CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell, and here's your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
(APPLAUSE)
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Aww. Thanks, Carl. Thanks everybody. We got a great show for you today. We got Huey Lewis of Huey Lewis and the News. He'll be joining us later to play our game. But first, before we get started, Carl, let me say it is great to have you back.
KASELL: Thank you, Peter, good to be back.
SAGAL: It's great to have you.
KASELL: I missed you.
SAGAL: Now, we missed you too, and we know the conclave did not work out the way you had hoped.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: We were rooting for you back at home. But I just have to ask, did you have a pope name ready in case you were picked?
KASELL: Just Carl, Peter.
(LAUGHTER)
KASELL: Pope Carl.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: You can tell us your name when you give us a call to play our games. The number is 1-888-Wait-Wait. That's 1-888-924-8924. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!
TODD TROUT: Hi, Peter.
SAGAL: Hi, who's this?
TROUT: My name's Todd Trout. I live in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
SAGAL: Hey, Todd Trout. OK, nice to talk to you.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: That's so great.
BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: Todd, what's your real name?
(LAUGHTER)
TROUT: I'm going to go with Todd Trout today.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So what do you do there in Pennsylvania?
TROUT: I'm a high school chemistry teacher.
SAGAL: You are?
POUNDSTONE: Whoa.
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SAGAL: So I want to ask you, as a high school chemistry teacher, has your prestige been increased by the TV show "Breaking Bad"?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Or is that like the worst thing ever to happen to high school chemistry teachers?
TROUT: That hasn't done a lot for me I'd have to say.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Really? So people are like, you know, where's your meth lab jokes, that kind of thing for you?
TROUT: No, but the new pope was a high school chemistry teacher for a little bit.
SAGAL: Was he really?
TROUT: Yeah.
GOLDTHWAIT: And a meth dealer.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now, Todd, let's introduce you to our panel this week. First up, "CBS Sunday Morning" contributor and host of this year's Inventure Prize at George Tech, broadcast on Georgia Public Broadcasting, it's Faith Salie.
FAITH SALIE: Hi, Todd Trout.
TROUT: Hi, Faith.
SAGAL: Also, a comedian performing March 22nd and 23rd at the Funny Farm in Youngstown, Ohio, it's Bobcat Goldthwait is back with us.
TROUT: Hi, Bobcat.
GOLDTHWAIT: Hey, hi, I didn't realize I had that gig.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Better get ready, dude, it's coming up. Also, a comedian performing May 4th at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, Paula Poundstone is here.
POUNDSTONE: Hey, Todd.
SAGAL: Todd, you're going to play Who's Carl This Time. Carl Kasell is going to read you three quotations from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain just two of them you'll win our prize, Carl's voice on your home answering machine. Are you ready to go?
TROUT: I am.
SAGAL: All right. Your first quote comes from the sister of an Argentinean man who was given a big promotion this week.
(LAUGHTER)
KASELL: I prayed that he wouldn't be chosen.
SAGAL: Well, God didn't listen to her.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: But hopefully, he will listen to him. What is this Argentinean's new gig?
TROUT: He is our new pope.
SAGAL: He is.
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SAGAL: He is the new pope. Yes, you got it right.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: The new pope is Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina. He's the first South American pope, the first Jesuit pope and the first whose last name sounds like a noise you make while kissing your baby's tummy.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Bergoglio. You like that.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now, the Vatican this time wanted to update its image and make this pope selection feel like a little less traditional, a little more fun for the 21st century. So instead of a conclave, they turned the Sistine Chapel into a man clave.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: They got rid of the communion wafers and now they have communion wings.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: They even got some wide screens and Xboxes, even though most of the older cardinal called them ten boxes.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: They're traditional, what can I say. He'll be known to history as Pope Francis The First, Francis I. Apparently, you decide - this is how you get your pope. It's the name of the kid you beat up in junior high.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Plus the number of women you slept with before you decided to become a priest.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: You're like, hello, Benedict XVI. Wait a minute.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I had no idea that they chose a pope name.
GOLDTHWAIT: Yeah, you get to name yourself.
POUNDSTONE: My assistant Gordon said to me, he said no - he said there was more than one John Paul. I said I thought it was a coincidence.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I thought it was Briana in my kid's elementary school.
SAGAL: Really? Because you didn't realize there was a Pope John Paul in the 70s. He died very quickly after being named pope. And the next pope was John Paul II.
