BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm the man who takes depressed Cubs fans out to the Bill game, Bill Kurtis. And here is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thank you, everybody.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thank you so much. We are so excited. We're having our old friend Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He'll stop by to tell us what's going on in outer space. But first, we wanted to spare a word for Joe Biden. He decided not to run for president after all. It's a shame. We were looking forward to making even more stale Uncle Joe jokes. We don't know what the vice president will do next, but he has asked, once his term is over, if he can crash in the White House basement for a couple of weeks, a month tops. We still have lots of other people to talk about though, so 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.
SANDY STRAUSS: Hi, I'm Sandy Strauss, and I'm calling from Harrisburg, Pa.
SAGAL: Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania.
STRAUSS: Absolutely.
SAGAL: I am so weirdly proud I knew that.
STRAUSS: (Laughter).
SAGAL: Are you involved in the state government there?
STRAUSS: Not in state government but I do spend a lot of time at the Capitol.
SAGAL: What do you do there?
STRAUSS: I am a lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Council of Churches.
SAGAL: Well, wait a minute. You're a lobbyist for the Council of Churches. We always understand lobbyists to be evil people who argue for the special interests...
STRAUSS: Oh, no.
SAGAL: ...So you're telling me you represent big church? What are you saying?
STRAUSS: (Laughter) Well, yes, I suppose I do. But it's on the - for the cause of peace and justice.
SAGAL: (Laughter) Oh, I see. And how many...
ADAM FELBER: There's no money in that.
FAITH SALIE: Do you begin all your lobbying with, we the steeple?
STRAUSS: No, but that really depends.
SAGAL: Consider it.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Sandy, let me introduce you to our panel, except for Faith, who we are removing from the stage.
SALIE: (Laughter).
SAGAL: No, I kid. First up, it's a writer for HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," Mr. Adam Felber.
FELBER: Hey, how are you?
SAGAL: Next, it is a contributor to "CBS Sunday Morning" and the host of "Science Goes To The Movies" on CUNY.TV, it's Faith Salie.
SALIE: Hi, Sandy.
STRAUSS: Hey, Faith.
SAGAL: And finally, it's a comedian - this is exciting. He'll be performing near here at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, Ill., on November 13, it's Maz Jobrani.
MAZ JOBRANI: Hey, Sandy.
STRAUSS: Hey, Maz.
SAGAL: So, Sandy, I bet you anticipated this, but you're going to play Who's Bill This Time? Bill Kurtis will recreate for you three quotations from the week's news. Your job - correctly identify or explain just two of them. Do that, you'll win our prize - the voice of scorekeeper emeritus Carl Kasell on your voice mail. Are you ready to do this?
STRAUSS: I am. I'm psyched.
SAGAL: All right, here is your first quote.
KURTIS: It's the thrilla in the Longworth office building.
SAGAL: That was a writer for the Daily Beast referring to what televised event that took place all of Thursday?
STRAUSS: I think that would be the hearings about Benghazi.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: The Benghazi hearing with Hillary.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: This is the first time that Secretary Clinton has testified about Benghazi in Congress. She basically spent a whole day repeating what she has said before. It's like spending millions on a congressional hearing just to hear your dad tell the story again about how back on the high school football team he let the terrorist score a touchdown. So we didn't learn much in terms of real information from this hearing, except for this - Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, did not have a computer in her office. This, frankly, stretches credulity. What do you do all day in an office without a computer? How do you tweet? How did she watch puppy videos?
SALIE: I think we learned a lot about...
SAGAL: What do you think we learned?
SALIE: I learned that she's going to be - will - might be a great president because she was so unflappable and she has a bladder of steel. She has a presidential bladder.
SAGAL: She really does.
JOBRANI: Yeah.
SALIE: This is - I could...
FELBER: That's always been the ding on the whole idea of a woman president.
SALIE: That's right, Adam.
SAGAL: Yes.
FELBER: Tense, you know - you know, there are missiles coming towards our shores. Where's the president? Oh...
SALIE: Right.
FELBER: She's out.
SAGAL: I know.
SALIE: I mean, thank God for split screen, right? She was so much fun to watch.
SAGAL: She was. This was the best part of the hearing was her faces because they - C-SPAN and the other networks did a split screen. You see her interrogator and Mrs. Clinton. And she just made these great faces. She put her chin in her hand, she rolled her eyes, she made that...
SALIE: She did...
SAGAL: She made that L sign on her forehead.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And then at one point - this was great...
FELBER: Mimed hanging herself.
SAGAL: Did the whole I'm going to make myself throw up gesture.
