Who's Bill This Time
NPR
Saturday, October 18, 2014
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Bill Kurtis reads three quotes from the week's news: Going Viral; Fan-boy; Home Boxless Office.
Transcript
BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm simply gorgeous anchorman, Bill Kurtis.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: And here's your host at the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Peter Sagal.
(APPLAUSE)
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, all. Thank you. It is in fact great - it is great to be back in Pittsburgh, Pa, which many people still think of as a Rust Belt postindustrial wasteland but is actually a gorgeous metropolis bathed by rivers, surrounded by hills and populated by the most beautiful people on the planet.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: They also have a very generous tourist bureau. Thanks, guys.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: We'll be talking to Pittsburgh's native son, actor Jeff Goldblum, about this paradise on earth. But first, it's your turn. Give us call. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT - that's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
SAMUEL DELLAL: Hi. How are you doing, Peter?
SAGAL: I'm fine. Who's this?
DELLAL: This is Sam from Andover, Massachusetts.
SAGAL: Andover - and what do you do there?
DELLAL: I'm a student at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell.
SAGAL: Oh, and what are you studying?
DELLAL: Chemistry.
SAGAL: I see.
DELLAL: Yep.
SAGAL: And what you want to do with that degree?
DELLAL: Well, I wanted to work in industry.
SAGAL: Yeah, there is no more.
(LAUGHTER)
DELLAL: Well, we still have one, but it's really repetitive work. So I've decided to become a teacher.
SAGAL: Oh, that's excellent. We need more teachers. Good for you.
FAITH SALIE: I've watched enough TV to know that that's code for he's going to make meth.
SAGAL: Really? - much better. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. Samuel, first up - it's the humorist who'll be hosting Storytellers On A Mission with Roy Blount Jr. at the Flynn theater in Burlington, Vermont on November 1. I mean, it's Tom Bodett.
TOM BODETT: Hello, Sam.
DELLAL: How's it going, Tom?
SAGAL: Next up, it's a style columnist for the Washington Post, Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Hello, hello.
SAGAL: And finally, a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning, the inimitable Faith Salie is here.
SALIE: Hi, Sam.
SAGAL: So Samuel, start us off with Whose Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis, of course, is going to re-create for you, dramatically, three quotations from the week's news. Your job - correctly identify or explain two of them. Do that - I bet you anticipated this - and you will win the voice of scorekeeper emeritus Carl Kasell on your voicemail. You ready to go?
DELLAL: I am very ready.
SAGAL: All right. Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: Oops.
SAGAL: That is the Calgary Sun being kind of Canadian as they talk about U.S. efforts to deal with what crisis?
DELLAL: The Ebola crisis.
SAGAL: The Ebola crisis.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: America is in the midst of an irrational panic attack about the Ebola virus. It's 24/7 on cable news even though two times more people in this country have been married to Larry King than have come down with Ebola.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Maybe we should quarantine him if you're concerned about public safety. Ebola is extremely hard to get, as we all know. But thankfully, our medical personnel are making it a lot easier.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: The Dallas hospital which handled the first domestic case managed to expose dozens of people to the disease, including two nurses who then contracted it. Hopefully this should end the hospital's practice of ending each nursing shift by French kissing the patients.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: Yeah, I might have my incompetent government agencies mixed up, but it seems like just a matter of time before Ebola jumps the White House fence.
SAGAL: That's true.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Everybody was saying to President Obama you have to take care of this. You have to show leadership. So President Obama canceled a trip he was going to go on to hold meetings to discuss the crisis. Well, of course that's just an excuse. He doesn't want to go to the airport either. Somebody might have Ebola.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: You know who I'm really worried about is Wolf Blitzer. Yeah. That guy hasn't taken a breath in two weeks.
SAGAL: He really - he's learned circular breathing. He can inhale through the nose while spreading panic with the mouth.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: I just want to say that this whole thing - this whole Ebola crisis is a validation for those of us who spend all our time avoiding all human contact so we can stare at our phones. There. We're going to be - we're all going to look up from our phone, and everybody else is going to be dead. And we're going to, like, oh.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Better tweet that to the survivors. All right, very good, Sam. Here is your next quote.
KURTIS: Ladies and gentlemen, we have an extremely peculiar situation right now.
SAGAL: That was a moderator at the gubernatorial debate in Florida Wednesday night. One of the candidates, Governor Rick Scott, refused to take the stage because his opponent in the debate was using what?
DELLAL: I have no idea.
SAGAL: Really, you didn't hear about this?
DELLAL: No, I didn't hear about it.
SAGAL: Well, his opponent, who's former Governor Crist - two governors were debating - really wanted, if you will, to be cool during the debate.
ROBERTS: It's that humanity, Sam.
DELLAL: He was using a fan?
SAGAL: A fan, yes.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: It's Fangate, Fanghazi, the Teapot Fan scandal. I don't know.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So this is what happens. You all know the scene. It's when a live debate starts on TV. And the lights come up, and there's the stage. And there's the bunting, and there's the podium. And there's one candidate with his silver hair waiting to go, and there's nobody else because the governor - the sitting governor of Florida, Rick Scott, refused to come on stage because his team asserted that Governor Crist - his opponent, former Governor Crist, had a little fan in his podium. And those were illegal under the agreed upon debate rules. And nobody could believe this. It was a political debate in 2014 that was actually interesting to watch.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And Governor Scott finally agreed to come on stage. They allowed him to wear a tank top and shorts so he would also be cool. He looked good. Apparently the ruling question that caused the problem - there's no electronics allowed in the debate. This is obvious because you don't want, you know, people getting information through an earpiece or maybe a phone but a fan? Is a fan a problem in this regard? I guess you can't be too careful. What if one of the questions was Mr. Crist what sound does the wind make?
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: Well, it just goes to show it's not the heat, it's the stupidity.
(APPLAUSE)
SALIE: Maybe Charlie Crist - he's in his fifties. Maybe he's just going through the change.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Here, Sam, is your last quote.
KURTIS: Will this mean the death of cable - spoiler alert, yes.
SAGAL: That was Decider website talking about a company's decision to allow noncable subscribers to use their streaming service at long last. Who is it?
DELLAL: HBO.
SAGAL: It is HBO. Very good.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: The announcement Wednesday that HBO would offer its programming online to anybody who paid was like this big vulture circling in the sky above cable TV. It means you won't need cable to watch HBO anymore or CBS News which offered the same thing. It also means you can stop sponging off your parent's password and start supporting yourself, you freeloaders.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: Is this going to work like Netflix now?
SAGAL: Yeah, it is. It worked just like that. And it's a good deal for anybody who's paying $100 a month for cable just to get HBO because they're going to offer their online service for about five bucks a month which works out to just one penny per gratuitous nude scene in a season of "Game Of Thrones."
(LAUGHER)
SAGAL: Cable, though, is not taking this lying down. Cable TV says it's going to make a comeback sometime in a two-hour window between 2014 and 2018.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Can't be more specific at this time, and no, it can't call you first. Bill, how did Sam do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Chemistry or not, Sam got them all right.
SAGAL: Well done, Sam. Congratulations.
DELLAL: Thank you.
SAGAL: Thanks so much for joining us, and good luck in the chemistry degree.
DELLAL: Thank you. It was a pleasure.
SAGAL: Bye bye, Sam. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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