Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

00:00 Zendaya and Tom Holland are back in Spider-Man Brand New Day, and the movie has a more grounded tone than we've seen from the franchise. But does it strike the right balance of fun and darkness? We'll talk about it on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. 00:22 From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. Want a full-bodied vintage with notes of oak? Try me, Alzo Slade. And here's your host at the Green Music Center's Wild Hall at Sonoma State University, Peter Sagal. Thank you. 00:41 Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you. 00:48 We are so excited to be here in Sonoma, California, home of so many great vineyards. But the wine is not the reason we are here. No, the wine is the reason we do a bad job when we are here. 01:03 Later on, we're going to be joined by science writer extraordinaire Mary Roach. But first, it's your turn to call in and play our games. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. 01:16 Hi, Peter. Welcome back to California. 01:19 Thank you so much. Who's calling? 01:21 My name is Sarah Beth Rothfeld, and I'm calling from Woodland Hills, California. 01:26 Woodland Hills. 01:28 The other California, the southern California. 01:32 Correct. 01:33 Yeah, then what do you do there? 01:35 Well, I'm a retired special education teacher. 01:37 That's beautiful. 01:40 We love those, yes? 01:41 Yes. 01:42 My love language is baking, so my goal is to make my family and my friends and everybody I come in contact slightly chubby. 01:51 Right. And how's that going? 01:54 It's going pretty well. And by night, I fight crime. 01:58 Yes! Finally! Someone! 02:02 I appreciate that. 02:04 Sarah Beth, welcome to our show. Let me introduce you to our panel. First, a comedian you can see in his show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival all through August. It's Shane Torres. Thank you. 02:15 How are you? Next, a comedian whose album Yell Joy is on Blonde Medicine. It's Joyelle Nicole Johnson. Hello, Sarada. Hello, Joyelle. 02:28 And the host of the Breaking Bad podcast and a maker of a mean loaf of sourdough, it's Tom Papa. Hi, Sarah. Hi, Tom. 02:37 So, Sarabeth, welcome to the show. You are going to play Who's Alzo this time? Alzo Slade is going to read you three quotations from this week's news. Your job, just correctly identify or explain what he's talking about. Do that. You'll win our prize. Any voice from our show on your voicemail. Are you ready to go? 02:54 Very ready. 02:55 I can tell. Here is your first quote. It's from Forbes magazine. It's our new favorite pastime. Thanks to sites like FanDuel, DraftKings, what has surpassed movies, music, and every other form of entertainment as Americans' favorite thing to do? 03:12 Ooh, yikes. May I have a hint, please? I can tell. 03:17 You're too pure of heart to engage in this yourself. 03:21 But FanDuel's, DraftKings, does that ring any bells? 03:24 I'm too sweet. Another hint. 03:28 I'm gonna bet that you'll be able to figure this out. 03:30 Oh, gambling. Gambling, yes, gambling. 03:36 Last year, Americans spent $300 billion gambling. That is more than Americans spent on movies, arts, music, and museums combined. 03:51 Yes, even museums. 03:56 So, let's face it, if art and culture want to stay relevant, we have to bet on it. I, for example, would bet $20 Odysseus doesn't make it home. 04:09 I am not good at gambling. 04:13 Are you guys? I went to a Dodger game last night, and my friend is a big gambler. 04:21 You're in Giants territory. Yeah. 04:25 Yeah. 04:29 And he gambled on his phone. He had, like, six bets going into this. 04:33 So he's sitting at the game. He's sitting at the game. 04:35 He's on his phone. He had that Otani was going to get five home runs, that the guy from the Mariners was going to get two home runs, that it was going to be over 11. It was going to be the combined score by halfway through the thing. Yeah. 04:51 like 10, 11 bets on this thing. And when we left, he was, his team won and he was so depressed because he lost like $1,500. Wow. 05:02 Tom, is he single? 05:10 Is his wife happy? 05:12 He probably will be if he keeps losing 1,500 bucks a game. 05:17 Americans bet more than $300 billion on sports. That breaks down to $1,000 for every adult. But I know if you just front me a couple hundred more, I can win it all back. 05:31 All right, here, Sarah Beth, is your next quote, and it's about an electric vehicle that made history this week. 05:39 It passed the Edsel as the worst automotive flop ever. That was Bloomberg News on the truck that's now officially the worst selling vehicle in history. 05:50 What is it? Hold on, hold on. 05:54 What is it? 05:56 Oh, the Elon Musk truck theme. 05:59 I want to give it to you. 06:03 Yes, it's the Cybertruck. Cybertruck. Yes, according to Bloomberg, the Cybertruck has eclipsed the Ford Edsel, the legendary Edsel, as the worst selling car ever. Now, please, please, please do not clap. The vibrations can damage any Cybertruck in the parking lot. 06:26 I got picked up in one in an Uber. And all I could think is, like, what are you doing with your money? This is an insanely obnoxious, expensive vehicle. They're like $100,000 or something. They're very expensive. Yeah. This guy's making $7 to take me to a Taco Bell drive-thru. 06:45 Yeah. And he's like, are you living in here? How are you affording this? 06:48 Cybertruck sales dropped by 48% between 2024 and 2025. Yeah. 06:59 Or as Tesla put it, sales increased by a staggering negative 48%. 