Panel Round Two

Transcript

BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ in Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill kurtis. We're playing this week with P.J. O'Rourke, Paula Poundstone and Adam Felber. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, filling in for Peter Sagal, here is Mike Pesca.

(APPLAUSE)

MIKE PESCA, HOST:

Thank you, Bill. In just a minute, Bill satisfies the rhymal urges in our Listener Limerick Challenge game. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT, that's 1(888) 924-8924. But right now panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Adam, the UK election is next month and campaigning is well underway. So in a desperate bid to appeal to younger voters, Prime Minister David Cameron revealed what this week?

ADAM FELBER: His tattoo.

(LAUGHTER)

PESCA: Not as classy. Maybe it's that his last name might have been Kameron with a K - keeping up with the Kamerons.

FELBER: He revealed his penchant for watching reality television.

PESCA: Even closer than that...

FELBER: The Kardashians...

PESCA: He revealed he's related to Kim Kardashian. In an interview with Heat Magazine, which is the UK equivalent of the New York Review of Books, Cameron was asked if he watches "Keeping Up With The Kardashians?" Quote "did you know I'm 13th cousins with them?" Some careful digging by genealogy website geni.com traced the link back to Sir William Spencer, born in 1555. The poor guy, it was really hard for him to find a suit of armor that fit his curves.

(LAUGHTER)

PAULA POUNDSTONE: Wow...

PESCA: Yeah.

POUNDSTONE: ...13th cousins...

PESCA: Yeah.

POUNDSTONE: That's really reaching there, yeah.

O'ROURKE: Aren't we all 13th cousins?

POUNDSTONE: I was about to say, technically we're all 13th cousins. Yeah, and this is a reunion.

(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

PESCA: Paula, toy company Mattel has announced it's releasing a new Barbie this fall. She's fresh, she's modern - what's so special about her?

POUNDSTONE: She talks trash.

(LAUGHTER)

O'ROURKE: She does?

POUNDSTONE: Yeah, it's trash talking Barbie.

PESCA: Here, I'll give you a hint.

POUNDSTONE: What are you wearing?

(LAUGHTER)

PESCA: She's actually replacing an earlier, outmoded dial-up connection Barbie.

POUNDSTONE: High-speed Internet Barbie?

PESCA: She is Wi-Fi enabled, yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

POUNDSTONE: Oh jeez. Will we just cut it out with this stupid computer stuff?

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: Have we not driven ourselves totally insane? I mean, I didn't like Barbie to begin with, maybe they belong together. But I - well, I mean, I don't hate her, you know? Years ago, there was somebody who was making a documentary about Barbie. And they called me up and they asked me if I would come be interviewed for their documentary about Barbie, and I said yeah. I don't know why she thought of me, maybe it was the dream car.

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: But when I got there, it became clear that she didn't like Barbie and she wanted me to speak out against Barbie. But she didn't just not like her. She was like oh, you know, you grow up with a bad body self-image. And she was putting a lot of her personal baggage on Barbie, I felt. And honestly, I came to Barbie's defense.

FELBER: Wow.

POUNDSTONE: I said - yeah, I did. I said, you know, I don't like her, but I'm not jealous of her for heaven's sakes.

O'ROURKE: It's a plastic doll.

POUNDSTONE: Honestly, get over for it heaven's sake. On her best night, she slept in a box in the closet...

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: ...You know? Yeah.

PESCA: P.J., the new app Clean Reader scans your e-books and replaces every profanity with something PG rated. But authors are complaining that it replaces every racy reference with one specific word. What's that specific word?

O'ROURKE: Every - every racy word...

PESCA: Yeah.

O'ROURKE: ...With...

PESCA: Not the top but the...

O'ROURKE: Bottom.

PESCA: Yes, yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

PESCA: Clean Reader was billed as a tool for parents to protect their kids from the damaging effects of literature, but free speech...

(LAUGHTER)

PESCA: But free speech advocates say it's censoring language and doing a really bad job of it in the process. So it uses bottom for everything below the waist - every private part.

O'ROURKE: Wow.

POUNDSTONE: Wow.

PESCA: It changes the...

FELBER: So does my son.

O'ROURKE: Who is how old?

FELBER: He just turned 7.

(LAUGHTER)

PESCA: Pretty much every word below the belt gets turned into bottom, which is confusing. But it gets really weird when it goes the other way around and bottom gets replaced by those words. We'd Dannon fruit on the [expletive] yogurt. And I think that's odd and not right.

FELBER: Right.

PESCA: Yeah.

POUNDSTONE: What is it called now? Boy, that's going to make a mess.

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: What is it called now?

PESCA: Fruit on the bottom.

POUNDSTONE: Oh.

PESCA: Yeah.

FELBER: Yeah.

POUNDSTONE: Well, that sounds messy too now.

(LAUGHTER) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.