BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. Hey, folks, don't get up in my grill. Get up in my Bill.
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KURTIS: 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.
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SAGAL: Thank you so much. Listen, we have a great show for you today. Later on we are going to be talking to Nora Roberts, one of the most popular and most prolific writers of romance novels in the world. We're so excited to bring a romance writer to NPR listeners, especially Valentine's Day week because NPR listeners until now had nothing to turn them on but Bill Kurtis reading the underwriting credit for Lumber Liquidators.
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KURTIS: That's 1-800-HARDWOOD.
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SAGAL: But first, though, we want to hear your breathy voice. Give us a call. The number is 1-888-WAITWAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. It is time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
BEN HERMAN: Hello, Peter. This is Rabbi Ben Herman from Jericho, N.Y.
SAGAL: Rabbi Ben Herman. How are you, Rabbi?
HERMAN: I'm doing great. Didn't have a circumcision today, but I'm doing fine.
SAGAL: All right.
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ROY BLOUNT JR: Well, it's about time you had one.
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SAGAL: Yeah, you really delayed it a little while, Rabbi. You should probably get that done. Well, let me introduce you to our panel this week. First, it's humorist and author, most recently of "Save Room For Pie," Roy Blunt Jr.
BLOUNT: Hello, Rabbi.
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SAGAL: Next up, it's a columnist for The Washington Post making her debut on our panel. It is Alexandra Petri.
ALEXANDRA PETRI: Hi.
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SAGAL: And finally, it's a humorist, author and motel huckster whose tractor is stuck in Vermont and whose plane is delayed in Chicago. It's Tom Bodett.
TOM BODETT: Hello, Rabbi.
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SAGAL: So welcome to the show, Rabbi. You're going to play Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis is going to read for you three quotations from the week's news. Your job is to correctly identify or explain just two of them. Do that, you will win our prize, the voice of scorekeeper emeritus Carl Kasell on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
HERMAN: Absolutely.
SAGAL: All right, here we go. Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.
SAGAL: That was someone with a very unique opinion about the Trump administration. Who?
HERMAN: Could that happen to be President Donald Trump?
SAGAL: It would be, Rabbi.
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SAGAL: President Donald Trump.
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SAGAL: And let us just note in passing you answered my question with a question. In a week...
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SAGAL: Could it be?
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SAGAL: In a week that was swirling with questions about the administration - did they collude with Russia during the campaign? Why was Mike Flynn fired? - Donald Trump held his first solo press conference as president, which raised another question. What exactly is wrong with him?
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BLOUNT: Remember when we thought the weird thing about him was his hair?
SAGAL: Yeah.
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BLOUNT: That's just way down the list.
SAGAL: I don't care about his hair anymore.
PETRI: It's everything under the hair that's the problem.
SAGAL: (Laughter) It really is. Even though the only thing in the White House that is not like a dumpster on fire is the actual dumpster, President Trump insisted the administration is running like, quote, "a fine-tuned machine." You know, like a Samsung Galaxy 7, say.
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BLOUNT: There we go being unfair to him again.
SAGAL: Everybody is, he says.
BLOUNT: I've been unfair to him so many times in my heart just today.
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BLOUNT: I remember people used to tell me, now, any boy can grow up to be president. And it's still boy, I guess, but you don't have to grow up.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: You know, what's funny is that used to be something people would say as sort of an expression of optimism. Now it's a warning.
BLOUNT: I know.
PETRI: Yeah.
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SAGAL: All right, Rabbi, here is your next quote.
KURTIS: Trudeau resisting is the biggest display of dominance in the history of Canada.
SAGAL: That was an admiring tweet from a woman named Brandy Jensen. Hello, Brandy. She was praising Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the way he handled what aspect of his meeting with President Trump earlier this week?
HERMAN: Can I get a hint, Peter?
SAGAL: Well, it's sort of - it's sort of a physic - it's sort of a dominance display that Donald...
PETRI: I've got a hint.
SAGAL: Go ahead.
