Who's Bill This Time

Transcript

BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm legendary anchorman Bill Kurtis, filling in for Carl Kasell.

(LAUGHTER)

KURTIS: And here is your host, at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Bill.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Thank you so much. Thanks everyone. We've got a great show for you today. We've got NFL reporter Michele Tafoya, telling us what it's like to stand next to giant, aggressive men high on adrenaline.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Speaking of which, nice to see you again, Bill Kurtis.

KURTIS: Nice to see you too, Peter.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Now, Bill wanted to come with us on this trip to Minneapolis because this is the place, Minnesota, where great public radio is born, as we all know.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Yes. And Bill wanted to bring his own special approach to that tradition.

KURTIS: It was a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, because people didn't know a remorseless killer lurked in their midst.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: We're interested in the stories you have to tell. Give us a call. The number is 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!.

KEVIN DUBAY: Hi, this is Kevin Dubay, calling from Hartford, Connecticut.

SAGAL: Hey, how are things in Hartford?

DUBAY: Terrific.

SAGAL: I'm glad to hear it.

DUBAY: Hopefully, we're going to be just north of the cicada line.

SAGAL: There you are.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Do you have like a wall? You're manning the wall, like in "Game of Thrones," to keep the cicadas from reaching Hartford?

(LAUGHTER)

ADAM FELBER: Chirping is coming. Chirp.

SAGAL: Because once they get to Hartford, it's all over.

FELBER: That's right.

SAGAL: Then they get on I-94 and all the way to Boston.

FELBER: We draw the line here.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: What do you do there in Hartford?

DUBAY: I'm a judge of the Superior Court.

SAGAL: Oh, really?

MO ROCCA: Wow.

SAGAL: I guess that means we should be nicer then.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Do judges - I mean judges are powerful people. When you walk around, just in a normal day, do people treat you differently when you're out of the robes?

DUBAY: Not a bit. You know, at court it's "Your Honor" this and "Your Honor" that and then I come home to two teenage girls.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Well, welcome to our show, Kevin. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning and the host of "My Grandmother's Ravioli" on the Cooking Channel. It's Mr. Mo Rocca.

(APPLAUSE)

ROCCA: Hi, Your Honor.

SAGAL: Next up, it's a writer for HBO's "Real Time" with Bill Maher, Mr. Adam Felber is here. Great to see you.

(APPLAUSE)

FELBER: Hi, Kevin.

SAGAL: Finally, it's a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning, and the only member of our panel named after a George Michael song, it's Faith Salie.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

FAITH SALIE: Hello, Judge Kevin.

SAGAL: Kevin, welcome to the show. You're going to start, of course, with Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis, filling in for Carl, is going to recreate for you three quotations from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain two of them, you'll win our prize, Carl Kasell's voice on your home answering machine. Are you ready?

DUBAY: I hope so.

SAGAL: Me, too.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here is your first quote. It's from the First Lady, Michelle Obama.

KURTIS: I could take up a whole afternoon talking about his failures.

SAGAL: The First Lady was talking about whose many failures now in the news.

DUBAY: I would think her husband.

SAGAL: Yes, President Obama's failures.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: The commander-in-chief, President Obama, is having a bad couple of weeks, and Mrs. Obama wasn't helping with that comment.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: He's got the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, the spying on the AP scandal and now the investigating a Fox News reporter scandal, all happening at the same time. The only good news is all this is that if he gets one more punch on his frequent scandal card, he gets a free felony.

(LAUGHTER)

SALIE: I thought those bangs were going to soften her but she is just...

FELBER: No, she's...

(LAUGHTER)

SALIE: She's relentlessly feisty.

SAGAL: She is pretty feisty.

SALIE: Yeah, sassy.

SAGAL: Have you noticed how many jokes President Obama makes about his wife's temper?

FELBER: Yeah, that's kind of a Ropers thing happening.

SAGAL: Yeah, there really is.

(LAUGHTER)

FELBER: Gets in little digs at him at him all the time and he just...

SAGAL: There's real fear in his voice, I think.

ROCCA: Barack.

