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Who's Bill This Time

BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. Sleep tight, baby - you're about to get a dose of Bill-atonin (ph)...

(APPLAUSE)

KURTIS: I'm Bill Kurtis. And here is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Bill.

(CHEERING)

SAGAL: Thanks, everybody. Thank you so much. We have a very fine show for you today. We're very pleased with what we've got for you. Later on, we're going to be talking to American soccer superstar Kristine Lilly, who has the most caps of any player, male or female, veteran of five World Cups and famous for her game-changing defense against the golden goal in the '99 final. You have about a half an hour to Google around so you can understand what I just said.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: But in the meantime, give us a call. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT - that's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant.

Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.

ANDY JOHNSON: Hello. This is Andy Johnson.

SAGAL: Hey, Andy. How are you?

JOHNSON: Fantastic.

SAGAL: I'm glad to hear it. Where are you calling from?

JOHNSON: I'm calling from Warrenville, Ill. - about 30 miles due west.

SAGAL: Thirty miles due west. I've never been there.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: You should come.

SAGAL: Tell me what I'm missing by never venturing out of the city limits.

JOHNSON: (Laughter) Well, you're missing a lot. Like, being out here in Warrenville, we are the home to "The Picture Of Dorian Gray." It was painted here.

JORDAN CARLOS: Wow.

SAGAL: Wait a minute - "The Picture Of Dorian Gray"?

JOHNSON: Yeah. The Albrights had their studio here. And if you go to the Art Institute of Chicago, you can see that macabre portrait of Dorian Gray. And it was painted here in Warrenville, Ill.

SAGAL: Well, that's exciting.

JOHNSON: Yeah.

SAGAL: Yeah.

JOHNSON: It's a great, little town.

SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show. And let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, a humorist and author most recently of Save Room For Pie - it's Roy Blount Jr.

(APPLAUSE)

JOHNSON: Hello, Roy.

ROY BLOUNT JR: Hey, Andy.

SAGAL: Next up, it's the comedian producing and starring in the upcoming Asian American comedy film "Becoming Eddie" - details at becomingeddiefilm.com. It's Helen Hong.

HELEN HONG: Hi. Hi, Andy.

(APPLAUSE)

JOHNSON: Hello, Helen.

SAGAL: And making his debut on our show, he's a writer for "Black Mirror," HBO's "Divorce" and host of the #Adulting podcast on WNYC. It's Jordan Carlos.

CARLOS: Hi.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: So, Andy, welcome to the show. I bet you anticipated this, but you're going to play Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis is going to read you three quotations from the 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 choose on your voicemail. You ready to play?

JOHNSON: I'm ready.

KURTIS: All right. Here is your first quote.

KURTIS: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLOS: What?

KURTIS: It sounds celebratory.

SAGAL: Oh, no. You did it. You nailed it.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: To give you some context, that was somebody celebrating their 13th and final goal on Tuesday. She was a member of what team?

JOHNSON: Well, Team USA soccer.

SAGAL: Yes, the U.S. women's soccer team - very good.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The reigning women's World Cup champions, the U.S., celebrated their return to the tournament by laying an absolute beat-down on the Thailand team, winning 13-0. It would have been more, but they missed the extra point.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Now, the U.S. team was criticized not so much for running up the score but for celebrating a little too much. We don't know why they're getting grief for all these celebrations. We remember when the U.S. men celebrated their 13th World Cup goal, too. It just took them eight World Cups...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...To get around to it.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: That's true, by the way. The U.S. women in their first game scored more goals than the U.S. men have since, like, 1996.

(LAUGHTER)

HONG: I think I know enough about soccer that 13 is a lot.

SAGAL: Thirteen is an awful lot. There are a lot of soccer games that have only - there are a lot of soccer games that end with no goals, let alone two or three.

CARLOS: Was there a goalie, or...

SAGAL: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLOS: That's cool.

HONG: Did they cut so the poor Thai players, every time the U.S.A. team...

SAGAL: The Thai players looked sad - especially the Thai goalie.

HONG: Oh, yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That's what I'm saying. The Thai - or keeper, as - she just looks sadder and sadder and sadder.

HONG: Well, she should.

CARLOS: Well, didn't anybody else...

(LAUGHTER)

CARLOS: No one else wanted to rotate in? Like, I'd be - after the fifth goal, I'd be, like, you give it a try.

HONG: Yeah.

CARLOS: You know what I'm saying?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: What's interesting, though - just so you know, in case you feeling really sorry for the Thai team, that in a prior match - what they call a friendly, i.e., it didn't count for anything - they beat the Cambodian team 11-0.

