BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. All right, everybody, you're in Billennium (ph) Park now.
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KURTIS: I agree. I'm Bill Kurtis. And here's your host at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thank you, everybody.
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SAGAL: It's great to be back with you here at Millennium Park right on Chicago's lakefront with about, oh, 10,000 of our closest friends. Now, before people out there listening to get too impressed through the crowd here, be aware of two things. Everybody here knew it was free before they came down, but they didn't know they couldn't bring in any booze until they got here.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Boo.
SAGAL: I know. I'm sorry.
SAGAL: Later on, we're going to be talking to Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, a legit Chicago rock star who somehow forgot to move out of Chicago.
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SAGAL: But first, it's your turn. Give us a call. The number is 1-888-WAITWAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
COLLEEN SHEA: Hi, this is Colleen Shea calling from Portsmouth, N.H.
SAGAL: Hey, how are things in Portsmouth?
SHEA: Once that Giuliani left last week, everything's been great.
SAGAL: Really?
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SAGAL: Colleen, let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, a comedian and director whose new series "Misfits & Monsters" is on truTV Wednesday nights. It's Bobcat Goldthwait.
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BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: Nice to meet you.
SHEA: You as well.
SAGAL: Next, she writes the syndicated advice column "Ask Amy." Her memoir "Strangers Tend To Tell Me Things" is now out in paperback. It's Amy Dickinson.
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AMY DICKINSON: Hey, Colleen.
SHEA: Hey.
SAGAL: And the writer and actor who you can see playing Mike Pence in a new special episode of "The President Show" this fall, it's Peter Grosz.
PETER GROSZ: Hello, Colleen.
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SAGAL: So, Colleen, you're going to start us off with Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis is going to read you three quotations from this week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain two of them, you'll win our prize, any voice from our show you might like on your voicemail. You ready to play?
SHEA: I'm ready. Let's go.
SAGAL: OK. Now, all of the quotes for you this week - all three of them - are tweets because that is the hell we live in now.
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SAGAL: Here is your first tweet.
KURTIS: Space Force all the way.
SAGAL: That was somebody tweeting about how he's so excited he's going to get a new Space Force. Who is it?
SHEA: That would be President Donald Trump.
SAGAL: Yes, it is President Donald J. Trump.
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SAGAL: A few months ago, President Trump started talking about how we need a Space Force in order to force space.
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SAGAL: He had this great idea. It would have its own name and its own space uniforms and cool space guns that went pew-pew-pew-pew-pew (ph).
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SAGAL: And all his military advisers - when he came up with this, they said, no, Mr. President. That's unnecessary. It's counterproductive. It's way too expensive. So of course, this week, Vice President Pence announced that, yes, we're going to have a Space Force. Can you imagine being so obnoxious that other people would rather just spend $8 billion just to shut you up?
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GROSZ: I was actually excited to see that Mike Pence believes in space.
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GROSZ: He, like, acknowledges...
GOLDTHWAIT: Well, that's...
GROSZ: ...The scientific reality of space.
GOLDTHWAIT: That is why they are - it's to prove if there is space or not.
GROSZ: (Laughter) Yeah, exactly.
GOLDTHWAIT: It just seems like there was a "Beverly Hillbillies" where Jethro Bodine...
DICKINSON: (Laughter).
GOLDTHWAIT: ...Wanted to go to the moon to meet moon maidens.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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GOLDTHWAIT: These are the problems (laughter) when rich white guys have too much money.
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SAGAL: All right. You can make fun, but this might be a great idea. We don't know till they do it. I mean, you know the first guy to invent a Navy got all sorts of flak. Like, oh, yeah, we need fighting boats to have boat fights...
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SAGAL: ...With water guns.
GROSZ: Yeah. But it is Space Force. It's a little more stupid.
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SAGAL: Of course, the only thing worse than being a space cadet in the Space Force would be in the Space Force Reserve. You only have to do two weekends a year, but it takes 2 1/2 months to get up there each way.
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SAGAL: All right. Your next tweet, Colleen, is a comment on an article in The Washington Post this week.
KURTIS: I would convict him just for his taste in clothing alone.
SAGAL: That was a self-proclaimed fashion critic commenting on the trial of whom?
SHEA: Paul Manafort.
SAGAL: Yes, Paul Manafort.
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SAGAL: Yay.
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SAGAL: The trial of Mr. Manafort continued this week. If you're not familiar with it, Manafort is the man Donald Trump hired to rescue his flailing presidential campaign after Manafort was fired from his previous job with the Mafia for looking too shifty.
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SAGAL: Now, Manafort is on trial for bank and tax fraud, not for having terrible fashion sense, even though he apparently spent $15,000 for a jacket made of ostrich skin. That is not illegal, but it wasn't a good sign when he walked into the court and, oh, no, the judge is an ostrich.
