr. Brian Babylon is here.
(APPLAUSE)
BRIAN BABYLON: Yes. Hey, David. Thank you so much. Hey Dave.
SAGAL: Next say hello to one of the women behind the Washington Post's Reliable Source column, Mr. Roxanne Roberts.
(APPLAUSE)
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Hey, Dave.
SAGAL: Also a comedian performing August 9th through the 11th at Zanies in Nashville, Tennessee.
GOLDTHWAIT: I am?
SAGAL: It's Bobcat Goldthwait.
GOLDTHWAIT: Well, hello.
(APPLAUSE)
GOLDTHWAIT: Hi, David.
SAGAL: Did nobody tell you, Bobcat, that you're going to be in Nashville?
GOLDTHWAIT: I'm on a need to know basis. It's like the Black Ops. They just send me out. So David, so you're a police officer, was that what it was?
SCHWARTZ: Attorney, even worse.
GOLDTHWAIT: Attorney, attorney, OK. I don't know why I thought - I don't know why I thought cop. Oh, because all these hippies groaned. That's why.
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDTHWAIT: Oh, they're all mad at me now. Really, Asheville? Please. I drove by a place called The Organic Mechanic today, and you're going to...
(APPLAUSE)
GOLDTHWAIT: I have no idea. Maybe, what is it?
SAGAL: Well, basically they don't want to compel the lugnuts to come off. They try to convince them to by rapping with them. David, you're going to start off with Who's Carl This Time? Carl Kasell is going to read you three quotes from the week's news. Your job, correctly identify or explain just two of them. Do that you will win our prize, Carl's voice on your home answering machine, voicemail, whatever you've got there. You ready to go?
SCHWARTZ: Oh, yeah, and glad to have Carl back.
SAGAL: Oh, we all are, believe me.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: All right, here is your first quote.
KASELL: He had the will and the bravery to go against the matrix.
SAGAL: That was a Russian legislator celebrating Russia's decision to grant asylum to whom?
SCHWARTZ: Edward Snowden?
SAGAL: Exactly right, Edward Snowden.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: On Thursday, much to the surprise of everybody, international jetsetter and fugitive Edward Snowden walked out of the Moscow airport, where he's been living for the past month or so. He's been surviving on nothing but Cinnabons and Duty Free spiced rum. He seemed fine except for weighing 400 pounds and reflexively searching for a seat near an electrical outlet.
BABYLON: And you know what no one's mentioning?
SAGAL: What?
BABYLON: He had to smell bad. That's what I've been thinking this whole time. I mean, you know, like airport bathroom wash-ups can only go so far.
SAGAL: That's right.
BABYLON: We need to like immerse yourself into a - he needs an immersion, like with some type of, like, Febreeze or something.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia after someone didn't understand it was a rhetorical question when he asked, what could be worse than living in an airport?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Very good, David. Here is your next quote.
KASELL: Who am I to judge?
SAGAL: That was somebody saying he had no right to condemn gay people, which made the news because the person saying it is in fact whom?
SCHWARTZ: The pope?
SAGAL: Pope Francis, very good.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: This week, in an impromptu news conference on his airplane, known as Pope Force One...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Pope Francis shocked everybody by saying of gays who am I to judge. And the world responded you're the pope.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That's why you get to wear the white hat. You judge people. That's what you do. So Pope Francis doesn't sleep in the papal apartments. He carries his own bags, and now he will not condemn gay people. It's time to seriously ask the question: Is the pope Catholic?
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Somewhere a bear is going what am I doing here in the woods, this is unsanitary.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: What he said was something to the effect of people asked him about gay people, he says, well, you know, there's gay people, but, you know, as long as they're well-intentioned and seek God and seek to be good people, who am I to judge them, right? And immediately the Vatican, you know, officials started to walk it back. They're like, well, you know, what he meant by being well-intentioned is, like, do they intend to find a nice girl and settle down, that's what it means.
(LAUGHTER)
BABYLON: Man, he's like the old dirty bastard of popes, man. He does whatever he wants to do, Wu-Tang.
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDTHWAIT: He's...
SAGAL: He can go a little too far in this sort of progressive thing. Apparently, the way you now get rosary beads is by lifting your shirt, and they throw you some.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: A little too far. David, here we go, here is your last quote.
KASELL: I want to be a role model.
SAGAL: That was New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez, who may be facing a lifetime ban from baseball due to what?
SCHWARTZ: Taking steroids.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed, performance-enhancing drugs.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Major League Baseball has threatened Alex Rodriguez with a lifetime suspension from the game partly because he took performance-enhancing drugs, partly because he lied about it and partly because, man, what a putz.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This is the most unsurprising revelation about an athlete ever. It's like remember say it ain't so, Joe, you know, the little kid, the disbelieving kid on the courthouse steps, A-Rod's going to come outside to meet an adorable little boy, and the kid's going to look up and say: Figures, you ass.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
BABYLON: Now what was this he was doing, a cream, or was it injections? I mean, what are these guys doing now?
SAGAL: Oh, he was doing everything.
BABYLON: A-Rod?
SAGAL: Yeah, A-Rod. Well, apparently, he was both implicated in the Biogenesis scandal, this was this longevity center in Florida that was giving out all this stuff to athletes.
BABYLON: And that has nothing to do with "Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan." That's just Genesis Project.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: No, yeah, no, don't get confused.
BABYLON: OK my bad, all right.
SAGAL: That's OK. What's amazing is how much the other players seem to hate him. Even other Yankees hate him. Lance Armstrong just threw away his A-Rod jersey.
(APPLAUSE)
BABYLON: Can I ask you a kind of off - kind of a crazy question?
SAGAL: Go ahead.
BABYLON: Do you think if A-Rod looked like Steve Buscemi, people would give him a hard time?
(LAUGHTER)
BABYLON: I mean...
SAGAL: Are you saying people are just jealous of his good looks?
BABYLON: This is theoretical. I think a little bit.
GOLDTHWAIT: Are you saying the same body and Buscemi's head?
(LAUGHTER)
BABYLON: No, if it - yeah, like...
GOLDTHWAIT: Because I'm trying to imagine this.
BABYLON: Yeah, muscles, athletic prowess but just that mug. Do you think people would have such distaste for A-Rod?
SAGAL: You're telling me we hate him because he's beautiful?
BABYLON: I'm not saying anything. This is a hypothetical theory.
SAGAL: Well, Derek Jeter is a pretty good looking fellow, plays on the same team, everybody loves him.
BABYLON: He's no A-Rod.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Oh really?
BABYLON: That's what polls say. I don't know, I just read the paper, man.
(LAUGHTER)
KASELL: Brian has a type.
(LAUGHTER)
BABYLON: But didn't he, like, not fail a drug test? How do you do that? How do you drugs and not get caught?
SAGAL: Well, that's what Lance Armstrong did. It's possible. It can be done, and apparently he did it.
BABYLON: Not but seriously, how do you do it?
(LAUGHTER)
BABYLON: I know there's someone in this room who has a job interview to go to that needs to know that.
GOLDTHWAIT: No seriously, though.
ROBERTS: No, but...
GOLDTHWAIT: Myself and Asheville wants to know.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Carl, how did David do on our quiz?
KASELL: David, you had three correct answers, so you win our prize.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Yay, way to go, David.
SCHWARTZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.