WWDTM: Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone

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Speaker 10 From NPR and WBEC Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz.

Speaker 10 Forget your silver bells. I'm your silver fox.

Speaker 10 Bill Curtis, and here's your host at the Stude Baker Theater at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal.

Speaker 12 Thank you, Bill.

Speaker 13 Thanks, everybody. Great to see you.

Speaker 13 We do have a great show for you today.

Speaker 18 Later on, we're going to be talking to Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone, part of a pantheon of Hollywood power couples like Bogey and Bacall,

Speaker 22 Ben and J-Lo, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a series of women who cannot legally rent a car.

Speaker 20 You can play our games alone or as part of a power couple. We don't care.

Speaker 23 The number to call is 188-WAITWAIT.

Speaker 28 That's 1-888-9248-924.

Speaker 16 Let's welcome our first listener contestant.

Speaker 26 Hi, you are on WaitWait, don't tell me.

Speaker 30 Hi, this is Melanie Morgan from McKinney, Texas.

Speaker 31 McKinney, Texas. I don't know where that is.

Speaker 32 Can you tell me?

Speaker 30 It's a little north of Dallas.

Speaker 4 A little north of Dallas. And what do you do there?

Speaker 30 I am a legal aid attorney and an adjunct professor at a community college.

Speaker 33 All right. What do you teach? Okay.

Speaker 33 What do you teach there?

Speaker 30 Yeah, I say I have the two lowest paying jobs in the legal profession.

Speaker 5 Congratulations.

Speaker 30 I teach family law and mediation.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 6 Well, welcome to the show, Melanie.

Speaker 27 It's a pleasure to have you.

Speaker 6 Let me introduce you to our panel this week.

Speaker 27 First up, a comedian and corresponder for The Daily Show, who will be performing stand-up at the Philadelphia Punchline at December 27th and 28th.

Speaker 35 It's Dulce Sloan.

Speaker 5 Hello!

Speaker 5 Hi, Dulce.

Speaker 5 Nice to meet you.

Speaker 37 And he's a comedian whose newest special, Vacation Baby, is available on Hulu and YouTube.

Speaker 21 It's Hari Kandabolu.

Speaker 11 Hello. Hi, Hari.

Speaker 27 And he's a writer and humorist whose delightful sub stack is Take Another Little Piece of My Heart Now.

Speaker 28 It's Roy Blunt Jr.

Speaker 40 Hey, how you doing? Welcome.

Speaker 41 So,

Speaker 26 Melanie, welcome to our show. You're going to play Who's Bill this time.
Bill Curtis is going to read you three quotations from this week's news.

Speaker 16 If you can correctly identify or explain just two of them, you'll win our prize.

Speaker 38 Any voice from our show you might choose on your voicemail.

Speaker 1 Are you ready to play?

Speaker 30 I hope so. I've been avoiding the news since the election.

Speaker 5 Really?

Speaker 31 Interesting way to break your fast.

Speaker 43 Call in the news quest.

Speaker 44 It's broadcast nationally.

Speaker 12 All right.

Speaker 18 Now, your first quote comes from Senator Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 10 What the heck is going on?

Speaker 4 Senator Schumer was one of many people asking that question about what mysterious things in the sky over New Jersey.

Speaker 30 Oh, the drones.

Speaker 48 The drones for weeks now.

Speaker 24 People in New Jersey have been seeing what they say are car-sized drones, sometimes by the dozens, floating in the sky, and people want answers.

Speaker 27 And after many, many demands, finally, President Biden said, quote, there's nothing nefarious, apparently.

Speaker 16 Hey, quick thought.

Speaker 3 If you're trying to calm people down, don't use the word apparently.

Speaker 52 As a New Yorker, I find it hilarious and very cute that New Jersey thinks that aliens and the government are interested in its matters.

Speaker 52 Like the idea that they think they're that worthy of attention from outer space or the Major League Baseball's not interested in New Jersey, the NBA is not interested in New Jersey.

Speaker 52 The Jets and Giants play in New Jersey, but they don't even want to be associated with them.

Speaker 52 And you're telling me aliens and the government are putting maybe maybe the aliens have a particular interest in New Jersey maybe like for respiration instead of oxygen they breathe hair gel

Speaker 40 I believe that there is a tour that you can take to all the houses and sites of the Sopranos.

Speaker 22 Yes you can if there was that.

Speaker 40 If I were

Speaker 40 an alien being I would want to check that out first.

Speaker 56 Are these aliens? Do aliens have drones?

Speaker 57 I thought they had spaceships.

Speaker 47 Well you never know. I mean, maybe they have drones.

Speaker 7 Maybe they disguise the spaceships as drones.

Speaker 28 Maybe we think they're drones, but they're really spaceships.

Speaker 32 Who knows?

Speaker 18 This is too long for us to not know. Yeah, well, that's the thing.

Speaker 56 Well, but no, because we would have shot these down by now. I don't, as an American, I know we shoot first, ask questions, never.

Speaker 37 Now, what happens is, is like people saying, well, there are all these drones, and the government says, no, there aren't.

Speaker 4 We've looked, they're all perfectly reasonable explanations for all of it.

Speaker 32 And the whole thing might be this kind of mass hysteria.

Speaker 23 This is all true.

Speaker 16 A Pennsylvania state senator tweeted a photo of what he said was a drone that had been shot down.

Speaker 61 See?

Speaker 22 It was a Thai fighter from Star Wars.

Speaker 50 And the former governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, posted a footage of drones that he said were floating above his house for hours.

Speaker 24 And again, true, it was the constellation Orion.

Speaker 12 Okay, fine.

Speaker 40 Well, I flew here on one, but maybe that was just a plane.

Speaker 21 Yeah, I know, you never know, yeah.

Speaker 3 All right, Melanie, here is your next quote.

Speaker 10 Let's look back at some delicious memories.

Speaker 16 That was a message that appeared on people's Starbucks app.

Speaker 23 Starbucks is one of many companies copying Spotify Wrapped this month and offering users what?

Speaker 30 Like a summary of everything they've done all year?

Speaker 49 Exactly right, a year in review, right?

Speaker 33 Everybody's doing their own version of Spotify Wrapped.

