Who's Bill This Time

BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. Hey, Ebbing, Mo., you don't need three billboards.

(LAUGHTER)

KURTIS: You just need one Bill Kurtis.

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KURTIS: And here is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Bill.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Thanks, everybody. It's great to see you. It's great to be with you. We have a fun show for you today. Later on, we're going to talk to morning TV legend Al Roker from the "Today Show" about the new movie based on his novel, which is about a guy on a morning TV show murdering everybody else on it...

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SAGAL: ...Which is totally not passive-aggressive.

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SAGAL: But first, before we start, we have to address the elephant in the room. And that, of course, is the president's Fake Media Awards (ph). I'd say it was an honor just to be nominated, but we weren't even nominated.

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SAGAL: And given the work we put in this last year saying outrageously false things about the president...

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SAGAL: ...Like the fact that he circles the Oval Office endlessly muttering, I can't find the corner, I can't find the corner...

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SAGAL: ...Or that when he entered the West Wing for the first time, he asked, but how does it flap?

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SAGAL: All that work for nothing. All we can say is we're determined to make it to the red carpet next year. So help our awards campaign by giving us a call. The number is 1-888-WAITWAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Now let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi. You are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.

JORDAN: Hi, this is Jordan (ph) from Indianapolis, Ind.

SAGAL: How are things in Indianapolis?

JORDAN: Oh - ah, ooh.

(LAUGHTER)

MO ROCCA: Oh, what happened?

SAGAL: That good?

ROCCA: What happened?

SAGAL: What do you do in Indianapolis?

JORDAN: I am an exhibit graphic designer at the Indiana State Museum.

SAGAL: The Indiana State Museum. I'm dying to know - what is, like, the most exciting exhibit at the Indiana State Museum, the one that people would line up to get a special ticket to see?

JORDAN: We like to say that we have all things Indiana from mastodons to Michael Jackson.

SAGAL: Yeah.

JORDAN: Personally, my favorite object is probably either the gas-powered pogo stick or maybe the giant Prozac pill.

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SAGAL: Wait, you have the world's largest Prozac pill?

JORDAN: Yeah, that's it.

SAGAL: Well, I guess, you know, you might need to break the glass on that...

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SAGAL: ....Because it is an emergency. Jordan, welcome to our show. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's a comedian performing Tuesday, Jan. 23 in Hollywood at the Comedy Store and Belly Room. It's Alonzo Bodden.

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ALONZO BODDEN: Hello, Jordan.

SAGAL: Next up, a comedian performing Jan. 26 in Concord, N.H., at the Capitol Center for the Arts, Paula Poundstone.

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PAULA POUNDSTONE: Hey, Jordan.

SAGAL: And a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, the host of "The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation" Saturday morning on CBS, it's Mo Rocca.

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SAGAL: Jordan, welcome to the show. You're going to play Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis is going to perform for you three quotations from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain two of them, you'll win our prize, any voice on the show that you might like. You ready to play?

JORDAN: I'm ready.

SAGAL: Here is your first quote.

KURTIS: I get exercise.

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KURTIS: I mean, I walk. I this. I that.

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SAGAL: That was someone explaining how he maintains what his doctor called his excellent health. Who is it?

JORDAN: That would be Donald Trump.

SAGAL: Indeed.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The official White House doctor, who we should say is a real doctor, not somebody who bought a sexy doctor costume from Spencer's Gifts...

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SAGAL: ...He says the president is in excellent health, despite his lack of exercise. But the president, as you heard, disagreed. He told Reuters that he gets a lot of exercise doing a solid hour of this every morning, alternating with that, so his this doesn't get sore.

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SAGAL: Seriously, he said - he said this - that he gets all the exercise he needs by going from one building to another.

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SAGAL: He lives above his office.

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SAGAL: It's the same building.

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SAGAL: Mr. President, look. If you're listening, moving your bowels is not a cardiovascular exercise.

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BODDEN: Well, not so fast, Peter.

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BODDEN: You never know with him. That could be some work.

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SAGAL: Now...

POUNDSTONE: But - now - but wait. Wait. This is, like, a real doctor. It's not like the last guy.

SAGAL: No, no.

POUNDSTONE: Right?

SAGAL: It's not the crazy guy...

ROCCA: It's not the crazy guy.

SAGAL: ...From the campaign.

POUNDSTONE: OK.

SAGAL: He's, for example, the same doctor who did President Obama's last few examinations.

POUNDSTONE: OK. But OK. But so have they not - Alonzo was saying there's a site where they show pictures of people that are the weight that they say Trump is.

BODDEN: Right. They...

SAGAL: Well, yes.

BODDEN: ...They showed actual people who weigh 239 pounds.

SAGAL: Well, here's the thing...

BODDEN: And he was bigger than all of them.

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SAGAL: Welcome to the girther (ph) conspiracy.

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BODDEN: Yes, that is exactly what it's called.

ROCCA: That is hysterical.

