Panel Round Two
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More questions for the panel: The Boy Band Dimension, Thanks for the Emojis, Thelma and Louise and Thin Mints.
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 P.J. O'Rourke, Brian Babylon and Roxanne Roberts. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown, Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you so much.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Bill, thanks everybody. And with the 16th pick in this year's draft, the San Francisco Forty Rhymer's select Bill Kurtis.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Oh.
SAGAL: That's a Listener Limerick Challenge coming up. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. But right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Roxanne, President Obama hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as I'm sure you know...
ROBERTS: Yes.
SAGAL: ...At a state dinner. And in his honor, the president toasted Japan and thanked Japan for the gift of what?
ROBERTS: Sake.
SAGAL: No.
ROBERTS: Can I get a hint?
SAGAL: Well, when he said this, he showed, to indicate his amusement, a big smiley face on his phone.
ROBERTS: Emojis.
SAGAL: Yes, he thanked the prime minister of Japan for the gift of emojis to the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: ...And manga and karaoke as well. All right, no offense to Japan - fine country - but if the President of the United States is toasting your country at a state dinner, and that's the best praise he can come up with, don't you think you guys better step it up? You know, try to come up with something that isn't annoying?
BRIAN BABYLON: Why is that annoying?
SAGAL: Well...
BABYLON: You - people want words?
SAGAL: Mainly because I'm old and cannot make out what the damn things are.
(LAUGHTER)
BABYLON: I know, but it's sort of like being, like, Indiana Jones archaeologist where you're, like, looking at, like, hieroglyphs.
SAGAL: Hieroglyphs?
BABYLON: Yeah.
O'ROURKE: Hieroglyphs were emojis?
SAGAL: I'm just imagining Indiana Jones, like, staring at an ancient stele and saying I don't know what this ancient civilization was interested in, but it involves smiling piles of poop. I don't...
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: I think - I don't think it's fair to blame Japan because the happy face, I'm pretty sure, started here.
SAGAL: No, the happy face - that's an emoticon. That's different. The emoji are those little pictures that are all the rage.
ROBERTS: No, I understand that.
>>O"ROURKE: I don't.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: But aren't they basically in the same DNA?
BABYLON: Like the original emoji was, like, a happy face, and then it got out of hand.
SAGAL: Yeah.
BABYLON: Like, it was, like, happy face, happy face with heart eyes...
O'ROURKE: ...And then they got happy butt, and then they got...
BABYLON: ...Happy butt, then happy poo-face, and then a dolphin and then puppies and then a drumstick.
SAGAL: The Prime Minister got back at Obama by thanking America for providing Japan with the Kardashian's, heart disease and syphilis.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Brian, Stephen Hawking, the world-famous scientist, was the first man to theorize the existence of black holes. Well, in his latest to discovery, he says that there can be, there might be, an alternate universe in which what is true?
BABYLON: Give me a hint.
SAGAL: I'll give you a hint - in the grand universal theory of everything, there is more than one direction.
BABYLON: It's nothing to do with that boy band, does it?
SAGAL: It does have something to do with that boy band.
BABYLON: In another universe, Zach is still in One Direction?
SAGAL: Yes. It's Zayn, but I'll give it to you.
BABYLON: Zayn?
SAGAL: Zayn Malik.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Stephen Hawking theorized that there could be another universe in which Zayn Malik is still in One Direction. During a Q&A with an audience in Cambridge University, Hawking said there may be many universes other than our own. And in one of those universes, Zayn Malik never left that boy band.
BABYLON: Well, you could say that about the Backstreet Boys, Michael Jackson, anything.
SAGAL: Wouldn't it be awful if this alternate universe theory turned out to be true, and we were able to travel to these alternate universes, and they all had terrible boy bands?
BABYLON: Oh, heck.
SAGAL: Or even worse - what if there was only one alternate universe, and we went there and the only difference was Zayn Malik was still in One Direction?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: We're here in another dimension in which - that's it? P.J., the search for two missing women who have been lost in the woods of northern Michigan for two weeks is finally over. They're safe and sound. They were able to survive in the woods, in the snow on what?
O'ROURKE: Gee, Peter, I have not got a clue - snow and wood?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: If only. We'd all be better off. No, their camping kit contained Do-si-dos, Tagalongs, Thin Mints.
O'ROURKE: Girl Scout cookies.
SAGAL: Yes, Girl Scout cookies.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: They survived two weeks by eating slowly, so as to favor them, eight boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Weirdly, they couldn't figure out how to get out of the woods or signal for help or start a fire. So it proves that eating Girl Scout cookies does not give you the power of Girl Scouts.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Pity that. We know - we guess - what really happened here. They probably could have made their way out, but they realized they had a great excuse to just sit around and eat nothing but Girl Scout cookies.
(LAUGHTER)
BABYLON: But, like, in all that nature and the views and the cookies...
SAGAL: That's awesome. It's, like, hey, I can see the Walmart. Hush, Pam, we are lost.
(SOUNDBITE OF TAYLOR SWIFT SONG, "OUT OF THE WOODS")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet?
SAGAL: Coming up, it's Lightning Fill-In-The-Blank. But first, it's a game where you have to listen for the rhyme. If you'd like to play on-air, call and leave a message at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924, or click the Contact Us link on our website. That's waitwait.npr.org. There, you can find out about attending our weekly live shows right here at the Chase Bank Auditorium in Chicago and our June 25 show in Houston. Yes, we're coming to Houston. Also be sure and check out the latest How To Do Everything podcast. This week we tell you how to solve a medical crisis with bacon.
(LAUGHTER)
O'ROURKE: Which caused the medical crisis. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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