Speaker 64 So, for example,

Speaker 23 we mentioned Starbucks, tells you what you bought, what your favorite drinks were.

Speaker 26 The Washington Post has a summary of all the articles you read that year.

Speaker 38 Strava, of course, gives you a summary of all the exercise you did.

Speaker 54 And I personally loved Boeing's Flights You Survived 2024.

Speaker 4 No one asked for this.

Speaker 52 Like, there's an expression like, you know, if you feel like you're about to die, you're like, I saw my life flash before my eyes.

Speaker 52 When did that become a good thing? Right.

Speaker 56 nobody wants this information yes also it's just like Target shouldn't do this like target the Target store no because then you can look at all the times you went to Target and was like I just need toilet paper and then you spent two hundred dollars right

Speaker 37 you know who actually did this Tinder Tinder oh that's awesome offered their users an end-of-the-year swipe report because what everybody wants as a Christmas present is a statistical breakdown of all the people who rejected you

Speaker 24 So your top genre was unavailable guys with glasses.

Speaker 56 That's why I got rid of date naps. Every time I would open it, I'd be like, man, a whole city doesn't want to sleep with me.
Let me put my phone down.

Speaker 61 See, the whole point of these summaries is they give you the illusion of having accomplished something with your time.

Speaker 4 Right?

Speaker 47 You're still just like, you know, then the same old drudge you were January 1st.

Speaker 12 But look at all the songs you listen to.

Speaker 56 I know I listen to Megan Thee Stallion the whole time. I don't need nobody to tell me that.
There you are.

Speaker 18 Melanie, your last quote today

Speaker 37 is actually a punchline to a joke that was written out in a New York Times op-ed this week.

Speaker 10 All I can tell you is that it's the Pope who is driving him.

Speaker 4 Who told this joke, among a few others, about the Pope?

Speaker 57 Oh, the Pope.

Speaker 45 Yes, the Pope.

Speaker 34 What?

Speaker 39 Of course it was the Pope, or as he would say, is the me Catholic?

Speaker 32 Pope Francis wrote an op-ed in Tuesday's New York Times entitled There is Faith Faith in Humor in which he went on to basically tell a bunch of jokes.

Speaker 37 Great.

Speaker 1 Another old white guy in comedy.

Speaker 40 How many pulps does it take to do something?

Speaker 5 Here you go.

Speaker 27 Now he says that what this is about is like how humor is important in coping with life's travails.

Speaker 14 It's a part of faith that we should embrace humor, right?

Speaker 51 But what's going on is that pretty late in life, the Pope obviously wants to start doing stand-up.

Speaker 37 Which is fine but it will be shocking when he starts his sets with uh so I've been dating again

Speaker 16 and he'll do crowd work like oh what do you do for a living yes and what are your sins

Speaker 52 I mean it's hard when Betty White has raised the bar so high for elderly people in comedy that's true

Speaker 52 and then you got like because honestly If it wasn't the Pope, would they let him write a thing about comedy is good? That was the major point of of the article.

Speaker 52 It's nice to laugh, which I think in the 1400s would have been groundbreaking.

Speaker 36 Right, exactly.

Speaker 49 Well, he's really interested in comedy, as you may have heard Jim Gaffigan talking about on our show a few weeks ago.

Speaker 15 He invited a whole bunch of comedians and humorists to the Vatican to meet them.

Speaker 22 Not me?

Speaker 57 Well,

Speaker 55 are you Catholic?

Speaker 57 No.

Speaker 34 Oh,

Speaker 5 oh, you had to be Catholic. Apparently, I don't know.

Speaker 21 Well, most of these comics are heathens.

Speaker 20 That's true.

Speaker 40 Is the Pope Catholic?

Speaker 34 Shut up.

Speaker 28 Bill, how did Melanie do in our quiz?

Speaker 10 She deserves a win, so we're going to call her a winner. Good job.

Speaker 11 Thank you.

Speaker 45 Congratulations, Melanie.

Speaker 5 Bye-bye.

Speaker 6 Right now, panel, it is time for you to answer some questions about the week's news.

Speaker 12 Dulce, question for you.

Speaker 4 Dulce, there's been another breakthrough in pickles.

Speaker 16 Now the hot new online trend in pickles is to cover pickles with what?

Speaker 56 Let's see. Okay, so you could say that one they're doing is a fruit roll-up rolled in tahin, then you could do it with chamoy or you could put a little glitter in it.

Speaker 46 Glitter, you got it.

Speaker 62 Yes, you knew all of them.

Speaker 5 You want glitter.

Speaker 23 TikTok has come up with yet another way to torture a pickle so far as you I think we're trying to tell us.

Speaker 56 That was I love torturing a pickle. Go ahead.

Speaker 23 You did. Yeah.

Speaker 32 So far the TikTok TikTokers have wrapped pickles in fried cheese, they've stuffed them with taki chips, and now they are dumping edible glitter into pickle jars to make a treat called a glickle.

Speaker 20 Is this glitter edible?

Speaker 55 Yeah, they make edible glitter.

Speaker 5 They make it! Yeah!

Speaker 34 Where you been?

Speaker 28 Now, does glitter pickle sound like the name of an all-male strip club in Reno?

Speaker 55 Yes, of course it does.

Speaker 16 And glickles apparently are perfect for people who like sparkly things and literally have nothing else to eat.

Speaker 56 See, I feel like you're judging, Peter. I am.

Speaker 57 But why?

Speaker 18 Glitter pickles?

Speaker 56 That ain't none of your business.

Speaker 16 I guess you're right if people want to eat their pickles with glitter.

Speaker 17 It's a free country.

Speaker 21 It's a vegetable.

Speaker 34 Right.

Speaker 16 Have you eaten glitter pickles or glitter pickles?

Speaker 5 No, I'm a grown-up.

Speaker 4 Coming up, our panelists go adventuring in our bluff the listener game called 188 Wait Wait the Player.

Speaker 66 We'll be back in a minute with more Wait Wait Don Zommy from NPR.

Speaker 38 Hey, it's Peter Sagal.

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Speaker 68 So it's really more about my attitude of supplication than it is about asking for money, even though, of course, I'm going to be asking for money.