07:06 The problem is there's no gray area. Like you see a Cybertruck from far away, you get close, it's still a Cybertruck. Like even the red baseball cap. Like I saw a guy in a red baseball cap and he was walking towards me and I was like, oh, here we go. And then I got close and I was like, oh, Louisville. 07:25 That doesn't happen with the cyber truck. Nothing happens when you get closer to make you think better of it. 07:29 No, you get closer to the cyber truck and you're like, oh, this a-hole drives it. 07:33 I think there may be, I wonder if there are any cyber truck owners in the audience right now. 07:40 I don't wonder. 07:43 The cross section of cyber truck owners and NPR listeners. 07:47 I will say if that person is here, you are very interesting. 07:52 I don't like you, but you got, I want to talk to you. 07:55 All right, Sarah Beth, here's your last quote. 07:58 Crow's feet around the eyes gives you a bit of character. That was a dermatologist talking about a new trend of people who are no longer trying to get rid of their what? 08:09 Their wrinkles. 08:10 Exactly right, their wrinkles. 08:14 Good news, hags. 08:18 The wrinkles are in now. 08:22 Yeah. Oh, now you're excited. Okay. 08:26 More and more people are scaling back on those smoothing treatments like Botox injections because they want, quote, strategic wrinkles. So, right, instead of paying plastic surgeons to get rid of all wrinkles, now they're paying to get carefully chosen forehead wrinkles, smile lines. Now, if you want to achieve the same look at home for free, Just get old. 08:50 So wrinkles are hot now. Wrinkles are hot now. That's cool. Yeah. I wonder if turkey necks will be in next year. 08:59 In about 15 years, I'm going to look like a bull mastiff, so I'll be doing great. 09:05 The problem is people apparently are tired of having their faces frozen by these treatments. A New York dermatologist reduced his own Botox treatments explaining, quote, letting the top half of my face move more allows me to look more trusted. 09:26 I don't know. She might kill me for saying this, but my girlfriend will get a little bit of Botox every now and then. And then when her face gets frozen, we just do this game where I go make the same face as me and I just see her struggle the whole time. 09:38 Really? 09:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I met her parents today. They're here. That's great. 09:46 They're really nice people. You think they're nice. They just couldn't move their face. Yeah. 09:54 Alzo, how did Sarah Beth do in our quiz? Our baking superhero did great. She got three out of three. 10:00 Congratulations, Sarah Beth. 10:02 Thanks. Thanks for the help. 10:03 Thank you, Sarah Beth. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 10:13 Right now, panel, it's time for you to answer some questions about this week's news. Shane, this week we learned about a new dating trend where singles are making decisions about their love lives using what? 10:25 Oh. Social media? No. God, no. 10:30 I'll give you a hint. It's a way of finding out if that new guy really excels. 10:35 He don't have a job. I know. 10:37 Spreadsheets? 10:40 Spreadsheets. 10:41 Oh, my God. Spreadsheets. The Wall Street Journal interviewed so-called love hackers who claim that organizing data about their dates, like physical characteristics, conversation topics, and, of course, red flags into a spreadsheet helps you make sense of your own preferences and ultimately choose who to keep seeing. They enter data, right, on a variety of categories after a first date. Looks, sense of humor, employment status. One for how they treat the server. Mean to server, nice to server, makes out with server. 11:11 I think the spreadsheet is the red flag. Yeah, probably, yes. They're doing spreadsheets of all these characteristics of the guy and the guy's like, kept a spreadsheet. No. 11:22 Wait, I want to hear the end of the story with the server. 11:26 That was getting pretty juicy. 11:28 It was, yeah. I had this happen to me once. Did you really? What happened? 11:32 I found out that she was using numbers instead of Excel, and I dumped her. 11:36 Really? Yes. 11:39 You didn't approve of her choice of software platforms? No, Excel only. Exactly. 11:48 Coming up, our Bluff the Listener game could make you rich, but it probably won't. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play. We'll be back in a minute with more Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR. 12:01 The midterms are coming. And if you think the news cycle feels intense now, just wait until the fall. That's why summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated. I mean, Martinez, on Up First, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in fewer than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe to Up First today wherever you get podcasts. 12:24 GLP-1s are best known as weight loss drugs, but they may also help people cut back on alcohol, cigarettes and opioids. They seem to work for many types of addiction. 12:35 Maybe these effects are much broader than we previously thought. 12:39 Ideas about the brain, addiction, and empathy. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. 12:49 Death has never stopped the Grateful Dead. 60-plus years after their first gig and 30-plus years after the death of Jerry Garcia, the dancing bears are still dancing. This August, come along with us to meet deadheads wherever they are and hear the different ways they plan to keep the jam going. Listen to Dead After Death a two-episode series available starting on August 1st. Find it on the NPR Music Podcast wherever you listen. 