FELBER: Yeah.
SAGAL: Now what - it - what seems to be the case is everybody wondered if this hearing would be the time where they could finally make her crack.
SALIE: Nail her.
SAGAL: Nail her. And they couldn't do it. She was implacable. And so with Joe Biden's, you know, withdrawal from the race, it does look like - that the Democratic primary is just going to be Hillary versus Bernie. Hillary versus Bernie, they both go by their first names. Hillary versus Bernie does not sound like a presidential primary. It sounds like an awkward dinner party with your relatives.
(LAUGHTER)
FELBER: It sounds like a movie about an old couple getting divorced.
JOBRANI: Hillary versus Bernie.
FELBER: Right, they finally had it with each other.
SAGAL: OK, Sandy, here is your next quote.
KURTIS: My girlfriends and I are moving to Canada because damn.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That was one of the many tweets we saw talking about the super hot Canadian guy everybody is now talking about. His name is Justin Trudeau. Mr. Trudeau got a new job this week. What is it?
STRAUSS: Prime minister of Canada.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
JOBRANI: Oh, Canada.
SAGAL: Yes, Canada, the nation, is 167 years old. And like a lot of countries, it's having a midlife crisis. They're bored of being so boring. So you had crack-smoking Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto. Last week, you had Canadian baseball fans throwing garbage onto the field. And now they've gotten rid of their dull, old prime minister for a hot young trophy prime minister.
SALIE: With, like - he has a hot name, too, like Justin. I mean that's...
SAGAL: Justin. Justin doesn't sound like somebody who...
SALIE: That's a guy.
SAGAL: ...Should be in charge of a country.
SALIE: Yeah, that's right.
SAGAL: Justin sounds like somebody who should be your server tonight.
(LAUGHTER)
SALIE: Oh, I think people want to be served by this Justin.
SAGAL: Oh, yeah.
FELBER: Oh, yeah, you've been served.
SAGAL: And this is - if you haven't seen pictures of him, you should. He's like - yes, you should absolutely Google image search this new leading politician. When has that ever been said before? And 'cause all these pictures of him - he's now 43. He is smoking hot. And we believe he is the first major world leader to have a tattoo, if you don't count Vladimir Putin who, on his bare chest, has a tattoo of a bare-chested Vladimir Putin.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Mr. Trudeau, of course, just has a tramp stamp.
FELBER: Trudeau was - he was a boxer, wasn't he?
SAGAL: He was a boxer for a while. He did some charity boxing. This is the thing. He is the son of Pierre Trudeau, the very famous, successful prime minister of the '70s, primarily. And this may sound familiar to you, so he was the son of a former leader, he tried to go out on his own - he was a snowboard instructor, he was a bar bouncer - none of that worked out. So he went into his father's business and has now succeeded him. So basically he's like George W. Bush except you don't want to have a beer with him. You want to have a breakfast with him tomorrow morning.
(LAUGHTER)
JOBRANI: Wow.
SAGAL: All right, here is your last quote.
KURTIS: Don't worry, the world won't be coming to an end anytime soon.
SAGAL: That was Business Insider trying to calm everybody's fears after reports that astronomers may have found what in outer space?
STRAUSS: I think was some kind of not natural thing that was going across one of the stars somewhere out there.
SAGAL: That - you're exactly right. The phrase you're looking for is an alien megastructure...
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: ...Which is very cool. Astronomers were looking at this distant star. And what they do is they look for sort of dips in its light that indicate a planet passing in front of it. That's how we find exoplanets. And this one, instead of going dip, went dip, dip, dip, dip dip - as if some large object.
FELBER: It was singing doo-wop?
SAGAL: It was.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Right next to it was a trashcan on fire so clearly that's what it was doing. No, so that don't know what this is 'cause it's not the sort of thing you usually find and - among - 'cause what could it be? Could it be comets? I mean, it's these very large objects going in a line. It could be comets, it could be American...
FELBER: Comets in a line, I don't buy it.
SAGAL: Maybe. Maybe the aliens are revealing themselves. They wanted to wait until Canada elected Justin Trudeau because they were waiting to visit Earth. They were waiting until there was a leader hot enough to be taken to.
(LAUGHTER)
SALIE: Take me to your hot leader.
SAGAL: Exactly. Bill, how did Sandy do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Sandy is really smart. She got them all right.
SAGAL: Well done, Sandy.
KURTIS: Three straight.
(APPLAUSE)
STRAUSS: All right.
KURTIS: Thanks, Sandy.
STRAUSS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.