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Speaker 10 From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, and Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Bill Curtis.
We are playing this week with Hari Kandabolu, Dulce Sloan, and Roy Blunt Jr.

Speaker 10 And here again is your host at the Studemaker Theater in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Segal.

Speaker 55 Thank you, everybody.

Speaker 63 Thank you so much.

Speaker 27 Right now it is time for the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me bluff the listener game called 1888 Wait Wait to play our game on the air.

Speaker 16 You can always check out the pinned post on our Instagram page at wait wait NPR.

Speaker 42 The information you need is there.

Speaker 32 Hi, you're on WaitWait Don't Tell Me.

Speaker 71 Hi, this is Kelly Cullen from Pittsburgh.

Speaker 45 Hey, I love Pittsburgh, one of my favorite places.

Speaker 47 What do you do there?

Speaker 71 Well, for the next two weeks, I'm going to spend as much time as I can with my family, including my son, who's home from college in London.

Speaker 18 That's great.

Speaker 28 I have to ask, only because it's so typical, did he come back from college in London London with a pretentious British accent?

Speaker 71 Yes, he won't stop telling me how brilliant I am, and I will take it every day of the week. Yeah.

Speaker 62 That's great.

Speaker 19 Well, welcome to our show, Kelly.

Speaker 6 You're going to play the game in which you have to tell truth from fiction.

Speaker 53 Bill, what is Kelly's topic?

Speaker 10 Get me to REI.

Speaker 63 There's so much you can do in the great outdoors.

Speaker 21 You can kayak, rock climb, get malaria.

Speaker 45 Our panel is going to tell you about a whole new kind of outdoor activity that's becoming popular.

Speaker 51 Pick Pick the one who's telling the truth and you'll win the weight waiter of your choice in your voicemail.

Speaker 1 You ready to go?

Speaker 71 I am ready.

Speaker 16 Well, let's do it then.

Speaker 24 Let's hear first from Dulce Sloan.

Speaker 56 In today's installment of, hey, get off my lawn, the growing phenomenon of urban wandering.

Speaker 56 Based on the British tradition of wandering through fields in the countryside called rambling, Americans have started taking back their environment by walking aimlessly through businesses and people's yards.

Speaker 56 Rambling in the UK is protected by the right to roam law, allowing enthusiasts to access publicly and privately owned land because of centuries-old footpaths that predate modern property lines.

Speaker 56 Urban wandering, on the other hand, is a bunch of white people

Speaker 56 passing through a neighborhood they don't live in by jumping fences, walking through rose bushes, and then descending upon a Starbucks.

Speaker 56 The leader of the Wandering Society of Eagle, Colorado stated, It's our right to enjoy the world we live in.

Speaker 57 Property lines are fictional. Nature is real.

Speaker 56 And so was the trespassing citation her group received after trudging through a gated community.

Speaker 46 Urban wandering in which people just barge their way through whatever they want because I guess they can.

Speaker 23 Your next word from the wild comes from Roy Blunt Jr.

Speaker 40 Adventure catting it's called and it's a full-blown trend complete with special cat harnesses and social media feeds.

Speaker 40 People are taking their cats hiking, paddleboarding, and mountain climbing, as if they were dogs or people, anything but cats.

Speaker 40 One adventure catter told NPR, quote, taking them on adventures is such a good bonding activity. I wouldn't want to leave them at home.
The cat had no comment.

Speaker 40 It breaks the stereotype of cats, we are told. Well, I guess it does.

Speaker 40 Our cat, Jimmy, is adventurous, all right, when it comes to climbing way up behind a motel room sink or yowling with wildlife at 2 a.m.

Speaker 40 But can I see him swinging along a Sylvan hiking trail with us? Much less paddleboarding and all the other distinctly non-feline sports that adventure cats, we are told, get up to.

Speaker 40 What I can see is Jimmy taking one look at the little Nike snowshoes somebody got him and laughing his little ass off.

Speaker 6 Adventure catting, the new trend of taking your cat with you when you go out into the great outdoors.

Speaker 7 Your last inside scoop from the outside comes from Harikanda Bolu.

Speaker 5 Golf.

Speaker 52 Some would call it a pastime. Others a lifestyle.
And if you're under 30, boring.

Speaker 10 Very, very boring.

Speaker 52 In response to golf's declining popularity with young people, some country clubs have introduced a new variation of the game called Combat Golf.

Speaker 52 A golfer tees off and then has a two-minute head start before the other members of the foursome give chase.

Speaker 52 The three attackers are allowed to do anything they like to hinder the golfer outside of injury, at least intentionally, wink-wink.

Speaker 52 The inventor of combat golf goes by the name of Payne Stewart, Payne spelled P-A-I-N.

Speaker 10 He says,

Speaker 52 My daddy loved golf more than he loved me.

Speaker 52 When it was his weekend to have me, he made me caddy for him. Oh, the destruction I imagined causing with his golf clubs.
Who knew my revenge fantasy would turn into a legitimate team sport?

Speaker 39 All right, so here are your choices.

Speaker 27 One of these things is going on somewhere outside.

Speaker 26 Is it from Dulce Sloan urban wandering, where people just sort of wander through people's property and yards just because, you know, it's there, from Roy Blunt Jr.

Speaker 42 adventure catting, where people are doing the typical outdoor things, hiking paddleboarding but bringing their cats or from hurry kandabolu combat golf a new variation on the ancient Scottish game in which you can try to keep your opponent from hitting the ball by hitting him first.

Speaker 6 Which of these is the real story of a new outdoor activity?

Speaker 71 Well, although I love the UK tie-in and I am a dog person, I'm going to go with Roy's story about adventure catting.

Speaker 39 Adventure catting, all right, that is your choice.

Speaker 35 You believe Roy's telling the truth? Well,

Speaker 14 here is someone who has first-hand experience with this particular activity.

Speaker 72 I think we were doing adventure catting before adventure catting was a thing.

Speaker 16 That was Nicole Alcane talking to Oregon Public Broadcasting about her experience adventure catting. Funny, they never get the cats on tape talking about it.

Speaker 6 Congratulations, Kelly.

Speaker 26 You got it right. You earned a point for Roy.