HONG: Oh.

SAGAL: So the Americans beat the Thais, who beat the Cambodians.

BLOUNT JR: Let's play the Cambodians next.

CARLOS: Absolutely.

BLOUNT JR: Woo.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right, Andy. Your next quote is from the latest person to leave the White House.

KURTIS: I showed up every day, and I think I did the very best job that I could to be transparent and honest.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That was somebody just giving us one more lie for luck...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...As the president announced she was leaving her job. Who is it?

JOHNSON: Sarah Hucka-sands (ph).

SAGAL: Yes, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: True to form, Ms. Sanders announced she'd be leaving the White House by saying, I'm resigning. I never said I was resigning.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: But Ms. Sanders seems to be leaving on good terms. She said she was humbled to work with President Trump - quote, "the only president the United States has ever had."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Now, however you feel about her positions, I should say she was really, really good at doing her job, which was basically not doing her job.

HONG: She really was.

CARLOS: Yeah.

BLOUNT JR: It is true that she was transparent, though. You could see right through it.

SAGAL: That's true.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLOS: But what's next for her, though?

SAGAL: Well, she says she's going to go spend more time with her family. Of course, she's said she's going to go back to Arkansas to live with her parents, Mike Huckabee and Bernie Sanders.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLOS: But she was - she barely gave press briefings, though, right?

HONG: Yeah. She hasn't given one in, like, four months.

SAGAL: Well, that was the crazy thing. Her job, of course, is to take questions from the press - right? - and share information from the White House with the American people through our media representatives. And she ended the daily White House press briefing. She hasn't had one in about 95 days. By the end of her tenure, all her official statements were just, uh-huh.

(LAUGHTER)

HONG: I don't think she's been there for four months. I think they finally, like, went to her bedroom and lifted up the covers, and it was just a pile of pillows.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLOS: Right.

BLOUNT JR: The great thing about this president is he has such a big heart. He likes people that nobody else likes.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: That's true.

CARLOS: Too true.

SAGAL: All right, Andy. Your last quote is from CNN, and it's describing one of many fun vacation snapshots from the summer's new hottest tourist destination.

KURTIS: One photo shows a woman in a hazmat suit unzipped to expose her underwear.

SAGAL: Where is this new vacation hotspot?

JOHNSON: Holy mackerel.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I'll give you a hint. This was inspired by the success of an HBO miniseries.

JOHNSON: Oh, Chernobyl.

SAGAL: Chernobyl, yes.

BLOUNT JR: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

CARLOS: That's where the kids are going?

SAGAL: That's where the kids are going. Tour operators are now bringing people to the site of the nuclear accident. They're offering souvenirs for tourists to take home - T-shirts, bumper stickers, cancer.

(LAUGHTER)

HONG: Wait - isn't it closed for, like, a thousand years or something?

SAGAL: Yes. Well, it's surrounded by what's called the exclusion zone, where they evacuated all the residents 30 years ago. But you're - they allow people to go back in for limited periods of time.

HONG: What?

CARLOS: What? I love that - I mean, a sense of VIP - like, the exclusion zone.

SAGAL: Yes, I know.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It is true that there's, like, a 100-square-mile area of Ukraine that's surrounded by a single velvet rope.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLOS: Cool. So Chernobyl's just, like, hot again. I like that.

SAGAL: Yeah. Yeah.

BLOUNT JR: More room at Disney World for me.

SAGAL: Exactly.

(LAUGHTER)

HONG: Wait. What do you get to do when you go there? Do you get to pet, like, two-headed deer and stuff like that?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, like I said, there's just an entire city called Pripyat, which was built for the workers at the plant. And it was abandoned. I mean, the Russians, the Soviets at the time, told everybody they had to leave right away. So it's this weird ghost town where people's possessions are still sitting where they left them. So you can wander through there. And, as you said, actually, yes, there's this huge area where all the people have been barred, so wildlife has come back. So you can just see, you know, as you say, deer running around enjoying their freedom and that third set of legs.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Andy do on our quiz?

KURTIS: Andy did fine - 3 and 0.

SAGAL: Congratulations. Well done, Andy.

(APPLAUSE)

JOHNSON: (Unintelligible).

SAGAL: Thank you so much for playing. Bye-bye.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TOXIC")

BRITNEY SPEARS: (Singing) With a taste of your lips, I'm on a ride. You're toxic. I'm slipping under. Taste of a poison paradise, I'm addicted... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.