13:13 The day's top headlines, local stories from your community, your next podcast binge listen. You can have it all in one place, your pocket. Download the NPR app today. 13:31 From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Alzo Slade. We're playing this week with Tom Papa, Shane Torres, and Joelle Nicole Johnson. And here again is your host at the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University, Peter Sagal. Thank you, Alzo. Thank you, everybody. 13:55 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. 14:02 Hi, I'm Phoebe calling in from Denver, Colorado. 14:05 Oh, I love Colorado. I assume you do something very Denver-y, like, I don't know, lead group hikes while drinking craft beer? 14:12 Yeah. What I really do is walk backwards most of the day giving tours at two different places here in Denver and Golden. 14:20 Really? So what are the places you give tours of, just out of curiosity? 14:25 One is a candy factory. 14:28 Can I say the name? It's Hammond's. 14:30 Wow. You actually give tours of a candy factory to the five working winners of the golden ticket, I assume. 14:38 Four of whom come to horrible, horrible fates. 14:43 You're living the dream. 14:45 I am. For a sugar-addicted person like me, it is absolutely the dream, yeah. 14:50 Well, that's great. Well, welcome to the show, Phoebe. You're going to play the game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Also, what is Phoebe's topic? Cheapskate alert. There are lots of ways to save money. Don't take an Uber, take the bus. When you dine out, just leave without paying the bill. 15:04 This week, we heard about a new way somebody pinched pennies. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Pick the one who's telling the truth. You'll win the wait-waiter of your choice in your voicemail. You ready to play? 15:13 I am so ready. I can tell. First, let's hear from Joyelle Nicole Johnson. 15:17 Couples break up all the time. Divorce is as common as seeing your childhood hero live long enough to become a villain. 15:24 But still, a recent couple's divorce made headlines because the husband was too cheap. 15:29 Vicky Wong, a Taiwanese businesswoman, can buy things for herself. She's a successful management consultant, whatever that means. 15:37 Her husband also matched her gangster as one of the leading real estate agents in the region, which is why when she told him the only thing she wanted for her 40th birthday was a pair of Christian Louboutin heels with their famous towering stilettos and the deep red colored bottoms, she thought it wouldn't be a problem. They've got money. 15:55 While opening the gift at dinner, she was thrilled to see a pair of glossy black heels with blood red soles. It wasn't until she was tapped on the shoulder for leaving red footprints across the stage at a gala that she realized what happened. Her husband had bought a pair of no-name knockoffs and colored the bottoms with Crayola brand red poster paint. 16:15 When asked for a quote, the ex who shall remain nameless shamelessly doubled down. I don't care how crazy rich we are. I'm not paying a mortgage note for shoes. 16:28 A woman gets rid of her husband because he wouldn't pay for the real Louboutins, just bought knockoffs and painted the bottoms red. 16:36 Your next saving story comes from Tom Papa. 16:39 David Sovaldi and two of his friends had been hiking for about seven hours up Montana's tallest mountain on their way to froze-to-death plateau. 16:50 When he slipped on a rock and fell, when he rolled over, he realized he had impaled himself on one of his trekking poles. 16:58 The pole was jutting at an angle out of his armpit and out through his back like a human popsicle. But the scariest part for Mr. Sovaldi was the possibility of having to take a really expensive helicopter ride off the mountain. 17:15 Realizing he wasn't in pain and there was no blood, he decided to save some money and walk back down the mountain like a horror movie monster who can't be stopped. 17:27 After about six hours, his friends, who thought a helicopter ride would have been really great, started making shish kebab jokes. 17:37 And by the end, they were calling him Bob. 17:42 By 3.30 p.m., after trekking about 10 miles, Mr. Sovaldi got to the hospital. They pulled the trekking pole out of him, which he kept because, hey, those things ain't cheap. 17:56 A man doesn't want to pay for a rescue helicopter, so he walks down a mountain with a pole completely through him. Your last tightwad tale comes from Shane Torres. 18:10 Boxer Julio the Caesar Lopez returned to the ring this weekend with a splash. After spending years away from boxing, living lavishly, and also eating lavishly, he found himself in a position of being pretty fat and very broke. So when he needed to get his act together for his big return to the ring, he couldn't afford a nutritionist or a coach. He had to do it alone. Lopez spent the week before the fight trying to make weight, spending hours in sweatsuits and saunas, but he couldn't drop the pounds. He had to think of something fast. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So Lopez started eating handfuls of Taylor Farms lettuce. 18:44 The result was explosive. 