Speaker 63 You have won our prize, the voice of your choice and your voicemail.

Speaker 70 Thank you so much for playing and enjoy the holidays with your son home from England.

Speaker 15 Take care.

Speaker 55 Bye-bye.

Speaker 18 And now the game we call Not My Job.

Speaker 69 Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone have been married for 19 years and in that time they have written, produced, directed, and or starred in six films together, including The Boss and Thunder Force.

Speaker 16 And that is apart from the other movies Melissa has starred in, like Bridesmaids and Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Speaker 22 And yes, also they produced two children.

Speaker 44 Their latest project is a podcast called Hildi, the Barback and the Lake of Fire.

Speaker 27 Melissa and Ben, welcome to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 19 So

Speaker 36 let me start here.

Speaker 45 I always wonder this.

Speaker 6 You guys have been at the height of Hollywood fame and power.

Speaker 32 You have your own production company.

Speaker 47 Melissa, you've been nominated for two different Oscars.

Speaker 54 Why throw that all away to do a podcast?

Speaker 72 Well, it was Ben's idea. I mean,

Speaker 72 Ben as a child, when I was like, God knows what I was doing, would just constantly read all of the Lord of the Rings. So this is very much in his DNA.
It's kind of a middle-earth comedy. And Ben,

Speaker 72 well, you explain it. Exactly.

Speaker 74 Well, while other people, like Melissa, were probably dating, I was playing monkey beef.

Speaker 74 and

Speaker 74 reading these books. And so a friend of ours, Steve Mallory, who co-created the podcast with us,

Speaker 74 came to me with this idea of just doing know, sort of, you know,

Speaker 74 that style, fantasy style of a podcast, because one thing about these worlds is that women are very rarely featured. So we wanted to do a

Speaker 74 show where men mess everything up and funny women have to come to the rescue.

Speaker 19 Yes, of course.

Speaker 42 We read this, that when you perform this thing, this fantasy thing, you're wearing costumes.

Speaker 47 Even though no one can see you. Is that true?

Speaker 72 I would wear a costume costume to brush my teeth so if you put me in the middle ages I'm gonna have some kind of armor and helmet on

Speaker 72 no matter what because you so there that means I'm definitely not a nerd that's true

Speaker 32 definitely do you we read that you have a remarkable collection of costumes and wigs in your home is that the case yeah it doesn't I thought everybody had that that sounds incredible

Speaker 55 I do!

Speaker 36 Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 72 It seems like our Christmas parties are costume parties parties that have nothing to do with Christmas.

Speaker 24 So do the costume parties have like a theme that's a non-Christmas theme?

Speaker 72 Yes, I mean it comes like we did

Speaker 72 what was the Christmas, a Christmas flock of seagulls. So it was 80s hairbands with the, but with a kiss of Christmas.

Speaker 72 And then we did Hollywood bears and what was that one called?

Speaker 72 Hollywood bears and other woodland creatures.

Speaker 25 So really cute creatures.

Speaker 72 Right. So you could come as a Hollywood bear, which is a super cute, gay, hunky guy from West Hollywood, or a squirrel.

Speaker 40 Right.

Speaker 51 I read, by the way, and by the way, I read a lot of this in an incredibly elaborate People magazine chronology of your entire relationship, which I guess is a cool thing to have out there in the world.

Speaker 43 Does that exist?

Speaker 45 It does. It does.

Speaker 42 It starts when you were both teenagers in Illinois, and it extends to the present day.

Speaker 59 And one of the things it mentions is that you, both of you, once went to an Oscar after party wearing Valour track suits and people got mad.

Speaker 72 Yeah, I flipped off a lot because everybody, so many people change and they're in yet another kind of beautiful, but maybe not the most comfortable thing, or someone's in like another pair of high heels.

Speaker 72 And then Ben and I came in in track suits and like, you know, shell toe Adidas shoes and people were, can I, can I, I don't know if I can throw fingers. I'll keep it clean.

Speaker 72 But literally, you just see people that you hadn't met yet, but I was like, oh, I can't wait to to meet that person. And they were just like,

Speaker 55 really?

Speaker 72 But I do it again. Now I'm like, oh, I felt like I cracked the code.

Speaker 46 Sure.

Speaker 60 Speaking of that timeline of your relationship, you guys met as teenagers here in Illinois, right?

Speaker 22 Your booth grew up here.

Speaker 74 Yeah, so I'm from Carbondale, Illinois, where SIU is. Yes.

Speaker 5 Hey, all right.

Speaker 34 And

Speaker 74 I remember I was sort of like, you know, so this is the 80s, and I had like the swooped haircut and the earring and a clockwork orange t-shirt and, you know, that vibe.

Speaker 74 And a lot of my friends all had that sort of similar vibe. And we saw these people walk across the strip, we call it down there.
And they looked, you know, very goth and very cool.

Speaker 74 And I remember one of my friends going, I wish my mom would let me dress like that.

Speaker 34 And

Speaker 74 it was Melissa.

Speaker 25 It was Melissa.

Speaker 72 And it was probably, I probably had a full-length cape on and God knows what else. And it was probably like in southern Illinois, like 98 degrees pure humidity.

Speaker 72 And I'm sure it was like a real clam bait going on tonight. Right.

Speaker 24 Moving on, the People Magazine timeline of the marriage of Ben and Melissa.

Speaker 15 You saw each other, or at least Ben, you saw Melissa, but you actually met doing like an improv comedy group in LA, famously, The Groundlings.

Speaker 23 Do you remember Melissa, if like what caught your attention about Ben?

Speaker 72 I actually do. The first class we had,

Speaker 72 we all had to do like quick monologues and everyone was so loud and we were all trying so hard to be funny, but it was just loud and crazy and obnoxious.

Speaker 72 And then Ben got up there and was super quiet, super creepy. He was a prison inmate and he was welcoming his new cellmate and he's like, I just think we're going to get along so well.

Speaker 72 And it was so quiet that I was like, and for some reason, when I say it out loud, I realize I'm like, boy, this guy's super creepy. Maybe I'll get to marry him.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 59 Well, Melissa and Ben, it is a real pleasure to talk to you, and we have invited you here to play a game we're calling.