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GOLDTHWAIT: He also had a - I believe it was snakeskin.
SAGAL: He had snakeskin.
GOLDTHWAIT: Yeah.
SAGAL: He had ostrich skin.
GROSZ: Was there some other animal? There was another animal, right? It was, like...
GOLDTHWAIT: It was a...
GROSZ: ...Human, something.
GOLDTHWAIT: ...Unicorn. Unicorn.
GROSZ: Unicorn.
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GOLDTHWAIT: He just wanted to get all the endangered species in one jacket.
SAGAL: He killed the last one.
GOLDTHWAIT: I've got some elf. I like a guy who goes, you know, I don't look shifty enough. I need to look more like a snake.
SAGAL: Yeah.
GROSZ: Yeah.
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SAGAL: Now, the defense has said that all of this fraud that's been documented was really the work of Manafort's former partner and accomplice, Rick Gates, who ratted him out to the feds and confessed his own crimes. He's admitted in court to stealing from various companies, stealing from Manafort himself. And he admitted to having an affair, though no one asked him.
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DICKINSON: I love that.
GROSZ: Yeah.
SAGAL: And this is the good guy.
DICKINSON: Yeah.
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SAGAL: So it's a question of Gates versus Manafort. Who do you hate more? It's like when the Yankees play the Dallas Cowboys.
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SAGAL: Or Elon Musk has a fistfight with Mark Zuckerberg, you know, with both of them closing their eyes and just flailing their arms.
GROSZ: Please fight to the death. Please fight to the death.
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DICKINSON: But if Gates - so Gates did volunteer this affair...
SAGAL: Yes.
DICKINSON: ...For no reason.
SAGAL: Yeah.
DICKINSON: No one had - I - if more people would do that, my job would be a lot easier.
SAGAL: Just blurt it out.
DICKINSON: Just blurt it out.
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SAGAL: That actually happened. They said to him, have you lived a secret life? He said, yes, I had an affair. And they were like, we didn't ask you about that.
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SAGAL: Colleen, here's your final tweet. This one is about a big announcement this week from Hollywood.
KURTIS: A prize for popular films already exists. It's called money.
SAGAL: That person was complaining about the news that the most popular movie will soon be eligible for a what?
SHEA: An Oscar.
SAGAL: An Oscar, yes.
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SAGAL: An Oscar for popularity. The Oscar ceremony you see on TV is really long and boring, and they keep giving awards to obscure movies that most people have not seen. So they have announced a change. They're going to give out more awards. The new category is Oscar for best achievement in popular film, meaning film critics are going to be asking, yeah, it's got explosions, but are they Oscar explosions? You know what's going to happen. They're just going to blockbuster up artsy films. It's like - it's "Call Me By Your Name," but one of the guys is Iron Man.
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SAGAL: "Moonlight" was so amazing. I loved it when they blew up the moon with lasers.
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GROSZ: So what's the criteria? Like, you have to make a certain amount of box office gross domestic?
SAGAL: Nobody has any idea what the criteria are going to be.
DICKINSON: And aren't they changing the length of the - are they...
SAGAL: Yeah. They're saying it's going to be three hours. But they say that every year, and it never is.
GOLDTHWAIT: I went to the Oscars once.
SAGAL: Yeah? How'd that go? How'd you get in?
GOLDTHWAIT: Well...
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SAGAL: Because...
GOLDTHWAIT: I was - Robin Williams was my friend, and I was his date once, so...
DICKINSON: Aw.
GROSZ: That's great.
DICKINSON: Cool.
GOLDTHWAIT: And I sat in the third row. And I knew that if I clapped and cheered a lot, they'd cut to me.
SAGAL: Yeah.
GOLDTHWAIT: And I wasn't even listening. And - 'cause everybody's really grumpy at the Oscars, but I was, like, smiling and clapping. And they cut to me four times.
SAGAL: Really?
GOLDTHWAIT: Yeah.
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GOLDTHWAIT: And people were like, what? Is that Bobcat Goldthwait? What is this?
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GOLDTHWAIT: The only other person laughing at one joke, it was - I hear a female voice, and I look over, and it's Oprah. And me and Oprah had, like, this moment, like...
DICKINSON: Aw.
GOLDTHWAIT: You go, Billy Crystal.
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DICKINSON: Well, now maybe they'll give you an Oscar.
GOLDTHWAIT: For best sitting in the Oscars.
SAGAL: Yes.
DICKINSON: Yeah.
SAGAL: Bill, how did Colleen do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Got 3 and 0. She is Chicago strong.
SAGAL: Congratulations, Colleen.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.