Bluff The Listener
NPR
Saturday, January 31, 2015
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Our panelists tell three stories about someone saving the environment only one of which is true.
Transcript
BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis and we are playing this week with Tom Bodett, Peter Grosz and Amy Dickinson. And here again is your host of the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Right now it's time for the WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air.
Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
JAKE DALY-LEONARD: Hi, it's Jake Daly-Leonard in Philadelphia.
SAGAL: Hey, Jake Daly-Leonard.
DALY-LEONARD: Hey, there, Peter Sagal.
SAGAL: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So you're the Leonard we get every day?
DALY-LEONARD: That joke was made in high school. But, you know, parents bestow you with a last name, you just kind of got to roll with it.
SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show Jake. You're going to play the game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Jake's topic?
KURTIS: Do you have a minute to talk about the environment?
SAGAL: There's nothing really more counterproductive to environmentalism then people lecturing you about environmentalism. But this week, we read about someone attempting to cut through all that clutter and really got our attention about saving the planet - to really grab us by the collar. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Guess the true story and you will win Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. You ready to do this?
DALY-LEONARD: Yeah.
SAGAL: OK, let's then - let's first hear from Tom Bodett.
TOM BODETT: Teaching young people to respect the environment can be accomplished the same way we teach children anything - with fear and intimidation.
(LAUGHTER)
BODETT: That's what the faculty at St. Francis of Ascutney High School in Portland, Oregon decided when they initiated their Climate Camp Detention Program. Based on the Scared Straight experiment of the 1970s, where juvenile offenders were subjected to threats and ridicule by hard-core prison inmates, Climate Camp is intended to frighten kids who commit crimes against the environment into changing their ways. At St. Francis, those crimes include taking more than one paper napkin in the cafeteria, not using both sides of a homework paper, or God save the children, being caught putting recyclables in the trash. Offenders are sentenced to a week of after school detention, in which role-playing science geeks and faculty sit around a dry and overheated room assembling hemp book bags and acting out a scenario in a post climate change world. When asked if the climate camp was having an effect on her, junior Edy Lovette, a repeat climate violator, said yes, if the environmental apocalypse is going to be this lame and stupid, I'll do whatever it takes to avoid it, but I'm still flushing my pee.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: A Scared Straight for the environment program in Portland.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Your next story of someone with a creative environmental message comes from Peter Grosz.
PETER GROSZ: Mayor Dimitri Russo of Castel Volturno, Italy was having a hard time getting the word out to his constituents about recycling. So in order to promote the town's newest issue, he turned to the world's oldest profession - prostitution. Mayor Russo got two of his female advisors to dress as prostitutes in short skirts and low-cut blouses and stand by the side of a busy road in town. When drivers pulled over to, let's just say chat with the women, the mayor leaped out from a hiding spot behind the women to lecture the would-be johns about recycling. Yes, this was a deception, says Mayor Russo. But I know two things about the people of my town - they don't like recycling and they love sex.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: Political analysts don't foresee the use of prostitutes to promote political issues catching on in America, however, since our politicians are much more accustomed to selling themselves for money.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Using prostitutes or fake prostitutes to lure people into a honey trap for recycling. And your last story of someone ditching the petition and trying something new comes from Amy Dickinson.
AMY DICKINSON: Pattycake Thibodeau is a New Orleans native who said she had grown more and more worried about the waste during the weeks of Mardi Gras parades when revelers on floats throw literally tons of plastic bead necklaces onto the crowd. The beads land in the trees, in the streets and gutters, along the parade route throughout the city and then they're swept away. After several years of unsuccessfully trying to get the city to ban bead throwing, she launched a campaign to replace the plastic beads with necklaces made with sustainable materials like seeds, grass, suet and even rolled dung. Volunteers made thousands of eco necklaces and distributed a ton of the new eco beads to parade participants.
The first day of Mardi Gras, the first parade of the festival rolled down Bourbon Street. Thousands of drunken tourists lined the route. The sky suddenly got dark. At first, onlookers thought a storm was brewing, but were horrified to see a massive flock of grackles chasing the floats. Before they knew what was happening, thousands of birds descended onto the parade route attacking the partiers and pecking at the beads, the floats, the breasts and the people watching. People on the floats threw the beads faster and faster, dumping them directly onto people's heads trying to get rid of them. Thibodeau herself was injured and taken to the hospital when a group of spotted grosbeaks attacks her. It was like Hitchcock.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: City officials have advised people to stay indoors.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: All right. Here's how you get people to say attention to the environment. Was it from Tom Bodett, a Scared Straight program where they subject students to a horrible world in which it's hot and dry and they have to make hemp book bags, from Peter Grosz, an Italian mayor who decided to promote his new recycling program by luring people to the side of the road with fake prostitutes, or from Amy Dickinson, an attempt to make Marti Gras go green that ended with an attack of grackles. Which of these is the real story that we found in the news?
DALY-LEONARD: I'm going to go with A.
SAGAL: You're going to go with A. Jeez, I don't remember which A was. A, of course, was Scared Straight for the environment in Portland, Oregon. All right. That's your choice is Tom's story. Well, here is some news footage about this very program.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MAYOR DIMITRI RUSSO: (Through interpreter) Bongiorno. Good morning. Hi, there. I'm the mayor of Castel Volturno. I'm promoting a campaign to separate the recycling.
SAGAL: That was, in fact, the mayor of Castel Volturno himself, as translated, talking about his recycling plan with embarrassed johns in his town in Italy.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: Wow.
SAGAL: I know. We didn't believe it either, as is clearly the case. Although Tom's idea sounds like a good one, it was not the true one. So you didn't win our game, but you did win a point for Tom. Thank you so much for playing.
BODETT: Thanks, Jake.
DALY-LEONARD: Thank you, take care.
SAGAL: Bye-bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing) So pick up your bottles, recycle them too. Don't be a litterbug, it's so uncool. Save that plastic, round up the cans. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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