Speaker 10 Melissa and Ben meet Melissa and Doug.

Speaker 60 Melissa and Doug, since your parents, you might know that that is the company founded in 1988 by Melissa and Doug Bernstein to sell traditional wooden toys.

Speaker 32 We're going to ask you three questions about this company and its products.

Speaker 37 Answer two of them correctly.

Speaker 16 You'll win our prize, one of our listeners, the voice of whomever they like from our show.

Speaker 44 Bill, who are Melissa and Ben playing for?

Speaker 10 Jeff Spray of Anderson, South Carolina.

Speaker 70 All right, here's your first question.

Speaker 20 Although they eventually became very famous and successful for their wooden puzzles and playsets, their first big product, Melissa and Doug, was what?

Speaker 23 A, a half-hour-long VHS videotape that encouraged kids to make friends by playing the kazoo.

Speaker 37 B, a blank block of wood and a chisel sold with the name Imagination Playset.

Speaker 45 Or C, a quote, anti-war toy that was a flower you could stick in the barrel of other kids' toy guns.

Speaker 72 I want all three of these to be real.

Speaker 74 I think maybe it's the A?

Speaker 11 A?

Speaker 72 I would say A2.

Speaker 31 Oh, that was very collaborative.

Speaker 61 Yes, A, you're right. It is A.

Speaker 70 The video is called

Speaker 69 You on Kazoo.

Speaker 18 It did not sell well, so they moved on to actually making toys, but you can see it online because it went viral in the 2000s.

Speaker 61 And it is terrible.

Speaker 15 Here's your next question.

Speaker 51 In 2023, Melissa and Doug sold their company to a billion-dollar toy conglomerate called Spin Masters, but even that giant company had humble beginnings.

Speaker 49 What was Spin Masters' very first toy?

Speaker 38 A, a box of cereal rebranded as a Food Fight kit.

Speaker 54 B, a short yo-yo called Yo,

Speaker 60 with a string so short it just dangled.

Speaker 73 Or C, Earth Buddies, which was a nylon sock stuffed with sawdust and grass seeds.

Speaker 72 I find myself drawn to C.

Speaker 34 Yeah, me too.

Speaker 23 You're both drawn to C, and you're both correct.

Speaker 31 It was

Speaker 31 really successful.

Speaker 45 They sold thousands of them and went on to great things.

Speaker 73 All right, here's your last question.

Speaker 59 These days, their most popular products, Melissa and Doug, include play sets that allow kids to pretend they're doing adult things, including a Get Well Doctor activity center that is so realistic, it even includes what?

Speaker 48 A, a real working x-ray machine

Speaker 16 B a credit card swiper for when your insurance doesn't cover the visit

Speaker 23 or C an exam table with stirrups

Speaker 72 what inclusive inclusive it is yes very much so

Speaker 72 I want it to be C but I think it's B what do you think I think maybe

Speaker 72 A but now it's going to be B because I did not wrong I'm going to say C. We're parting ways.

Speaker 12 All right, this is fascinating.

Speaker 16 I think it's an amazing sort of glimpse of your working process.

Speaker 18 So, Ben, you're picking A, which was the real working x-ray machine.

Speaker 27 Melissa, you're picking C, the exam table.

Speaker 74 No, I'm switching to C.

Speaker 12 You're switching to C.

Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

Speaker 35 All right, now we see how the movie gets made.

Speaker 55 All right.

Speaker 43 So

Speaker 12 you're both choosing.

Speaker 70 Ben, you're following Melissa's lead and going to C, the exam table with stirrups.

Speaker 27 It was actually B, the credit card swiper.

Speaker 36 The D.

Speaker 27 The detailed medical playset is supposed to, quote, ease kids' fears of doctors' visits, unquote, including the part where the insurance company refuses to cover the visit, I guess.

Speaker 6 Bill, how did Melissa and Ben do in our quiz?

Speaker 46 Well, they did great.

Speaker 10 Two out of three means you're a winner here.

Speaker 13 Congratulations.

Speaker 59 You've won. You can now change into your track suits to be comfortable at the after party.

Speaker 21 We don't mind.

Speaker 27 Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy are the husband and wife duo behind Lemonada's hit podcast.

Speaker 23 He'll be the barback on the lake of fire.

Speaker 24 You can listen to all of season one, wherever you might get your podcasts.

Speaker 63 Melissa and Ben, thank you so much for joining us on Wait Wait, Don't Tell me.

Speaker 36 What are we going to meet you?

Speaker 63 Take care.

Speaker 69 In just a minute, Bill offers a delicious beauty tip that will give you that medium-rear look in our listener delivery challenge call 188-WATWAIT Joan US in the air.

Speaker 33 We'll be back in a minute with more of WaitWait, Don't Tell me from NPR.

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Speaker 10 From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WaitWait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Curtis.
We are playing this week with Roy Blanche Jr., Hari Dandabolu, and Dulce Sloan.

Speaker 55 And here again is your host.

Speaker 69 at the Studemaker Theater in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal.

Speaker 13 Thank you, Bill. Thanks so much, everybody.
In just a minute,

Speaker 63 Bill wants you to simply have a wonderful Christmas rhyme.

Speaker 16 Aw, and our listener at Limerick Challenge, if you'd like to play, give us a call at 1888-WAIT WAIT.

Speaker 28 That's 1-888-924-8924.

Speaker 21 But first, it is time for a game we call Doctors Thought.

Speaker 35 The news was filled recently with stories about doctors thinking they had the diagnosis right, only for it to turn out to be something else.

Speaker 7 So we're going to ask you to fill in the blank rapid fire style on some of these headlines about what doctors thought.

Speaker 3 Get yours right, you get a point.

Speaker 16 So what we'll do is we'll just ask you to take your best guess as what the blank is. Here we go.

Speaker 26 First one's for you, Harry.

Speaker 16 Fill in the blank on this headline from the Telegraph newspaper.

Speaker 48 Doctors thought I blanked a koala.

Speaker 10 I birthed a koala.

Speaker 45 No, it was doctors thought I got chlamydia from a koala.

Speaker 55 They have it!

Speaker 56 I thought they got vaccinated. Didn't they come up with a vaccine?

Speaker 35 They did, but the koalas, they still got it.

