BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WPEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Curtis. We are playing this week with Paula Poundstone, Mo Rocca and Tom Bodett. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. In just a minute...
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SAGAL: ...Bill releases the much-anticipated sequel "Rhyming Dory." Let me say that again. It's the much-anticipated sequel "Rhyming Dory."
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SAGAL: It's a Listener Limerick Challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-9248-924. Right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Paula, the Communist Party still rules China. And that means that the Chinese government also controls what, which just opened this week in Shanghai?
PAULA POUNDSTONE: I don't know - McDonald's or something?
SAGAL: No, another big American company opened a location.
POUNDSTONE: Starbucks.
SAGAL: Bigger.
POUNDSTONE: Walmart.
SAGAL: Bigger.
POUNDSTONE: Oh. Give me a hint, please.
SAGAL: It's an economically controlled world, after all.
POUNDSTONE: Oh, there's a Disneyland in China?
SAGAL: They just opened Disneyland Shanghai.
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POUNDSTONE: Oh, for heaven sakes.
SAGAL: Which is interesting, in and of itself.
POUNDSTONE: That's not right at all.
SAGAL: Why not, Paula?
POUNDSTONE: Because it's an American thing, and it should be here.
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SAGAL: But wait a minute.
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POUNDSTONE: No.
SAGAL: This is the sixth Disneyland. There's...
POUNDSTONE: I don't approve of any of them.
SAGAL: There's one in Paris. There's one in Tokyo. There's one in Hong Kong. And now there is one in Shanghai.
POUNDSTONE: I think it's all wrong.
MO ROCCA: Space Mountain is not in America.
POUNDSTONE: They should come here, and then that way, there, we all get to be together. Tourists should come here.
SAGAL: OK.
POUNDSTONE: They should not - they shouldn't just make it someplace else.
SAGAL: Well, don't you think that the good...
POUNDSTONE: What if there was an Eiffel Tower - well, there is one in Las Vegas.
SAGAL: Yeah, yeah.
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SAGAL: But don't you think...
TOM BODETT: And the London Bridge is in Arizona.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah, that's a (unintelligible) point.
SAGAL: Shanghai is one of the most populous cities in the world. Like, 20 million people live there.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
SAGAL: Don't you think they should be able to go to Disneyland without getting on a plane?
POUNDSTONE: No.
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POUNDSTONE: I really don't.
BODETT: Any more than we should be able to go to Beijing without getting on a plane.
POUNDSTONE: Exactly.
SAGAL: Right.
POUNDSTONE: Anymore that we should - yeah.
SAGAL: What's really...
POUNDSTONE: Or Panda Express. I don't...
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: People of China, Paula Poundstone has a message for you.
POUNDSTONE: Look at us. Look at us. We're not being with one another. And instead, we have this phony ride, Small World, and we think that we've, like, been with each other, you know what I mean? You go through to go through A Small World and you go, well, that was them. Like, now they're going to think that people in Nordic countries are kind of purple. And...
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POUNDSTONE: ...Only twist a couple of inches one way or the other.
ROCCA: It's a small world.
POUNDSTONE: That's not healthy.
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SAGAL: Oh, Tom.
BODETT: Yeah. Now I'm hungry for Panda Express.
SAGAL: Yeah. Tom, Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa...
BODETT: Is that her name?
SAGAL: It is. It comes in the Echo - the Amazon Echo. Alexa is her name. She can understand your requests for information or music - almost anything. But now Amazon wants Alexa to be able to understand what?
BODETT: To understand your moods.
SAGAL: Exactly right.
BODETT: Yes.
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SAGAL: That's exactly right.
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SAGAL: It will understand how you're feeling. So Apple has Siri, and Amazon has Alexa. Have you noticed that all these virtual assistants have female names because if you asked a male computer to do something, it would say - what? Oh, yeah. OK. Whatever.
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BODETT: Yeah. You know, I was fooling around with the boys and showing them how Siri worked. And I - just to make them laugh, I asked Siri to call me Numb Nuts. And Siri said, Numb Nuts - I like that. And then...
ROCCA: Really?
BODETT: It went through, and it changed my identity to Numb Nuts.
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ROCCA: That's great.
BODETT: All the way through the system. It was like my return email address for an entire day until I figured it out.
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ROCCA: That's fantastic.
BODETT: Seriously, Rita (ph) - I CC-ed Rita on an email, and she says - what's this Numb Nuts?
(LAUGHTER) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.