BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. Hey baby, you hungry? Let me be your umBillacle cord.
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KURTIS: Bill Kurtis here. And here is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thanks everybody.
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SAGAL: We've got a great show for you today. We do because later on we are going to be talking to the two guys who created the decades-long-running show "Blue Man Group." That is the show where the characters have no words to express their feelings and just bang on things. I know exactly how they feel, and it is still five months 'til the election.
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SAGAL: If you still have the power of speech, 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.
MATTHEW PARSONS: Hi, my name is Matthew Parsons. And I'm calling from Chicago, Ill.
SAGAL: Hey, Chicago.
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SAGAL: Why are you calling? You should've just come down and said hello in person. What you do here in our fair city?
PARSONS: Well, I work as a project manager for a major airline that's also headquartered here in Chicago.
SAGAL: Oh.
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SAGAL: Oh, I see, you were being coy.
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SAGAL: What do you do for them?
PARSONS: So as a project manager, I - whenever we have a new city, anything like that, I help set it up.
SAGAL: Really?
PARSONS: Yeah.
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SAGAL: You go in and say this is where the plane is going to be late.
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SAGAL: Well, Matthew, let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's a contributor to "CBS Sunday Morning" whose new book "Approval Junkie" has just been published by Crown Archetype. It's Faith Salie.
FAITH SALIE: Hi Matthew.
PARSONS: Hi.
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SAGAL: Next, it's a veteran rate of "Late Night With Seth Meyers" and "The Colbert Report." It's Peter Grosz.
PETER GROSZ: Hey Matthew.
PARSONS: Hi Peter.
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SAGAL: And finally, it's the Chicago-born comedian performing at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood on June 18. It's Brian Babylon.
PARSONS: Hey man.
BRIAN BABYLON: Hey.
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SAGAL: So Matthew, we're all here together. You're going to start us off with Who's Bill This Time? Bill Kurtis, of course, will re-create for you three quotations from the week's news. Your job - guess or identify what two of them are about. Do that - and you'll win our prize - scorekeeper emeritus Carl Kassel's voice on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
PARSONS: Yes sir.
SAGAL: Let's do it then. Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: "Thanks to you, we made history tonight. Celebrate with a free magnet."
SAGAL: That...
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SAGAL: ...Really was the celebratory tweet of whose historic but still pretty lame campaign?
PARSONS: Sounds like the inevitable Hillary Clinton.
SAGAL: The inevitable Hillary Clinton.
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SAGAL: Yes, that's right.
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SAGAL: And they said Hillary would never be magnetic. This week...
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SAGAL: ...She clinched the Democratic nomination, or if you watched her speak, it's more like clenched.
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SAGAL: Now, to be fair, it really was a historic moment - obviously, the first woman nominated by major party to be president. It's an important moment, and...
SALIE: Hell yeah.
SAGAL: And everybody - it was...
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SAGAL: Yes, all right.
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SAGAL: Bernie, of course, didn't concede. He's making noises. He said he'll continue to fight through the last primary. That's Washington, D.C., next week. But he also laid off most of his campaign staff. So he's becoming like a rogue effort, living off the land, moving from hiding place to hiding place.
SALIE: You know...
BABYLON: He's become like the Jack Bauer of the president campaign.
SAGAL: A little bit like that.
GROSZ: You know what? I think, like, he - I mean, he really needs to, like, deliver his people...
SAGAL: Yeah.
GROSZ: I And I feel like they're like courting him and not being too, like, mean to him and stuff. I feel like, you know, Hillary has magnets, and she has, like, the woman card and stuff on her website. She's got a lot of, like, products. She really does have the thing, like...
SAGAL: You can buy a woman card from her.
GROSZ: You can buy a woman card because they say she's playing the woman card. So - but anyway...
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GROSZ: I think that she should - because a lot of Sanders supporters people are like oh, I'm going to have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. I think she should put I'm with her on clothe pins so that people can put them over...
SALIE: So good.
GROSZ: ...Their nose...
SAGAL: That's great.
SALIE: That's so good.
GROSZ: ...And walk into a voting booth and be like I'm with her. I don't want to be...
SAGAL: Yeah.
GROSZ: ...But I'm with her.
SAGAL: So if you just give those people a way to guarantee - to advertise their purity...
GROSZ: Yeah - yeah, exactly.
SAGAL: ...They will do anything you ask.
GROSZ: You talk to someone and they're like do you like Hillary? And you hear the sound yeah, I like her. Then you know that they're wearing one of those.
BABYLON: That's genius.
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SALIE: All these supporters who are saying Bernie or bust...
SAGAL: Yeah.
SALIE: ...I'm like you got Hillary Clinton. There's the bust. It's the first one, embrace it.
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SAGAL: That may not be what they mean, but I appreciate that, Faith.
GROSZ: They'd be like oh, you got us on a technicality. That's not my kind of bust.
SAGAL: All right, Matthew, are you still with us?