Speaker 27 Turns out that this particular patient just had pneumonia apparently as you indicate chlamydia is very common in koalas it's really easy to catch it from them that's at least that's what that koala told me when she turned me down for a date i um

Speaker 27 dulce fill in the blank on this headline from the washington post doctors thought she had a deadly disease but she was just allergic to blank Talking to men.

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 37 The real headline was doctors thought she had a deadly disease, but she was just allergic to her own tattoo.

Speaker 19 Roy fill in the blank on this headline from the telegraph doctors thought she was pregnant with twins but it was blank.

Speaker 5 It was very small triplets.

Speaker 46 No.

Speaker 6 You went the other way.

Speaker 37 The real headline was a doctors thought she was pregnant with twins but it was just one giant baby.

Speaker 65 Thank you for playing doctors thought because remember malpractice makes mal perfect.

Speaker 44 And now some questions about the rest of the week's news.

Speaker 16 Roy, this week a new study found that what has five times as many germs as toilet seats.

Speaker 40 It's a food thing.

Speaker 5 It's not a food thing.

Speaker 16 It's not a food thing.

Speaker 37 It's a thing that a lot of people have in their homes on a seasonal basis, and this is the season.

Speaker 40 Christmas tree.

Speaker 38 Christmas tree, something on your Christmas tree.

Speaker 5 Oh, well, a little bulb.

Speaker 24 Yeah, Christmas ornaments. Ornaments.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 45 It's the most filthy time of the year.

Speaker 38 Because they are handled so often and never washed, Christmas ornaments can be one of the the germiest things in your house.

Speaker 54 So for a safer holiday, you can either disinfect the decorations as you put them on the tree or go the easy route and start putting all your presents underneath the toilet bowl.

Speaker 56 But they're not handled that often. They're only handled once a year.

Speaker 4 It's true, but then you never clean them.

Speaker 26 So over years, you know, all that grime and hand stuff gets all over them.

Speaker 52 So there's a whole civilization growing on the ornaments over the course of a year?

Speaker 48 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 12 Where's this Pixar movie?

Speaker 4 Hurry, a group of entrepreneurs in Russia is offering to take some of the work out of the holiday season, offering what for sale to anyone who wants it on the internet for up to $50 a pair.

Speaker 20 That means there's two of them. Two of them.

Speaker 55 Okay.

Speaker 22 Shoes. No.
Shoes.

Speaker 52 Hands.

Speaker 62 Feet.

Speaker 16 They represent hands and arms. They're hands and arms for a specific purpose.

Speaker 8 This sounds gross.

Speaker 12 I'll give you a hint.

Speaker 16 Some of them come in a package deal with a carrot and a corn comp pipe.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 52 a Frosty the Snowman kit.

Speaker 45 Well, I'll give it to you. Snowman hands.

Speaker 64 That is sticks.

Speaker 5 What?

Speaker 45 They're selling snowman hands.

Speaker 29 Russian online marketplaces are flooded with ads for artisanally plucked natural snowman arms with prices ranging from about $5,

Speaker 50 and basically those are just sticks to $50 for, well, those are also just sticks.

Speaker 38 The ad for the $50 pair reads, we have a super offer, new, shiny, creative hands for your snowman.

Speaker 4 Your snowman will become a star, and your neighbors will definitely envy you, unquote.

Speaker 57 Is this for other Russians?

Speaker 48 Presumably, yes.

Speaker 40 They're going to get killed.

Speaker 20 How are they going to get killed?

Speaker 56 Because they're going to realize I can go outside and get sticks.

Speaker 27 Well, no, no, they won't, because the last thing you want to do is cross Russian arms dealers.

Speaker 44 Coming up, it's Lightning Fill in the Blank.

Speaker 41 But first, it's the game where you have to listen for the rhyme.

Speaker 16 If you'd like to play on air, call or leave a message at 188-WAITWAIT.

Speaker 28 That's 1-888-9248-924.

Speaker 16 You can catch us most weeks at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago and come see us on the road.

Speaker 42 Check back in the new year for upcoming road shows near you.

Speaker 6 For tickets and information go to nprpresents.org and you can also check out our sister podcast how to do everything this week Mike and E and make me taste some new eggnog recipes and I barely escaped with my life

Speaker 48 hi you were on wait wait don't tell me hi Peter this is Becky from Madison Wisconsin oh Madison is great a beautiful and

Speaker 51 cultured town. I love it there.

Speaker 16 What do you do for fun?

Speaker 75 For fun, I guess I jigsaw puzzle and read and go hiking and walk around the lakes.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah, they have those there.

Speaker 56 Does she take her cat?

Speaker 21 Do you take your cat when you hike around the lakes?

Speaker 75 I wish. I think that will be a goal in the new year.

Speaker 64 Sure, absolutely.

Speaker 44 For you, if not the cat.

Speaker 35 Well, welcome to the show, Becky.

Speaker 23 Bill Curtis is going to perform for you.

Speaker 16 Three news-related limericks with a last word or phrase missing from each. If you can fill in that last word or phrase correctly and two of the limericks, you will be a winner.
You ready to go?

Speaker 27 I'm ready. Here's your first limerick.

Speaker 10 Brushing Fido's a bit of a slug.

Speaker 5 But as pet owner, I go whole hog.

Speaker 10 First, I taught him to sit. Now I use him to knit.
I spun yarn with the hair from my

Speaker 18 dog. Yes,

Speaker 48 from your dog.

Speaker 41 Dog fur knitting is back, baby.

Speaker 23 According to a new op-ed after its initial heyday in the 90s, people are once again collecting their dog's hair, spinning it into yarn, and knitting it into disgusting little sweaters.

Speaker 35 Why stop there?

Speaker 58 You know, why not collect all your dog's drool and throw it in your Brita?

Speaker 48 People advocating for dog hair garments argue it's warmer than sheep's wool, and also animal shelters just don't have any sheep.

Speaker 60 You can also collect all the material you need by sitting on any dog owner's couch.

Speaker 52 Wait, this was a trend in the past?

Speaker 51 This is a trend in the 90s, and it's come back, making sweaters out of your dog hair.