POUNDSTONE: I thought it was the same pope the whole time. It's a guy - I don't look closely.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Sometimes he goes by in a terrarium or something. You know, the thing they...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Pretty much.
POUNDSTONE: The pope terrarium. And usually he's kind of bent over.
SALIE: Any male who was baptized catholic can be pope. You don't have to be a priest.
SAGAL: Right.
SALIE: So I was googling...
POUNDSTONE: I didn't know that.
SALIE: ...famous catholic celebrities to find out who would be eligible. It turns out our own Bobcat Goldthwait.
(APPLAUSE)
SALIE: Was baptized catholic.
POUNDSTONE: Man, this close.
GOLDTHWAIT: That's why I'm depressed.
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDTHWAIT: You know, I blame my cell service. I think they called me.
SAGAL: Yeah. It could have been.
POUNDSTONE: Faith, I don't know why you know so much about it, because women are not a part of the papal decision.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: We're not allowed to be a part of the papal choice. We don't make a papal vote.
SALIE: The Papal Choice Awards, I love...
(LAUGHTER)
SALIE: You know...
SAGAL: I love that one.
SALIE: Burt Reynolds always wins that.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right, Todd, your next quote comes from an unnamed White House official.
KASELL: This is a joke. We're wasting his time and yours.
SAGAL: That quote, published in the National Journal on Tuesday is from someone questioning whose new charm offensive.
TROUT: President Obama's.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed, President Obama, very good.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Everybody claimed that during his first term, President Obama failed to reach out and make friends with the people who hated everything about him. So now he's giving it a try. He had some Republican senators over for dinner last week, and once he disposed of those bodies...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: He invited some more for lunch. On the menu at lunch: McCain Bourguignon.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I keep hearing them say that he doesn't go out to the clubs. Were there presidents who were going out to clubs? Because that's upsetting.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: By clubs, they don't mean like nightclubs with mirror balls and...
SALIE: Cheetah 3.
SAGAL: By clubs they mean, you know, like, you know, men's clubs and...
POUNDSTONE: Oh no, I didn't realize. I thought it was saying like he didn't got to like the - you know, he doesn't do the poetry slam or, you know...
SAGAL: No, no, no.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: He doesn't do karaoke, which...
SAGAL: But the problem is that Obama is doing all of this over meals. And if Obama has a meal with everybody in Congress who hates him, he's going to be suffering from carrying around like the charm offensive 20, if you know what I mean.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I don't think he's really eating. I think he does a lot of kind of pushing his meal around his plate, you know.
SAGAL: You think?
POUNDSTONE: You're not charming when you're eating anyway.
SAGAL: That's true.
POUNDSTONE: You're charming when you're giving other people food. You know, nobody want to see you like - so how you doing.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right, Todd, here's your last quote. It is about soda pop.
KASELL: We have a responsibility as human beings to do something, to save each other.
SAGAL: That was somebody who was foiled in his attempt this week to help us save each other from soda. Who was it?
TROUT: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
SAGAL: Indeed, yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: On the day that Mayor Bloomberg's ban on the sale of large sodas in New York City was supposed to go into effect, a judge struck it down, on the grounds, to use the technical legal phrase, that it was stupid.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Mayor Bloomberg was angry about this. He was jumping up and down so much, he was almost able to see over his podium.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: He said that big sodas are, quote "killing people." Killing people. He just hasn't gotten over the time - it was very traumatic - that he himself fell into a Big Gulp and had to be fished out by an aide.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Apparently, the judge, as he was making his declaration, kept leaning behind, like sort of under his robes, he had a straw and was just sucking down a beverage.
SAGAL: Yeah. The bad news is for the black market in large size sodas that was just ready to spring up.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: It would have been great. It would have been like Prohibition. People would have gone to Slurpeasies to get their fixes.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: You can always tell a slurp easy by the double wide doors, a little window in it.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah. Bloomy sent me.
SALIE: The password is just a big belch.
SAGAL: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Carl, how did Todd do on our quiz?
KASELL: Todd, you had three correct answers, so you're a winner. I'll be doing the message on your home answering machine.
POUNDSTONE: All right.
SAGAL: Well done, Todd. Thank you so much for playing.
TROUT: Thank you so much for having me.
(APPLAUSE)
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