PETRI: They're really large. The things that he does this with are really large.
HERMAN: His handshake, of course.
SAGAL: His handshake, yes.
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SAGAL: Donald Trump shakes hands with you like he is trying to tear your arm off. We haven't seen this kind of handshake in the White House since President Angry Bear of 1968.
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BLOUNT: Put her there (imitating growling).
SAGAL: So this is what he does. He sort of - if you've ever seen it - and you can watch a lot of horrifying YouTube videos of this - he grips the other person's hand and he pulls it towards him and he just keeps shaking. Who knew he likes to reach out and grab people by other parts, too?
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SAGAL: It is such an alarming thing to watch. This is true that one martial arts teacher has posted a video showing a method to counter the handshake...
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SAGAL: ...This is true - using jujitsu, or as Steve Bannon prefers to call it, Christian-jitsu (ph).
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BODETT: Well, I saw the replay of the initial Trudeau...
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODETT: ...Trump handshake. And showed that Trudeau, like, put his hand on Trump's shoulder.
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODETT: And I don't know if that was, like, a stabilizing move.
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODETT: I mean, I didn't quite get the play-by-play.
SAGAL: Well, he was prepared because he's done this to a lot of people. He did it to Shinzo Abe. For, I think, 19 seconds he shook Shinzo Abe's hand. He did it so hard that nine months later Shinzo Abe's hand will give birth to another little tiny baby hand.
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PETRI: And 19 seconds is long for Trump.
SAGAL: Oh, yeah, that's true.
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BLOUNT: This is almost a serious question. He's supposed to be so touch-averse.
SAGAL: Yeah.
BLOUNT: He's supposed to be so - not like getting...
SAGAL: Well, I mean, it's weird. People have tried to explain - because you're right. He says I'm a germophobe. He doesn't like being around other people. Maybe - which I guess is mutual - but maybe...
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SAGAL: Or maybe it's the only human contact he ever gets.
BLOUNT: Yeah.
SAGAL: Maybe that's it.
BLOUNT: Yeah.
SAGAL: Even Melania's like, (imitating Slavic accent) not tonight. I have a hand ache.
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SAGAL: All right, Rabbi, here is your last quote.
KURTIS: Today we're taking our identity back and rediscovering who we are.
SAGAL: That was Cooper Hefner, creative director of Playboy magazine, saying that magazine is going to take its identity back by doing what again?
HERMAN: Centerfolds.
SAGAL: Which - you are, of course, a man of God. You would not know about those.
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HERMAN: Yep.
SAGAL: But traditionally, Playboy presented women in what way until they stopped doing it a year ago?
HERMAN: Oh, of course, nude.
SAGAL: Yes, naked.
HERMAN: (Unintelligible).
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SAGAL: It was a year ago exactly that Playboy decided that it was pointless to print nude photographs, especially after watching bored readers trying to use their fingers to zoom in on the centerfold. Seriously, what is the point of selling a magazine with something anybody can get on their phone any time they want? It's like saying, buy The New Yorker, now with annoying texts from your mom.
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SAGAL: Playboy was really weird without naked ladies. It was like Penthouse publishing normal letters.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: I never thought it would happen to me. I was at the express checkout with 11 items and nobody said anything.
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BLOUNT: Maybe I just didn't notice that they weren't in there.
SAGAL: Yeah, it's possible. You...
BLOUNT: I've never dwelled on that aspect.
SAGAL: Of course not. Of course not. You're too (unintelligible). The scary thing is...
BLOUNT: How do you find that stuff on your phone?
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SAGAL: Bill, how did - how did our rabbi do on the - do on our quiz?
KURTIS: I think the rabbi learned a lot...
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KURTIS: ...On his way to a perfect score. Thank you, Rabbi.
SAGAL: Well done.
HERMAN: Thank you.
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HERMAN: Awesome. Thank you so much.
SAGAL: Bye-bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOU BUSCH AND HIS ORCHESTRA'S "COOL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.