(LAUGHTER)

FELBER: You think this mission in Afghanistan failed, you should have seen him last night.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

SALIE: Wa-wa.

FELBER: Wa-wa.

(LAUGHTER)

ROCCA: You call that a weapon of mass destruction.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I just imagine the leader of the free world tripping over an ottoman in the White House.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: This week, we found out that the Justice Department has been investigating Fox News reporter James Rosen, for being part of a criminal conspiracy. They said he was encouraging a source to divulge national security secrets. Basically, they're accusing reporter James Rosen of being a reporter.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Now in going after Rosen - this is true - the Department of Justice allegedly went so far as to get the phone records of his parents on Staten Island. Mrs. Rosen's response to this was "phone records? What phone records? He never calls."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: "Let me tell you, Mr. Justice Department, the only leaks are coming out of my eyes. What a son."

(LAUGHTER)

ROCCA: Meanwhile, poor CNN. Why doesn't anyone investigate us?

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Well, as soon as they report something true, I'm sure.

FELBER: They will.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here is your next quote. It is Senator John McCain, grilling, aggressively, a CEO in a Senate hearing.

KURTIS: Why the hell do I have to keep updating apps on my phone all the time?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: What company's CEO was being questioned so aggressively?

DUBAY: Apple's.

SAGAL: Apple's, yes. Apple's, indeed, very good.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Apple's CEO Tim Cook had gone before Congress to defend the way his company, Apple, had avoided paying any taxes at all on about $100 billion of income. But McCain took the opportunity to complain about his iPhone and about all those gadgets and doodads that are too hard to use.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It was the angriest we've seen McCain since he chaired the subcommittee on how the hell do I work this remote.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Apple had avoided taxes in this very complicated but legal scheme that incorporated a shell company in Ireland but it still operated in the U.S. It's a complicated scheme and we're pretty sure this is how they came up with it. Siri, where can I shield my money from the U.S. government?

(SOUNDBITE OF SIRI)

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: There you go.

FELBER: Yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

FELBER: You know what I think they need to do?

SAGAL: What?

FELBER: The Congress needs to instruct the IRS to start singling out corporations like this by searching for them.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: You think so?

FELBER: Yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

ROCCA: That's a very good idea.

FELBER: I mean, if they have information that makes them think - that's the thing.

SAGAL: I know. All right, very good, sir. Here is your last quote.

KURTIS: Ground control to Major Tim.

SAGAL: That was the headline on the U.K.'s Metro newspaper, announcing Major Tim Peak will be Britain's first official what?

ROCCA: That's hard.

SAGAL: It is a little hard. We were amazed to see this.

DUBAY: I'm guessing here, astronaut.

SAGAL: Yes, astronaut.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: It turns out...

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: ...that now, 2013, the United Kingdom is naming their first astronaut. It's one wee step for a bloke, one giant leap for blokekind.

ROCCA: Wait a minute, but wasn't there - the astronaut in the Flintstones was British. Do you remember that little...

SAGAL: Oh well, yeah.

FELBER: But he was from the future, Mo. It could have been any time, right.

SAGAL: Other than that, I mean.

ROCCA: OK.

SAGAL: In 2015, Major Tim Peak will become Britain's first official astronaut in space, meaning the only people to beat the U.K. into space are the Americans, the Russians, the Canadians, the Chinese, a dog, a monkey, Richard Branson, that guy from NSync and a jar of kimchi.

The British people are excited about the micro gravity research that Major Tim will do and how he will inspire young Brits to follow careers in science. But more than anything, Britain is excited to finally have a guy, a Britain, who can literally look down on every other person in the world.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Doesn't it seem a little crazy?

FELBER: Yeah, well...

SAGAL: I mean just now, they're finally getting to space. The U.S. just scrapped our space program and two years later, the U.K. is getting started.

FELBER: Yeah, they got an astronaut now.

SAGAL: Yeah.

FELBER: You'll see. Next, they'll get a dentist. Am I right?

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Kevin do on our quiz?

KURTIS: The judge ruled three correct.

SAGAL: There you are. Very well done.

KURTIS: Thank you, Judge.

SAGAL: Congratulations.

(APPLAUSE)

DUBAY: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.