BILL KURTIS: From NPR in WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. You're kind of cute, but I'm adora-Bill (ph) - Bill Kurtis.
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KURTIS: And here's your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Oh, thank you everybody. Thank you so much.
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SAGAL: We - we have a wonderful show for you lined up today and a really important guest. It's Craig Fugate. He's the director of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency because when you have a terrible emergency, he's the guy who comes and manages it.
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SAGAL: Sure, your town will still burn down, but it's going to do it in an orderly fashion.
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SAGAL: We want you to line up calmly and then give us a call. 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.
DAVID YOUNG: Hi Peter. This is David Young, calling from Ventura, Calif.
SAGAL: Hey, Ventura. I know of Ventura there on the coast, north of LA. What do you do there?
YOUNG: I'm a professor at Ventura College, and I teach life drawing.
SAGAL: Oh really? Cool.
ROY BLOUNT JR.: Ooh...
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SAGAL: Roy's very excited.
BLOUNT JR.: Yeah.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: I have a question I've always wanted to know about this. I would think - I'm always cold. So, like, (laughter) I'm always cold, right?
YOUNG: Yes.
ROBERTS: So I would be really cold if I were a life model. So do you always have to adjust the temperature for the models, or do you make them shiver?
YOUNG: No. We put an electric blanket down on the stand where they model, and we strategically position space heaters around them.
SAGAL: Yeah.
ROBERTS: That's genius.
LUKE BURBANK: I'd like to clarify...
YOUNG: Yeah.
BURBANK: ...It was very cold in that room I was life modeling in.
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BURBANK: Extremely cold.
SAGAL: Yes, that's exactly the problem.
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SAGAL: Anyway, I think at this point, David, I need to introduce you to our panel this week. First up, a host of the podcast Too Beautiful To Live and the public radio variety show LiveWire. It is Luke Burbank.
BURBANK: Hey David.
YOUNG: Hi Luke. How are you?
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SAGAL: They're not booing. They're clearing their throats. Next...
BURBANK: They were at the art class.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: Next, it's a feature writer for the Style section of The Washington Post, Roxanne Roberts.
ROBERTS: Hello.
YOUNG: Hi Roxanne.
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SAGAL: And an author and humorist whose newest book is "save room for pie." It's Roy Blount, Jr.
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BLOUNT JR.: Hey David.
YOUNG: Hi Roy. It's a pleasure to meet you.
SAGAL: So David, welcome to the show. You're going to play who's Bill This Time? Bill Kurtis is going to read you three quotes from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain two of them, you will win our prize - the voice of scorekeeper emeritus Carl Kasell on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
YOUNG: Yes sir, I am.
SAGAL: That's great to hear. Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: "To argue that Americans should be anything less than terrified is irresponsible."
SAGAL: That was Slate's Isaac Chotiner. He was one of many arguing that it was high time for Americans to come together and panic about what?
YOUNG: Terrorism?
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SAGAL: Oh no, we can handle that.
YOUNG: No, the election of Donald Trump.
SAGAL: The election of Donald Trump, yes, very good.
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SAGAL: On Thursday, Donald Trump reached the number of pledged delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination. Interestingly, on Friday, Lucifer changed the number of the beast from 666 to 1,237.
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ROBERTS: So this has solved global warming 'cause hell has frozen over?
BURBANK: Exactly.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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BURBANK: That's a silver lining, it is.
SAGAL: Usually, what would happen at this point is that a bunch of experts would come out and say do not freak out. But all the people that usually tell you to calm down are basically knocking on our doors and going can I hide in your basement?
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SAGAL: Nate Silver was spotted hoarding canned goods and sawing off a shotgun.
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SAGAL: All the places we go for comfort, for reassurance are letting us down. On "Sesame Street," Big Bird said F is for what the F is happening?
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SAGAL: Are you guys panicking?
BLOUNT JR.: No.
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SAGAL: Both front-runners, we should say, had setbacks this week. The State Department issued a report saying Hillary Clinton broke rules with her email - that's bad. And there's a video going around - this is true - of Trump. He's giving one of his speeches, and there is a fly in his hair...
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SAGAL: ...And it cannot get out.
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SAGAL: We know how it feels, Mr. Fly.
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ROBERTS: Are you sure it was a fly? Maybe it was a drone.
SAGAL: It could be.
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SAGAL: All right, here is your next quote.
KURTIS: "Only a fool would skip the most important meal of the day, right?"
SAGAL: That was a doctor named Aaron Carroll. That's a quote from his very controversial article in The New York Times this week saying that what really is not that important?
YOUNG: Breakfast.
SAGAL: Rights...
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SAGAL: ...Breakfast, the most emailed and read story in The New York Times earlier this week...
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SAGAL: ...Is one saying that breakfast really isn't that important to your health, for keeping weight off, for anything.