18:49 Lopez triumphed in the ring and in doing so created the newest diet fad on TikTok with someone calling it the ring walk pound drop. 18:56 He remains one of the great pound for pound fighters of his era. With this win, he could be in the spring mix for a title shot. 19:10 Which of these stories of somebody trying to save some money did we find in the news? Was it from Joyelle, a man who lost his wife when he tried to save money by buying fake Louboutins and painting them red? From Tom Papa, a guy who simply didn't want to shell out for the helicopter, so walked down a mountain with a pole all the way through him? Or from Shane Torres, a fighter who managed to lose the weight he needed to lose simply by eating a lot of bagged lettuce and accepting the results? Which of these is the story of a penny pincher we found in the news. 19:42 As a Coloradan and an avid hiker, you better believe the hiker story came across my news feed this week, and the pictures are gross. 19:51 I'm going with Tom. 19:51 You've chosen, obviously, Tom's story. Well, to bring you the correct answer, we spoke to a reporter who covered the real story. 20:00 He saw one of his trekking poles, and then he thought, oh, I can't see the other one. Well, he realized, oh, that thing is sticking out of me. 20:08 That was Remy Tooman, a reporter for The New York Times, talking about that frugal hiker that you knew about. Congratulations, Phoebe. You got it right. 20:16 Tom was telling the truth. 20:18 He gets a point just for doing that. You win our prize for keeping up in the news. Congratulations, and thank you so much for playing. 20:26 Thank you so much. Thank you. 20:34 And now the game we call Not My Job. Mary Roach is either the funniest science writer in the world or the most scientific comedian. Her books include Stiff, that's about our bodies after we die, Bonk on the Science of Sex, Gulp on the Digestive Process, and her newest Replaceable You is about the efforts to make spare parts for human beings. Mary Roach, welcome to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. 20:57 Thank you. 20:59 Thank you. 21:02 So I have been reading you for decades. I think I've read every one of your books, including the latest. And I'm trying to see if there's a theme to your work. I would suggest it might be human bodies and the terrible, awful, no good things that can happen to it. 21:15 That is exactly right. 21:16 That's really it? That is it. How did you fall into that specialty? 21:20 It was kind of random. 21:22 I wrote this column for Salon.com back in the day when that was like a big, it's like an internet magazine. How cool. A couple of them had to do with cadaver research. And an agent contacted me and said, you know, you should think about books and maybe look at which columns were popular and those were popular. And he said, you should think about a book about cadavers. And I thought, that's a terrible idea. Yeah. 21:52 I mean, that's a little disappointing to me, only as a fan of yours, because I wanted to think that it was a lifelong interest of yours. Like, when you were little, your Barbies would have been an absolute horror show, what you would have done to them. 22:03 Actually... 22:04 Yes? 22:05 Actually, I do recall when I was in first grade, Mary Hewitt gave me a Barbie doll, and I was kind of like, what? Because I liked the little plastic dinosaurs. I wasn't really into the Barbies. So I would... 22:19 pull off the head, and I would say, you have five seconds to get the head back on, or she dies. 22:25 Really? So you were like, you were playing with like weird transplantation themed games even then. 22:33 And you know, yes. And you know what? That's actually accurate. 22:35 Yeah. 22:36 If you got it back on. 22:37 So even you knew. 22:38 Yeah. 22:38 So in other words, if, if, if I were to, if something horrible would happen and your head would be just accidentally screwed off. Yes. We'd have five seconds to get it back on. 22:46 Yeah. More or less. Give or take. Okay. That's important safety tip for everybody. 22:50 Yeah. 22:51 So as long as no one panics, you'll be fine. Exactly. Breathe or you can't. 23:04 Your latest, your new book, Replaceable You, it's about replacement parts, the long history of trying to acquire them, make them, grow them. 23:13 How did you become interested in that? 23:17 Well, I had a file folder called bits and pieces. 23:25 And I thought, you know, when I'm looking for a new topic, I kind of go back to the file cabinet. And I was looking in bits and pieces. And I was thinking about fat. Like maybe fat could be... 23:37 Something. 23:38 Sure. 23:39 And then I called this woman who works in a lab that has to do with fat, but it turns out it's stem cells from fat. I thought, oh, stem cells kind of interesting. But then the conversation kind of veered and she told me she had come across a study by a surgeon who rebuilt a man's penis using his middle finger... 24:01 And I, of course, pictured the finger removed just as is. 24:07 Right, sure. 24:11 And able to kind of beckon. 24:14 Beckon, yeah. Or maybe, given the company, maybe point and select, you know. 24:22 Exactly. He happened to be in Tbilisi, Georgia. I'm like, I'm going. 24:30 The surgeon wasn't there, but his receptionist said, you can come in and we can look on his laptop. He has photographs. 24:39 I don't need to describe many of them, but one of them I want to because it was a demonstration of how robust this penis was. 24:49 It does, in fact... 24:51 Bend up partway. Does it? Yes. 24:55 In a strange place. 24:56 I'd love to see how this guy texts people. 25:02 She said it was robust. 25:06 It was robust. Joyo, just sit this one out. 25:11 I wrote that down. 25:18 How quickly after they described this did you find this man? 25:22 Well, he only had four fingers. 25:28 I have to ask, is it true that you once lived every American's dream and almost vomited on Tom Cruise? 25:36 That is actually true. Really? That is true. 25:39 I had a very short-lived and misguided career interviewing celebrities. 