Panel Round One
NPR
Saturday, March 21, 2015
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Our panelists answer questions about the week's news: Black Hat Bourbon.
Transcript
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
We want to remind everybody they can join us most weeks right here at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Ill. For tickets or more information, just go over to wbez.org. Or you can find a link at our website, waitwait.npr.org. Right now, panel, it is time for you to answer some questions about this week's news. Gabe, the Puritans - you remember the Puritans...
GABE LIEDMAN: Sure.
SAGAL: They have a reputation for being our most un-fun ancestors. But a new exhibit at the U.S. National Archives reveals what surprising fact about them?
LIEDMAN: Can I have a hint?
SAGAL: You may have a hint. You're picking this up rather quickly.
LIEDMAN: I love hints, yeah.
SAGAL: It's 5 o'clock-eth somewhere-eth.
LIEDMAN: They had their own happy hour? They loved to drink?
SAGAL: Yes, they loved to drink.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
LIEDMAN: Wow.
SAGAL: In fact, they drank all day long.
LIEDMAN: They really pretended not to drink.
SAGAL: They did.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: According to the exhibit's curator, a Puritan's day included, quote, "a healthful dram for breakfast, whiskey was a typical lunchtime tipple, ale accompanied supper and the day ended with a nightcap," unquote. To put it into perspective, if you just look at the amount of pure alcohol in all our cocktails - you know, wine and beer that we drink - Americans today drink about two gallons of pure alcohol a year. Back in the 1700s, they gang drank 5.8 gallons.
MO ROCCA: Wow, they really threw it back.
FAITH SALIE: You know, I did a story on hard cider...
SAGAL: Yes.
SALIE: And how it's kind of our national drink - or used to be our national drink.
SAGAL: Used to be.
SALIE: And that's because it was oftentimes much more safe to drink alcohol than water.
SAGAL: Yeah 'cause the water - 'cause alcohol killed all the nasty things in it.
SALIE: Right, this is before Bear Grylls taught us to drink our own urine.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Right, which is now our national drink.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And yet, when you think of the Puritans, they seem so uptight.
LIEDMAN: Yeah, how do you unbuckle all of your clothes when you're just a little soused, right?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That hilarious. It's like, oh, I'll come to bed with you, but I can't get the buckle on my shoe off.
(LAUGHTER)
LIEDMAN: Somehow my shoes attach to my hat...
SAGAL: Oh, my God.
LIEDMAN: I don't know what I did.
SAGAL: My hat is buckled to my head now.
(LAUGHTER)
SALIE: That's why they were so chaste.
SAGAL: Exactly.
LIEDMAN: Yeah. Well we buckled ourselves to each other; that's kind of like sex.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED ARTIST: (Singing) Yeah, you know, I don't drink much. Man, I hardly drink at all. Yeah, you know, I don't drink much. Boy, I hardly drink at all. And when I wind up so hung over, man, I wish I could recall.
SAGAL: Coming up, it's an educational Bluff The Listener game. Call 1-888- WAIT-WAIT to play. We'll be back in a minute with more of WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME from NPR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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