PARSONS: Yes sir.
SAGAL: All right.
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SAGAL: All right, Matthew, here is your next quote.
KURTIS: "Be nice to him. He's a poor first-time candidate."
SAGAL: That was GOP Senator Orrin Hatch making one of many excuses offered this week for whose strange behavior?
PARSONS: Donald Trump?
SAGAL: Yes, indeed.
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SAGAL: So this...
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SAGAL: ...Was the period between the end of the primaries, beginning - the convention - that Donald was supposed to, quote, "pivot," which usually means changing one's behavior but in his case just meant turning quickly and spewing racist crap in a different direction.
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SAGAL: His latest - as you probably heard - attacks on a judge overseeing a fraud case involving him for being Mexican, which the judge is not. The judge is from Indiana.
SALIE: Same thing.
SAGAL: Well, no actually - Indiana arguably worse than Mexico. I mean, where would you rather go on a vacation, Oaxaca...
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PARSONS: Or Elkhart, or, you know, Gary...
SAGAL: Hey, what do you want to eat tonight, honey, Mexican or Indianan?
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SALIE: Oh no.
GROSZ: Oh, basketballs again?
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SALIE: What's so bizarro about him, right, he can say racist and misogynistic things and people still vote for him and, you know, he can lie about steaks and universities and people still vote for him. And everything's opposite with him. So when he finally did his speech where he read...
SAGAL: Yeah...
SALIE: ...The teleprompter, we were all riveted. Like, usually if someone goes off script, you want to see what they say.
SAGAL: Yeah.
SALIE: But I only watched that speech because I wanted to see what it's like when he reads something.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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GROSZ: You know, I'm like - for a while, I was kind of scared that he would, like, kind of dispense with all the insanity and kind of just be calm for a little bit and people would line up behind him. And then, like, this last week, I was like well, I don't know if he can do it. And then he sort of read from that teleprompter and you thought maybe he's going to calm down again. But, like, let's be honest, it doesn't change. Like...
SALIE: But that's what's been so great about this week because the press has been saying well, he was kind of contained and humble for Donald Trump that night. But let's see if this behavior can continue.
GROSZ: How can it?
SALIE: And it totally reminds me of my 2 and 4-year-old, like, how I think about them. And I was just thinking all Donald Trump needs from the GOP is a sticker chart and an earlier bedtime.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SALIE: And they've got this thing.
GROSZ: That's funny.
SALIE: They've got it.
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SAGAL: All right, here Matthew is your last quote.
KURTIS: "All I'll say is that the owls need a bit of work."
SAGAL: That was a very brief review of a play that began previews in London this week, the play that continues the story of what beloved character?
PARSONS: Oh gosh, I don't know.
SAGAL: Well, I'll give you a hint. They sell Butterbeer at the concession stand.
PARSONS: Oh, Harry Potter?
SAGAL: Harry Potter...
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SAGAL: He's back...
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SAGAL: And he's old. This week, the new two-part play "Harry Potter And The Cursed Child" started performances in London. It takes place 19 years after the end of the last movie when Harry Potter now is a beleaguered government employee who has problems.
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BABYLON: Wait, he's out of the magic game?
SAGAL: Well, no, he's working for the Ministry of Magic. He's a high-level bureaucrat.
BABYLON: Oh.
SAGAL: Yeah. It's nice to know that even Harry Potter, the wizard, the chosen one, can end up being as boring as we are.
BABYLON: Is he...
SALIE: And they...
GROSZ: He has an office under the stairs?
BABYLON: Is he, like, pushing papers...
SAGAL: Yeah.
BABYLON: ...Like, with magic?
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: That'd be funny if he was - accio spreadsheet.
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BABYLON: Is he doing that?
SAGAL: Let's face it - I mean, I loved the "Harry Potter" books. I saw all the movies with my kids. It should be done.
BABYLON: Yeah.
SAGAL: They should not be going on. Twenty years from now, do we want to be seeing the latest play "Harry Potter And The Curse Of Getting Up Six Times A Night?"
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SAGAL: "Harry Potter And The Relaxed-Fit Robes?"
BABYLON: So is this anything...
SALIE: "Harry Potter And Ed With His Wand?"
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SAGAL: Well, you know, what would - what if Harry Potter, you know, had...
GROSZ: Just two levitating bathtubs, next to a...
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GROSZ: Somewhere...
SAGAL: Like Cialis?
GROSZ: Yeah exactly.
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SAGAL: What if Harry Potter - you know, what if Harry Potter was unfaithful to Ginny Weasley and he's like well, you know, Ginny, they say the wand picks the wizard?
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SAGAL: Bill, how did Matthew do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Like the Cubs, Matthew hit three home runs - one right after the other.
PARSONS: Thank you.
SAGAL: Congratulations Matthew, and welcome to Chicago.
PARSONS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC")
FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) That old black magic has me in its spell. That old black magic that you weave so well. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.