25:46 for a parade magazine Sunday. 25:50 Not a high point in the career. And they liked to send me out to do something with the celebrity. And Tom Cruise, as you may know, likes to fly. And he had a little antique biplane. And the thing with those antique biplanes is that it's an open cockpit and the passenger sits in front of you. And he was doing barrel rolls and hammerheads, which would go straight up, cut the engine, and then you pull out, right? 26:25 And he did two of those, and I was suddenly very ill, and I thought, if I throw up, it goes right back in his face. 26:39 And... 26:42 I made it back to the ground without it. Really? Yeah. 26:44 Was he impressed? 26:47 No. 26:47 He was not impressed. Did he ask you if you wanted to do that? Yeah. It sounds like he was trying. 26:52 Well, you know what? After the first hammerhead, he said, you're doing great. And I was so excited that I was kind of, and I'm like, let's do another one. 26:59 And then I was like, green. And you almost threw up and you said, I need to find a career that nauseates me less than that. 27:08 Well, Mary Roach, it is a pleasure to talk to you. We've invited you here, though, to play a game we're calling Bonk, Gulp, Grunt. Meet Zoom, Bang, Bam. 27:20 So you've written the books Bonk, Gulp, and Grunt. So we thought we'd ask you about some other crazy sounds. Get two out of three right, and you will win our prize for one of our listeners. Also, who is Mary Roach playing for? 27:30 Jonathan Fois-Vong of San Carlos, California. All right. 27:37 Ready to play? 27:39 Here we go. Also, what's Mary's first sound? Zoom. 27:44 An Ohio State senator was attending a Zoom meeting about distracted driving, and he used a fake office background to hide the fact that he was himself, at that moment during the meeting, driving. 27:59 But he was busted. How? Was it A, he went through a Wendy's drive-thru and placed an order without muting himself. 28:06 B, he rear-ended another participant in the meeting who was doing exactly the same thing. 28:13 Or C, people in office chairs don't normally wear seat belts. 28:20 I'm going with C. You're right. 28:22 Yes. 28:23 The other participants noticed that he was wearing a shoulder belt while sitting supposedly at his desk. 28:30 Alzo, what noise is next? 28:33 Bang! So combat, as you know, you wrote a book about it, is full of bangs, but the Royal Navy once came under criticism when it was revealed they were doing what to get their sailors ready for the strife of battle? Was it A, they used water balloons instead of hand grenades, B, they told their gunners to shout bang instead of firing off live rounds, or C, they helped cadets get used to the stress of battle by showing them war movies, but really loudly. Okay. 28:59 I'm going to go with B. 29:01 You're going to go with B, that they were told their gunners to shout, bang, you're right. 29:06 In training, the sailors would load a shell, aim the gun, and then they'd all yell, bang. 29:12 People thought it was silly, but it did save the Navy about $5 million, though. All right. Also, one more, please. 29:18 Bam. Celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse is known for his scotch phrase, bam. Bam. 29:25 which he does whenever he throws something into the food. He says he came up with BAM for one reason only. What was it? A, everybody misheard him when he was yelling about adding HAM to a dish. The stuck. B, he was filming at 1.8 episodes a day and screaming BAM was the only way to keep everybody awake. 29:43 Or C, because he couldn't pass the censors with his prior catchphrase, and here's some effin' spices. 29:50 Aha. 29:54 It's either B or C. I'm not going to tell you. It sounds like an even split. 30:01 It does. 30:04 C. We're going to go for C because he couldn't get away with saying, there's some F and spices. Instead he said, bam. No, it was actually B. It was B. It was B. 30:13 All right. 30:18 Yeah, he's just trying to keep his crew awake by yelling bam at random moments. 30:22 Alzo, how did Mary Roach do in our quiz? She did a zoom, bang, bam of a job. Two out of three. Congratulations. 30:32 Mary Roach is a best-selling science author. Her new book is Replaceable You. You can see her on tour this fall. More information is at maryroach.net. Mary Roach, thank you so much for joining us again. Great to see you. Mary Roach, everybody. 30:57 In just a minute, the barn door is open in our Listener Limerick Challenge called 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to join us on the air. We'll be back in a minute with more of Wait, Wait, Don't Sell Me from NPO. 31:15 Oh, hey there. I'm Brittany Luce. And I don't know, maybe this is a little out of pocket to say, but I think you should listen to my podcast. 31:24 It's called It's Been a Minute, and I love it, and I think you will too. Over the past couple months, over 100,000 new listeners started tuning in. Find out why. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR today. 31:38 Waylon, it seems like everything is being called a recession indicator these days. 31:42 Yeah, like the box of Hamburger Helper in my pantry. 31:45 Or the new Apple Neo book. 31:47 Or the resurgence of press on nails or lipstick or no lipstick. I've lost track. 31:52 There is only one way to know if these are actual economic warning signs, though. Listen to the indicator from Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. 32:06 From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Alzo Slade. We're playing this week with Joyelle Nicole Johnson, Tom Papa, and Shane Torres. And here again is your host at the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University, Peter Sagal. Thank you, Alzo. 32:28 In just a minute. 