BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. Get ready for my downward dog. I'm flexi-Bill (ph) Bill Kurtis. And here is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thanks, everybody. Great show for you today. Our guest later on will be broadcasting legend Katie Couric. She hosted "The Today Show," anchored "CBS Evening News," she reached the highest highs of journalism, and now she has a podcast. It just goes to show you no matter how high you rise, one tiny little slip up and you're back down here with us. We're interested in hearing you via old media, meaning the telephone. 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.
LOGAN ADAMS: Hi, this is Logan calling from Raleigh, N.C.
SAGAL: What do you do there in Raleigh?
ADAMS: I'm a college student, actually.
SAGAL: Oh, what are you studying?
ADAMS: Electrical engineering.
SAGAL: Oh that's good. That's useful. That's important.
ADAMS: Yeah.
SAGAL: You'll be able to find a job.
ADAMS: (Laughter) We hope.
SAGAL: Believe me, I come from a long line of liberal arts majors. You'll be fine.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well, Logan, welcome to the show. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up is a writer for HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher," Mr. Adam Felber.
ADAM FELBER: Hey there, Logan.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Next, a comedian whose new live comedy CD, "North By Northwest," is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and at paulapoundstone.com. It's Paula Poundstone.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Hey, Logan.
ADAMS: Hey, Paula.
(APPLAUSE)
POUNDSTONE: Logan, my dad was an electrical engineer, and he worked.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And a comedian you can hear on the new Laugh.ly app, Alonzo Bodden.
(APPLAUSE)
ALONZO BODDEN: What's up, Logan?
ADAMS: Hey, Alonzo.
SAGAL: You're going to play Who's Bill This Time, Logan. Bill Kurtis, right now, is going to read you three quotations from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain just two of them, you will win our prize, scorekeeper emeritus Carl Kasell's voice on your voice mail. You ready to play?
ADAMS: Absolutely.
SAGAL: Let's do it. Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people - maybe there is, I don't know.
SAGAL: That was somebody who was adding suggesting assassination to his long and distinguished resume this week. Who was it?
ADAMS: I would assume it was Donald Trump.
SAGAL: It was, of course, Donald Trump.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: According to Donald Trump, no, no, no, he was not saying he wanted people to shoot Hillary Clinton. That's a media distortion based on the words he actually said.
(LAUGHTER)
FELBER: I like the way that when he says things like that thing that he said...
SAGAL: Yeah.
FELBER: ...He acts like it - you know, it's real subtle and it might even be going over some people's heads, and it's really not.
SAGAL: Yeah.
FELBER: He's like that buffoon who's dropping an innuendo into the conversation and thinks that nobody's getting it. He's like, yes, waitress, I'd like a couple more tomatoes (laughter). I mean breasts (laughter). He's that guy.
SAGAL: So we're all kind of reeling with the Hillary - the Second Amendment thing, and then the next day he started saying that President Obama was the founder of ISIS. He said, and I quote him, "Obama is the founder of ISIS. He's the founder of ISIS. He's the founder. He founded ISIS," unquote.
(LAUGHTER)
FELBER: What do you think he meant?
SAGAL: So not only is Donald Trump wrong about ISIS, he's also a terrible rapper.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
BODDEN: I can only imagine his staff, like, every time he does this - right? - because last week, like, he threw a baby out of a rally.
SAGAL: Right.
BODDEN: And they're like, no, you've got to clean that up. You've got to somehow get them to forget that.
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODDEN: So it's like, OK, I'll threaten to kill Hillary Clinton. No...
SAGAL: No, no.
BODDEN: ...You've got to clean that up. You've got to say something to clean that up. OK, Barack Obama started ISIS. No.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Here is your next quote.
KURTIS: This is an electronic Watergate. This is a break-in.
SAGAL: That was Nancy Pelosi responding to news that what may have been much more extensive than originally thought?
ADAMS: Oh, was it the DNC leaks?
SAGAL: Yes, it was the DNC hack.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: That's very good. Good job, Logan.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: You all remember that right before the Democratic Convention, WikiLeaks put out all these emails from the DNC that made the Democrats look bad, stuff about them trying to hurt Bernie and a bunch of kombucha recipes.
BODDEN: Shouldn't there just be somebody on top of these things, particularly with Hillary's history with email? Like, I wouldn't allow Hillary any more than an AOL account with parental controls.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
BODDEN: I've never seen such a professional, slick organization have this much trouble with something so simple as, like, hey, you're not allowed to use that email server for that, you know what I mean? Like, this email is blocked. You know, like, I don't have one porn account in my actual name.
SAGAL: No.
BODDEN: I didn't need someone to tell me that.