Speaker 20 You take the dog hair, you collect it, brush it out, whatever.

Speaker 42 You have to spin it into yarn, and then you knit a sweater.

Speaker 58 And nobody will know that you're wearing clothing made out of dog fur unless, of course, you wear it in the rain.

Speaker 14 Y'all wear it.

Speaker 56 You mean to tell me there's people in here?

Speaker 52 that act like that they wouldn't wear a dog hair.

Speaker 5 Too good for your own dog?

Speaker 48 Here is your next limerick.

Speaker 10 Hot men aren't hard-edged or futile, and rodent dudes pack your caboodle. A modern cute gentee, he's barely al dente.

Speaker 10 He is skinny and limp like a

Speaker 45 noodle.

Speaker 12 Yes, noodle.

Speaker 45 Move over, Rat Boys.

Speaker 18 The new Hollywood heartthrob archetype is Noodle Boys.

Speaker 33 Actually, stay there, Rat Boys.

Speaker 23 A lot of you are the same people.

Speaker 53 We're talking about these floppy-haired, wispy-armed Hollywood stars like Timothy Chalamay and Finn Wolfhard, who I refuse to believe is not a character from the Flintstones.

Speaker 6 According to the New York Times, our pop culture fixation has moved away from men who look like they spend hours in the gym to men who look like they've just coughed up blood into a handkerchief.

Speaker 56 I don't like this man. I don't like this man.
I've never liked this man.

Speaker 20 Which man? A wisp of a man. A wisp of a fellow.

Speaker 21 Girl, I don't want a man who's going to fall through a crack in the floor.

Speaker 5 I'm a whole woman.

Speaker 55 Wait, so the rat boy craze, who was in the book?

Speaker 12 The rat boy, that was last summer.

Speaker 23 Last summer, we were told that all the guys were into rat boys.

Speaker 22 We were these sort of vaguely feral, or I guess, looking guys.

Speaker 56 So Timothy Chalamet.

Speaker 64 Yeah, basically, whatever Timothy Chalamet looks like now, that's the trend, right?

Speaker 56 I can't wait till that boy hits puberty.

Speaker 23 Here is your last limerick.

Speaker 10 From this tallow, my skin gets relief. But the internet's giving me grief.
The fat from a cow makes a wrinkle-free brow. So I'm rubbing my face with some...

Speaker 5 Beef? Beef! Yes!

Speaker 63 According to the New York Times, more and more people are turning to beef tallow.

Speaker 16 That's beef fat, is a cheap and natural alternative to commercial skincare products. So stop shopping for skincare at Sephora.

Speaker 58 Start shopping at the dumpster behind a Ruth Scritz steakhouse.

Speaker 60 Users claim slathering pure beef fat on their faces makes their skin look nourished and gives them that fresh off-the-grill glow.

Speaker 40 So it's dog hair and beef tellows.

Speaker 43 Basically, yeah.

Speaker 56 So basically we're just England in the 1500s.

Speaker 55 Right.

Speaker 6 Bill, how did Becky do in our quiz?

Speaker 46 She is a champion.

Speaker 10 Becky, good job.

Speaker 34 Congratulations, Becky. Well done.

Speaker 56 You still cheerful. Becky's the third.

Speaker 63 Becky, congratulations, and thanks so much for playing.

Speaker 33 Thank you. This was fun.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 8 This message comes from Fisher Investments. Senior Vice President Michael Hasmar shares why he believes in empowering clients with knowledge at every step of their financial planning journey.

Speaker 76 At Fisher Investments, we prefer to use a sizable group of experts with a diverse skill set, diverse knowledge, all collaborating together to deliver what hopefully is optimal advice for our clients.

Speaker 76 I believe the best and maybe the only way to properly address client expectations is through education.

Speaker 76 Once I've met with a prospective client for the first time, I hope they feel that they've learned something.

Speaker 76 I hope they feel they've made some progress and they understand not only the financial markets and financial planning better, but they understand their own personal goals and objectives a bit better as well.

Speaker 76 I hope they have a little bit more peace of mind.

Speaker 8 Learn more at FisherInvestments.com. Investing in securities involves the risk of loss.

Speaker 60 Now it is time for our final game, Lightning Fill-in-the-Blank.

Speaker 37 Each of our players will have 60 seconds in which to answer as many fill-in-the-blank questions as they can.

Speaker 16 Each correct answer is now worth two points. Bill, can you give us the scores?

Speaker 10 Dulce and Roy each have two, and Zahari has three.

Speaker 5 All right.

Speaker 20 So,

Speaker 14 why don't we do this?

Speaker 60 Since Dulce and Roy are in second place, Dulce, I will start with you.

Speaker 20 You ready to play?

Speaker 54 Because you were eager to go.

Speaker 19 Here we go, Dulce, you're up first.

Speaker 16 The clock will start when I begin your first question.

Speaker 48 Fill in the blank.

Speaker 26 On Monday, doctors in Louisiana confirmed the first severe human case of blank flu in the U.S.

Speaker 5 Heard? Yes.

Speaker 6 On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could effectively ban social media app blank.

Speaker 47 Right, this week the Biden administration set new pollution goals to help combat blank.

Speaker 57 Climate change.

Speaker 58 Right, on Thursday, the Teamsters launched the largest ever strike against online shopping giant blank.

Speaker 47 Amazon.

Speaker 37 Right, this week a man in Singapore who drove directly into a guarded military camp said he did it because he wanted to blank.

Speaker 5 Get

Speaker 34 no.

Speaker 43 He just wanted to see, he said, how security would react.

Speaker 41 On Wednesday, the CDC confirmed that U.S.

Speaker 44 blank had risen to 78.4 years.

Speaker 57 Average age?

Speaker 21 A life expectancy.

Speaker 33 Life expectancy, right.

Speaker 47 According to a new study, moderate blanking may be healthier than teetotaling.

Speaker 12 What? Oh, drinking. Right.

Speaker 32 80 people got food poisoning at an LA Times event celebrating blank.

Speaker 27 Food.

Speaker 45 Good enough.

Speaker 16 They got food poisoning at an event celebrating the best restaurants in LA.