32:30 Fire up FanDuel and bet the kids college fund in the listener limerick challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Shane, the governor of a province in Turkey, was ousted from office after photographs surfaced of him doing what? 32:51 I'm going to need a clue. 32:52 Yeah, well, it's not, I don't know, it's not a crime to love spandex and appropriate butt cushioning. 33:00 He's wearing what? Exercising? 33:04 He was exercising in a picture of her way and wearing... 33:08 I don't exercise. 33:14 What are you doing to me? Ask Alzo that question. 33:19 I don't wear them though. 33:21 He has too much self-respect. Anybody know? Bike pants. Bike shorts. Yeah. He was forced from office because he was photographed wearing bike shorts. And he should be. Yeah. He was forced out of office for being caught in public wearing skin-tight black bike shorts. If that sounds harsh, just take a second. Think of a politician. First one that comes to mind. Now think of him in bike shorts. 33:44 See? 33:46 To be fair to the governor, he was, in fact, riding a bike at the time. To be fair to everybody else, that is no excuse. 33:54 They got some different standards over there in Turkey, I see. 33:56 They do, yeah. Photos circulated of him in bike shorts. It became a huge scandal. One political opponent said, in the Turkish parliament, quote, a governor cannot wander a city like this. After his ouster, his supporters were sad to see him go, but they loved to watch him leave. 34:12 Was he wearing those little clippy shoes? 34:15 So he made a little clatter noise when he laughed and his toes were up in the air. 34:18 That's been very funny. He's currently a very hot Peloton instructor. Exactly. 34:22 Peter, one day we should show up to the show. Absolutely. 34:27 We should absolutely do that. And then we'll have to find other jobs. Tom, Robotics is a company that has marketed AI-powered sex robots. 34:39 But now they have a new model of a robot that they say will serve in what other role? 34:49 It will... 34:51 I can't say it. 34:54 So the robot does something else? Something else. The robot. 34:59 And it's going to be put into schools in New York State because it's going to be a... 35:05 Lunch lady. No. 35:08 A mean custodian. No. 35:11 It's right there in front of you. In a school, it's going to be a... Teacher. Exactly right. 35:17 Assistant teachers, assistant teachers. Robotics company Realbotics insists to this day that their $175,000 female-shaped robot called Aria is meant for companionship and not for sex. 35:33 But more recently, the company struck a deal with a school district in New York State to deploy another one of its robots called Sally. 35:43 as a teacher's assistant. They say she, also a very attractive replica female, can answer science and math questions the students might have. Great, it's like if your calculator had boobs. 35:57 Stop making them attractive. 36:01 Stop making them attractive. Also, we made those in the wrong order. The teacher should have come first. You think so? Yeah. 36:08 Yeah, and look like my dad. 36:12 I guarantee you, you send a teacher out there, a robotic teacher that looks like my dad, no one's going to try anything funny with him. 36:21 You're asking for trouble. It's true. Now, interestingly, the teaching doll, unlike the original doll, only costs $57,000, which makes her... 36:31 The most realistic doll yet. The second she went into education, she took a 70% pay cut. 36:43 Coming up, it's lightning, fill in the blank, but first it's the game where you have to listen for the rhyme. If you'd like to play on air, call or leave a message at 1-888-wait-wait. That's 1-888-924-8924. You can see us most weeks at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago and catch us on the road. We'll be at the Rose Music Center outside of Dayton, Ohio on September 3rd and in Omaha, Nebraska on September 24th. For tickets and info to all our live events, go to nprpresents.org. 37:07 Hi, everyone. Wait, wait, don't tell me. Hey there, Peter. Hi, who's this? Alan Martin from Long Beach, Washington. Long Beach, Washington. I didn't know there was a Long Beach in Washington. 37:16 Where's that? Not many people do. Right on the Oregon border. Yeah. About two hours east, west of Portland. 37:27 So you're two hours east and west of Portland. Yeah, something like that. Something like that. 37:31 Two hours west of Portland. 37:32 Yes. Hilarious. 37:36 Do you know where you are right now, sir? Rerouting. Rerouting. Alan, welcome to the show. Alzo Slade is going to read you three news-related limericks with a last word or phrase missing from each. If you can fill in that last word or phrase correctly, and two of the limericks will be a winner. You ready to play? 37:53 Born ready. Hey. 37:55 Here's your first limerick. 37:57 Once jeans were so pre-stressed and ripped. Now they're made to look like they have slipped. 38:04 Since kids have a taste for exposing their waist, the fly of their jeans isn't zipped. 38:11 Right, zipped. This summer's it jeans are jeans that make it look like your fly is down. They're called fold-over jeans, as in your grandmother would fold over in her grave if she saw you wearing these. 38:25 They're called fold aubergines because of, quote, the sliver of fold and fabric sewn down at the waist, which is often printed like underwear with tiny flowers or stripes, to give the illusion of a totally open fly. 38:37 Wow, if only I had a finger penis, I could zip it up. Yeah. 38:46 Moving on. 38:49 Here's your next limerick. With the soda scent, I like to prep me. A fine cola vanilla can rep me. I will cover my stink with a cool fountain drink. I will smell like a cold can of... 39:03 Pepsi. 