BLOUNT JR.: What are we going to do with all those eggs?
SAGAL: Well, this is the thing, you do not - you can still eat breakfast foods.
BLOUNT JR.: Oh.
SAGAL: You can eat eggs and bacon and waffles, but you can go back to eating them at 9 p.m. when drunk, as God intended.
BLOUNT JR.: Oh, there you go.
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ROBERTS: Did this article make a distinction between coffee and breakfast?
SAGAL: No, no, no, no - it said, of course, coffee - well, of course, no one's going to argue with having coffee. But this whole idea that if you don't eat breakfast every day you'll gain weight and it's bad for your health, it turns out - and this is the creepy truth - all of those studies were funded by the breakfast food industry...
BLOUNT JR.: Oh no.
SAGAL: ...Including something called the Quaker Oats Center for Excellence.
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BURBANK: Hey Peter, I didn't get a chance to see the report. Where did they come down on breakfast?
SAGAL: They are for it.
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BURBANK: Oh - oh, interesting.
SAGAL: The Quaker Oats Center for Excellence is your safety school if you don't get into Hamburger University.
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SAGAL: But if we don't have breakfast anymore, what happens to, like, all the cereal mascots? Tony the Tiger goes back to pimping.
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BURBANK: I feel like those cereal mascots really fell along one side or the other of the critical issue of are they helping the kids get the cereal, or are they obsessed with the kids not getting the cereal?
SAGAL: Right, so, like, the Trix Rabbit, for example is an enemy of kids eating cereal.
BURBANK: As was the leprechaun...
SAGAL: Right.
BURBANK: Toucan Sam, he was pretty cool. He would lead them to the cereal.
SAGAL: Yeah.
ROBERTS: What about Cap'n Crunch?
BURBANK: He would put them on a boat and take them God knows where.
SAGAL: We don't know what happened to the kids who went with Cap'n Crunch.
BURBANK: Yeah, they're still looking for them, actually.
SAGAL: Count Chocula would give them chocolate cereal and then drain their blood...
BURBANK: Yeah.
SAGAL: ...Which was a mixed message...
BURBANK: Right.
SAGAL: ...For kids.
ROBERTS: What about - what were the little Rice Krispies guys?
BURBANK: Snap, Crackle and Pop.
SAGAL: You know, it's sad because in the wake of this news, Snap, Crackle and Pop killed themselves by sitting in the milk too long.
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SAGAL: Here is your last quote.
KURTIS: "Middle-aged men may grieve, but they'll get over it. Sometimes even angels fall."
SAGAL: That was New York magazine mourning the loss of what popular catalog?
YOUNG: I have no idea.
ROBERTS: Angels.
SAGAL: Angels is a hint.
YOUNG: Oh, Victoria's Secret?
SAGAL: There you go.
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SAGAL: Yes. The news that Victoria's Secret has discontinued its printed catalogs came as a shock to the apparel industry and terrible news to middle-school boys everywhere...
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SAGAL: ...Until those boys remembered there's an Internet.
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BLOUNT JR.: Then there's life class, too.
SAGAL: There is...
BURBANK: Yeah.
SAGAL: ...If they can get in. This will do terrible things for literacy. Thanks to catalogs like Victoria's Secret, junior high boys learn to read. Sure, the only letters they knew were A through D, but...
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SAGAL: ...It was a start.
BLOUNT JR.: Yeah, yeah.
BURBANK: I think it's a real threat to the young people of America, particularly the young boys of America that they don't have to work hard enough to get nudity in their life.
SAGAL: Right.
BURBANK: Me and my friends, it was all we did. Like, pornography is like matter. You cannot destroy it.
SAGAL: Right.
BURBANK: You throw it in a dumpster behind a barbershop and it shoots an invisible beam of light into the sky...
SAGAL: Yeah.
BURBANK: ...That only 13-year-old boys can see.
SAGAL: It's true.
BURBANK: Then you get the pornography, and then you build a fort to hide it in.
SAGAL: Right.
BURBANK: It was a whole economy, really.
SAGAL: And - but here's the funny thing, now it's, like, so ubiquitous the only people who are going to be missing this catalog are us old guys. It's - we feel just the way that old-timey Long John fetishists felt when they canceled the Sears catalog.
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BURBANK: You got anything in a union suit?
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: Bill, how did David do on our quiz?
KURTIS: David, you made some recruits for your life class here. You got three right, too. You're a winner.
YOUNG: Thank you very much.
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SAGAL: Thank you so much David for calling.
YOUNG: Thank you very much.
SAGAL: And have fun out there on the coast.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ANGEL")
SHAGGY: (Singing) Girl, you're my angel. You're my darling angel. Closer than my peeps you are to me, baby. Shorty, you're my angel... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.