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODDEN: I was like, you know, this would probably be a good idea to come up with a code.
SAGAL: (Laughter).
FELBER: Shmalonzo (ph).
BODDEN: Yeah, something that they can't figure out.
FELBER: Having read a bunch of the emails, one thing that I find really interesting about them is that when she gets emails from Nigerian princes looking for lost funds, it's not spam.
SAGAL: That's true.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Adam, you can't just say you read them and then not tell us. OK, what did some of them say? I haven't read them.
FELBER: They're really dull.
POUNDSTONE: Like what?
FELBER: Like, there's a trip to Indonesia coming and somebody sends her some stats about it, and she sends an email back going, yes, thanks, please print.
SAGAL: There's one email in...
FELBER: ...Like, half of the emails from Hillary Clinton are please print because she wants to go traveling with these papers that she's being shown.
POUNDSTONE: What - maybe she's having - maybe this - OK, this could be a good thing for the Trump campaign - maybe she has stock in ink.
FELBER: Oh.
SAGAL: Yeah.
FELBER: Toner stock.
SAGAL: Yeah.
POUNDSTONE: Exactly.
FELBER: She's in the pocket of big toner.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I think it's something to think about.
BODDEN: That would be great, except...
FELBER: ...She has ink on her hands.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
POUNDSTONE: She's covered in ink.
SAGAL: So, Logan, here is your last quote.
KURTIS: We expect the color to be back to blue soon.
SAGAL: That was an official talking about a pool that mysteriously turned green this week. That's one of the many things that seemed to go wrong where?
ADAMS: In Rio.
SAGAL: In Rio for the Olympics. Yes, very good, Logan.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL, APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: These Olympics in Rio have a particular fascination. We're watching not because of the amazing competition, but because at any moment something insane might happen. There haven't been any, like, building collapses, as people were afraid, but a guy got mugged outside the main stadium, which would not be that weird if the victim were not the head of security for the entire Olympics.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Is that true?
SAGAL: That's absolutely true.
BODDEN: Yes.
POUNDSTONE: Oh my gosh.
SAGAL: He never saw that coming.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah. You know, too busy taking care of others.
SAGAL: And we've already mentioned that the diving pool suddenly turned green.
FELBER: Like, bright green.
SAGAL: Like, really bright green.
POUNDSTONE: Well, everyone knows why that happened.
SAGAL: Why did that happen?
POUNDSTONE: They have that chemical in the pool that if somebody peed in it, it would...
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Sure, absolutely.
SAGAL: You'd know, absolutely.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
FELBER: I think that - I think maybe one of the Russian divers cut himself.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: It wasn't so weird that it turned green. It was weird when the Chinese diver bounced off it. That was...
FELBER: Oh, it was Jell-O.
SAGAL: This is also true...
BODDEN: ...It's actually good incentive for a diver because how small a splash are you trying to make in green water? You are getting in and getting out like a dart.
SAGAL: That's true. (Laughter) It's funny to see a diver go off the board and he sees the water and he tries not to fall. He's like (yelling).
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: There have been some wonderful things. Michael Phelps, American hero, won his...
POUNDSTONE: ...Yeah, baby.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: People like Michael Phelps - won his 20th Olympic gold medal, breaking a record held by, and I am not kidding, Leonidas of Rhodes back in 164 B.C.
FELBER: Overrated.
SAGAL: Much like Phelps, Leonidas also smoked a fair bit of weed.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Wow.
BODDEN: Do you think the other athlete - the other swimmers would be OK with Michael Phelps smoking weed?
SAGAL: I think they'd be fine.
BODDEN: They'd be like, go ahead, Mike, you get high. Then we'll have a chance. Matter of fact, we brought some for you.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: You know what I think is most amazing about the events at the swimming pool? It's that I think that they could not interview the athletes when they come out of the pool and it would be just as satisfying to the viewer.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I mean...
FELBER: I don't think it's the interviewers' fault.
POUNDSTONE: No.
FELBER: 'Cause, like, these are people who do the same thing all day, every day, for years. And so I - you know, the interviewer says - asks them a question and all they've got to tell you is, yeah, I swam really fast in a line.
(LAUGHTER)
FELBER: Faster than some people, not as fast as others.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: But they also - the list of questions - you know, the number one question is what were you thinking? And the answer is keep swimming.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Faster, faster. It's not - yeah, it's not like a...
FELBER: ...When I saw that wall, I just turned around. I swam back.
POUNDSTONE: I mean, where they come up with some of the just, you know, boy, you got awfully wet in that last race.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Bill, how did Logan do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Perfect 10. All three are right.
SAGAL: Thank you for playing, Logan. Congratulations.
ADAMS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.