39:04 Pepsi, yes. Everyone is excited for the release of Pepsi body care products. 39:11 And by everyone, we mean 13-year-old boys and bees. 39:18 Starting this week, you can buy the Pepsi Vanilla Slushy Body Scrub or the Pepsi Wild Cherry Body Wash, which is, quote, inspired by Pepsi Wild Cherry. 39:30 Mmm. 39:33 Sticky. 39:35 I love that this is going to get the men who use Axe body spray laid. Finally. 39:40 Finally. 39:44 All right, here's your last limerick. At IKEA, we strive to improve. We'll get out of our flimsy shelf groove. So toss that hex wrench for your foldable bench. Now our furniture lasts through a... Come on, audience, give me some help here. 40:05 Can you hear them? 40:07 No. So it rhymes with improve and groove. Groove. 40:12 and the furniture will last through a move. 40:17 Move, yes. 40:19 Wow. We all know the rituals of moving. You throw one last party, you package up gently your prized heirlooms, and you throw out everything you ever bought from Ikea because that stuff dissolves when exposed to a slight breeze. Well, Ikea is launching a new line of furniture designed to be sturdy enough for people who move a lot, like college students and identity thieves. 40:41 The new line is called Kornstufer, probably. 40:48 It features built-in handles for carrying. It's made of sturdier materials like solid pine and steel, so it can handle the stress of moving fine, fine. That's not what we need, IKEA. We need you to commit to your bit and give us single-use disposable couches. 41:06 Does anyone go back to Ikea, or you just go once, build an apartment, and realize I'm never going? It's my favorite restaurant. 41:17 Also, how did Alan do in our quiz? Alan did all right. He got three out of three. Congratulations. 41:23 Well done. Congratulations, Alan. You got him. 41:28 Thank you so much for playing. 41:30 Take care, everybody. 41:48 For Grateful Dead fans, this summer is a moment of transition. For the first time in years, there are no members of the Dead touring the band's music, but that doesn't mean the music's going to stop. This August, go around the country with NPR Music to see where the long, strange trip goes next. Listen to Dead After Death, a two-episode series starting August 1st. Find it on the NPR Music Podcast wherever you listen. 42:12 On this season of Planet Money Summer School, we follow the money and not just the dollars. We're following the yuan, the naira, the krona, and more. Every Wednesday this summer, we're taking you on a world tour to meet the people, trying new solutions to old economic problems. Planet Money Summer School. Drop some friends, pack your bags, and don't forget the sunscreen. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. 42:36 Now on to our final game, lightning fill in the blank. Each of our players will have 60 seconds in which to answer as many fill in the blank questions as they can. Each correct answer now worth two points. Alzo, can you give us the score? Absolutely. 42:47 Tom has a whopping four. Joyo has two. And Shane, you just got one, buddy. 42:55 It's a good one, though. It's a good one, Shane. 42:57 It'll just make my comeback that much more dramatic. Exactly. 43:01 Exactly. 43:02 So Shane, you are in third place, so you're going to go first. The clock will start when I begin your first question, fill in the blank. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve voted to keep blanks steady. Rates. Right, interest rates. On Tuesday, Japan deployed thousands of troops to help with rescue and recovery after a powerful blank struck the country. Earthquake. Right. For the second time in its history, the Red Cross declared an emergency over the lack of blank donations. Blood donations. Right. On Wednesday, NASA confirmed plans to launch the new Nancy Grace Roman space blank in August. 43:31 Shh. 43:31 Rocket? Space Telescope. At a government conference this week, attendees noticed that a U.S.-made map of Africa had mislabeled blank. 43:39 Most of it? 43:40 Yes. 43:40 In fact, pretty much. 43:44 They mislabeled literally every country in Africa on the map of Africa. On Thursday, European nations announced a boycott over FIFA's plan to privatize the blank. 43:53 World Cup. Right. On Thursday, Apple announced a new program that would allow customers to lease the newest blank. iPhone? Right. This week, a whaling museum in New Bedford is drawing attention after someone posted a one-star review calling it blank. 44:07 Boring? They called the whaling museum, quote, the worst aquarium ever. 44:16 It can be confusing at first when you visit the New Bedford Whaling Museum. There's nowhere to know it's a museum and not an aquarium, other than by reading its name and all the big signs. 44:28 The man who posted the review must have been disappointed that instead of live whales, there were just old skeletons. The review went viral, but it isn't even the reviewers' first one-star rating. They also said that Fogo de Chao was the worst petting zoo they'd ever been to. 44:46 How did Shane do in our quiz? 44:47 Shane actually did all right. He got six right for 12 more points. 44:52 He has 13 and the lead. Wow. 44:56 Thanks for throwing in actually. 45:01 Joyelle, you're up next. Fill in the blank. On Thursday, the U.S. launched a new wave of strikes against targets in blank. 45:07 Iran. 45:08 Right. According to a new study, taking a daily blank can help curve heavy drinking. 