Speaker 27 A norovirus outbreak linked to oysters poisoned 80 people who paid $159 to get into a celebration of the finest cuisine in the city with the people who paid $350 for VIP tickets getting VIP very important vomiting.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 40 Yeah, well oysters are worth it.

Speaker 34 Are they?

Speaker 16 Bill, how did Dulce do in our quiz?

Speaker 10 Dulce got seven right for 14 more points, a total of 16. Dulce has the lead.
All right.

Speaker 12 All right, Roy, you're up next, Phil in the Blank.

Speaker 27 On Wednesday, a House panel voted to release the ethics report on Blank.

Speaker 40 Great case.

Speaker 12 That's right.

Speaker 16 On Monday, Olaf Schultz, the chancellor of blank, lost a no-confidence vote.

Speaker 5 Sweden.

Speaker 51 No, Germany.

Speaker 1 This week, the Federal Reserve cut blanks by a quarter point.

Speaker 40 Look at the interest rate. Right.

Speaker 16 On Wednesday, the FAA reported that over 100 blanks have been hit by laser pointers this month.

Speaker 18 Planes. Right, airplanes.

Speaker 16 This week, a woman in California sued her parents because she claimed they gave her blank.

Speaker 62 Chlamydia. No.

Speaker 39 They gave her all of their ugliest genes.

Speaker 28 On Monday, U.S.

Speaker 44 entomologists confirmed that the invasive blank hornet threat had been eliminated.

Speaker 40 The bandit hornet, the outlaw hornet, the illegal hornet, the...

Speaker 36 You're so close. No,

Speaker 12 it's the murder hornet.

Speaker 55 Murder hornet.

Speaker 37 This week, a criminal in Massachusetts was caught by police after he got stuck trying to blank.

Speaker 40 Get through a miserable round of questioning after.

Speaker 44 No, he was caught while trying to escape down a family's chimney after evading police by jumping from roof to roof.

Speaker 37 The man made a huge mistake when he got stuck trying to escape down a chimney.

Speaker 7 There's the nice list and there's the naughty list, but it's so rare we get somebody on Santa's stay-in-your-lane list.

Speaker 66 Bill, how did Roy do in our quiz?

Speaker 10 Three right, six more points, total of eight for Roy.

Speaker 5 All right,

Speaker 44 how many then

Speaker 70 does Harry need to win?

Speaker 46 Seven to win.

Speaker 62 All right, here we go, Harry.

Speaker 61 This is for the game.

Speaker 15 On Thursday, Luigi Mangione agreed to be extradited to blank for his trial.

Speaker 23 New York.

Speaker 28 Right.

Speaker 47 On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that you can now use a 1-800 number to call blank.

Speaker 38 Dominoes.

Speaker 37 You call chat GPT.

Speaker 32 This week, NASA confirmed that the two astronauts stuck on the blank will be there until late March.

Speaker 10 Spaceship. Right.

Speaker 31 Well, Space Station.

Speaker 37 On Wednesday, Taylor Swift threw a huge party to celebrate the end of her blank tour.

Speaker 54 Errors tour.

Speaker 38 Right. This week, a report revealed that the owner of the New York Jets scuttled a trade for star receiver Jerry Judy because blank

Speaker 66 slept with his wife.

Speaker 42 No, because his player rating in the Madden video game was too low.

Speaker 37 In a possible link to climate change, researchers warned that some blanks had become carnivores.

Speaker 66 Herbivores.

Speaker 16 No, squirrels, a squeamish man whose wife was in the bathroom sick with food poisoning, was able to comfort her and keep his distance by blanking.

Speaker 52 Hiding under the bed.

Speaker 60 No, he comforted her from a safe distance by rubbing her back with a swiffer mop.

Speaker 35 While his wife cradled the toilet, the husband was hiding in the hallway and rubbing her back from about four feet away with their swiffer.

Speaker 14 It was a gesture just around the corner from Sweet.

Speaker 37 It was so nice, he also sent the Roomba in when he had to step away, so there was somebody there at least to repeatedly bump her.

Speaker 61 Bill, did Hari do well enough to win? No.

Speaker 66 We got three right.

Speaker 10 Six more points. Nine is the total, but guess who won?

Speaker 5 Rolte!

Speaker 34 Rolte!

Speaker 27 Coming up, our panelists predict what would be the best Christmas present of the year, but first let me tell you that.

Speaker 37 Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me is a production of NPRW Beasy Chicago in association with Urgent Hair Care Productions, Doug Burnman, Benevolent Overlord.

Speaker 18 Philip Godeker writes our limericks.

Speaker 16 Our public address announcer is Paul Friedman.

Speaker 38 Our tour manager is Shana Donald.

Speaker 60 Thanks to the staff and crew at the Studebaker Theater.

Speaker 27 BJ Liederman, composer at Theme, our program is produced by Jennifer Mills, Miles Drumboss, and Lillian King.

Speaker 60 Special thanks this week to Vinnie Thomas and Monica Hickey.

Speaker 37 Santa's little helper is Peter Gwynn.

Speaker 16 Emma Choi is our vibe curator, technical director is from Lorna White.

Speaker 23 Our CFO is Colin Miller.

Speaker 35 Our production manager is Robert Newhouse, our senior producer is Ian Schillock, and the executive producer of WaitWait Don't Tell me is Michael Danforth.

Speaker 27 Now, panel, what will be the best present received this year?

Speaker 61 Hari Kundabolu.

Speaker 52 The Earth is one year closer to getting these pesky humans out of here.

Speaker 10 Roy Blunt Jr., Jimmy Carter will get

Speaker 40 heaven with with a high five from A. Blinkle.

Speaker 36 And Dulce Sloan.

Speaker 56 Mr. Scrooge is going to wake up on Christmas morning and save TikTok.

Speaker 36 Well, if any of that happens, we're going to ask you about it right here on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

Speaker 63 Thank you, Bill Curtis.

Speaker 36 Thanks also to Roy Blunt Jr., Dulce Sloan,

Speaker 13 and Hurry Condabulo. Thanks to all of you for listening.
Thanks to our fabulous audience here at the Student Baker Theater. Happy holidays from everybody here.

Speaker 63 I'm Peter Sagan. We'll see you next week.

Speaker 33 This is NPR.

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