SAGAL: We credit Chris Hayes of MSNBC for that term. So what the doctor said was that President Trump is 6 foot 3 inches high and 239 pounds. No one believes it. People have posted, as you say, photos of the president next to pro athletes who are the same height and weight. And they're saying, well, look. There's no way it's the same. Look at that guy. It's not a fair comparison. Muscle is much heavier than whatever Trump is made of...

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ROCCA: Right.

SAGAL: ...Which we think is cotton batting and bile.

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POUNDSTONE: He's a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff.

SAGAL: He really is.

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SAGAL: Everybody's, like, look. That guy, look at him. He's at least 275, maybe close to 300. You hear all this talk about how heavy he is. And all you can think of is, oh, that poor porn star.

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SAGAL: Are you guys just following the story? The Wall Street Journal reported that they found that they - he'd paid $130,000 through a shell company in Delaware to this porn star right before the election to buy her silence. And everybody's, like, yeah.

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POUNDSTONE: Well, I mean, for me, first of all, it was when some - one of his wives had just - was - had a baby.

SAGAL: The affair presumably happened...

ROCCA: Yes, Melania. The one he's married to now.

SAGAL: Yeah.

POUNDSTONE: When - yeah. OK. Well, first of all, Melania probably paid for the porn star.

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SAGAL: You know what he did, according to her? I mean, the details are coming out - is that he made her sit there and watch three hours of "Shark Week."

ROCCA: And?

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SAGAL: And then she also says that he asked her to spank him with a copy of Forbes magazine.

ROCCA: With his picture on it. Although...

SAGAL: There is some supposition.

ROCCA: Is it a fake cover? That's what I want to know.

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POUNDSTONE: So - but she - so she had a rolled-up copy...

ROCCA: Of Forbes.

POUNDSTONE: ...Of Forbes magazine. See, this, again, really supports my argument about print being better than digital.

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ROCCA: Yeah.

SAGAL: Yeah, it's true.

ROCCA: You can't do that with...

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POUNDSTONE: Very hard with digital.

SAGAL: Jordan, here is your next quote.

JORDAN: All right.

KURTIS: This has turned into an S-show for no good reason. And the only way out of this thing is to grow up a little bit.

SAGAL: That was Senator Lindsey Graham. What was the S-show, as he put it, that he and everybody else spent this week trying to avoid?

JORDAN: The government shutdown.

SAGAL: Right. Exactly, yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Even though the Republicans control both houses of Congress, the presidency, there were questions all week about whether they could avoid shutting down the government. Maybe they should not have tried so hard. At this point, the only thing that might fix the government is turning it off, waiting a while and then turning it back on again.

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ROCCA: Can I ask - I mean, this is sort of an existential question.

SAGAL: Yes.

ROCCA: But if the government shuts down, how can you tell?

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SAGAL: Well, presumably, these days, we would all stop waking up in a sense of abject terror. That would be one sign.

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ROCCA: I'd note that Twitter doesn't shut down.

SAGAL: I guess not.

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SAGAL: Many fear the threat the shutdown would present to the American people. But no one is happier than Melania, who hopes this means she can stop being Trump's wife just for a few days.

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BODDEN: Oh, she's not getting out of it that easy.

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SAGAL: Here, Jordan, is your last quote.

KURTIS: I ate all the leftover lasagna in my fridge. I figured that if bleep was about to hit the fan, I'd better carb it up.

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SAGAL: That was one of many people in Hawaii last Saturday talking about how they reacted to what distressing news?

JORDAN: The nuclear warhead false alarm.

SAGAL: Yes, that they were all about to be killed in a nuclear holocaust...

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: ...At around 8 in the morning. Yes. That's great.

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SAGAL: Terrifying. But false alarm. At around 8 in the morning last Saturday, everybody in Hawaii got a text on their phone reading, ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill. Oh, that's fun. And it turns out that it was all a false alarm, of course. It was caused by a technician who picked the wrong item from a drop-down menu. This is true. Like, one choice said send test message. The other said, drive an entire state into panicked terror.

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SAGAL: And he picked the wrong one because he was also playing "HQ Trivia" on his phone. You know how it is.

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POUNDSTONE: Carb it up. I've never heard that phrase before. Carb it up.

SAGAL: Well, extreme situations call for extreme solutions.

POUNDSTONE: Yeah, got to carb it up.

BODDEN: Did he plan to run?

SAGAL: No. Well, what was interesting was Internet forum Reddit asked for people to say, you know, what they did during that terrifying 38 minutes before they got the news that it was a false alarm.

ROCCA: Thirty-eight minutes, wow.

SAGAL: Thirty-eight minutes people thought that they might die. Many people...

POUNDSTONE: You know what I would do?

SAGAL: What?

POUNDSTONE: I would call Verizon.

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: Because I think you could get through.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Because nobody else would be doing it.

POUNDSTONE: Right, exactly. There's not going to be, like, a long - you know, here you are. You know, you are 56th in line waiting for...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Jordan do on our quiz?

KURTIS: Jordan is pretty darn good. He got them all right.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Terrific.

POUNDSTONE: All right.

JORDAN: Thank you.

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