45:12 Vitamin. No, GLP-1 pill. This week, Poland is accusing blank of firing a missile into their territory. Israel. No. 45:20 Not yet, anyway. Russia. According to new reports, arrests by blank at airports are surging. Axe. Right. This week, blank announced plans to host a new cooking show. 45:32 Ooh, Martha Stewart. RFK Jr. Ew. 45:36 Ew. 45:39 Roadkill every day. 45:42 On Monday, Emily Wilson, a translator of the blank, criticized Christopher Nolan's movie adaptation. Odyssey. Yes. This week, ESPN announced a deal to produce a last dance-style documentary about blank. Michael Jackson. No. LeBron James. This week, a man in Japan who regularly practiced guitar at full volume in his house was shocked when his neighbors banded together and blanked. 46:06 Jumped him. Had him arrested. Yeah. 46:09 The man in Kyoto was arrested after his neighbors flagged that his seven years of playing guitar had seemingly caused damage to their hearing. According to the police, the man also placed a radio by the window and left it playing 24 hours a day. 46:22 See, when we say support public radio, this is exactly what we learned. 46:27 Alzo, how did Joyelle do in our quiz? 46:29 Well, she seemed like she had fun. Uh... 46:40 She got three right for six more points. Total of eight. Shane is still in the lead. All right. How many then does Tom Papa need to win? 46:48 He needs five to win. Ready, Tom? I'm ready. Here we go. This is for the game. On Wednesday, funeral services were held in South Carolina for Senator Blank. Lindsey Graham. Right. On Tuesday, a judge blocked Minnesota from implementing a law banning blank markets. 47:04 Betting. Yeah, prediction markets. This week, GOP Senate members postponed a key vote in the confirmation of Todd Blanche as Trump's new blank. Attorney General. Right. During a performance this week, Katy Perry got trapped crowd surfing in a giant rolling inflatable ball because the fans blanked. 47:19 Popped her. 47:20 No. They refused to roll her back onto the stage. 47:27 On Thursday, dental researchers said they discovered a way to stop blanks without drilling. 47:32 Cavities. 47:32 Right. This week, people are accusing Canadian politician Bill Oliver of using AI to write his speeches because he said blank halfway through an address to the legislature. 47:42 Because he said, I love Trump. No. 47:47 He talked for a while and then he said, here's a more natural flowing version of that section that reads like a legislative speech rather than a series of short points. 48:00 Mr. Oliver read the chat bot's commentary about the speech out loud not one but three separate times throughout the address. Oh. 48:08 You know it's a boring speech when even the guy who was reading it is not listening. 48:14 Alzo, did Tom do well enough to win? Oh, he got four right for eight more points. Total of 12, which means Sane has one of the greatest comebacks in lightweight history. He is the winner. 48:28 My big college moment. 48:33 His in-laws are here. That's true. It's all because of what Sally taught him. 48:40 Of course, Sally. 48:41 In just a minute, we're going to ask our panelists to predict, now that wrinkles are in, what will be the next surprising beauty trend. But first, let me tell you that Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me is a production of NPR and WBEZ, Chicago, in association with Urgent Haircut Productions. Doug Berman, Benevolent Overlord. Philip Gotteke writes our limericks. Our public address announcer is Paul Friedman. Our ops manager is Jasira Vardak. BJ Liederman composed our theme. Our program is produced by Jennifer Mills, Miles Norbas, and Lillian King. Special thanks this week to Mohanad Elsheki. Peter Gwynn is our sommelier. Emma Choi is our vibe curator. 49:12 Technical director is from Lorna White. Our CFO is Colin Miller. Our production manager is Robert Newhouse. Our senior producer is Ian Chilag and the executive producer, wait, wait, don't tell me, is Michael Danforth. Now panel, what would be the next big beauty trend? Shane Torres. Big butts out, long flat ones are in. 49:27 Doyelle Nicole Johnson. Mary Roach's robust enlargements. 49:34 And Tom, pop up. Open-toed Crocs that highlight older men's toes. 49:41 And if any of that happens, we'll ask you about it on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. 49:44 Thank you so much, Elsa Slade. Thanks also. 49:48 to Shane Torres, Joyelle, Nicole Johnson, and Tom Papa. 49:53 Thanks to the staff and crew here at the Green Music Center. Special thanks to member stations KQED, KALW, and KRCB. Thanks to our fabulous audience who came out to see us in Sonoma, California. And thanks to all of you, wherever you might be, for listening. I'm Peter Sagan. We'll see you next week. 50:23 This is NPR. 50:27 This is Fresh Air's Dave Davies. Renowned classic scholar Emily Wilson made headlines when she called Christopher Nolan's adaptation of The Odyssey abysmally written. 50:36 It's a star-studded cast, and they're doing their absolute best with the script they were given. 50:41 I talked with Wilson about her scathing critique and so much more. Listen to Fresh Air on the NPR app or wherever you listen to podcasts. 50:49 This week on Shortwave, peptides are everywhere. Influencers claim they help you reduce inflammation, build muscle faster, age slower. And now the FDA looks poised to make peptides even easier to get. But does the science match the hype? It might be fine in rats and mice, but it might be toxic in people. What we really know about how peptides work in your body on Shortwave. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.