BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. During Lent, take a bite out of me. I'll be your Bill-let-o (ph) fish...
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KURTIS: ...Bill Kurtis. And here's your host at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford, Conn., Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. It is great to be back here in Connecticut, a state that out of the whole country is among the hardest to spell.
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SAGAL: But as they say in the Nutmeg State, thank God for Mississippi.
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SAGAL: Now we are - we have been seeing a lot of high-profile people leaving their jobs recently. So we thought as a public service, we'd get some tips from a guy who's had the same job for 18 years, one Tom Brady of Foxborough, Mass.
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SAGAL: No, so the lesson is, there's hope for you oldsters out there. Don't let yourself get deflated.
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SAGAL: But first, we want to see how hard you can throw him. 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.
ANDREW FRASCA: Hi, Peter. This is Andrew Frasca (ph).
SAGAL: And where are you calling from, Andrew?
FRASCA: I'm calling from Morris, Minn.
SAGAL: Morris, Minn...
FRASCA: Sure am.
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SAGAL: ...Home of the University of Minnesota at Morris?
FRASCA: Yeah.
SAGAL: I've been there. What a lovely place. I'm kidding. But...
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SAGAL: ...It is out there in the prairie near North Dakota. What do you do there?
FRASCA: Yeah. So I'm actually one of the admissions counselors for the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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SAGAL: Are you really?
FRASCA: I sure am.
SAGAL: Wow. So are you out there selling the University of Minnesota at Morris to prospective students?
FRASCA: I wouldn't call it selling. But yeah.
SAGAL: What are the selling points, just in case I'm wondering, you know, high school seniors are thinking - what are some of the selling points of the University of Minnesota at Morris?
MO ROCCA: Well, it's near North Dakota.
SAGAL: That's true.
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SAGAL: Well, I misspoke. South Dakota, right?
ROCCA: Oh.
SAGAL: It's near a Dakota. Who cares, really?
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SAGAL: Well, welcome to our show, Andrew. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning and the host of the "Henry Ford's Innovation Nation" Saturday morning on CBS. It's Mo Rocca.
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ROCCA: Hi, Andrew.
SAGAL: Next up, it's a comedian who will be performing at the San Antonio River Center Improv on March 22 through the 25. She is also the host of the trivia podcast "Go Fact Yourself" on the Maximum Fun network. It's Helen Hong.
HELEN HONG: Hi.
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SAGAL: Finally, it's a humorist, author, low-IQ individual and a sleepy-eyed son of a bitch. It's Tom Bodett.
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TOM BODETT: Hello, Andrew.
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BODETT: Oh, I begged them to do that. And they did that.
SAGAL: We'll do anything you ask, Tom.
BODETT: I'm so happy.
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SAGAL: Now, Andrew, you're going to start us off this week by playing, of course, the game we call Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis is going to read - read is not the right verb. Recreate for you through his improvisational magic - three quotations from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain two of them, you'll win our prize, the voice of anyone you like on our show on your voicemail. You ready to play?
FRASCA: Sure am.
SAGAL: All right. Your first quote is an ominous warning from White House chief of staff John Kelly.
KURTIS: You may be seeing a tweet.
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SAGAL: Who found out he was about to get fired this week on Twitter?
FRASCA: Oh, was that Rex Tillerson?
SAGAL: It was. I know...
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SAGAL: ...It could've been so many.
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SAGAL: This week, it was Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state. The president thinks of his Cabinet like his family, meaning that he frequently swaps them out for new people when he gets bored.
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ROCCA: I'm just hearing Melania now saying, why can't he fire me?
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BODETT: I wonder if the president is confusing his first term for his first season.
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BODETT: And that everybody has to be fired but one...
ROCCA: Right. Right.
HONG: Yeah.
BODETT: ...By the end of this.
SAGAL: And then there's a winner.
BODETT: Right. Right.
SAGAL: So does that mean, like...
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SAGAL: So does that mean when he's all done the only one standing is Linda McMahon, and she gets the rose? Is that how that works? I don't watch a lot of...
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HONG: He's such a mean girl. Like, who fires someone over Twitter? He's one step away from just doing an Instagram story where he's like, just FYI, I am not hanging out with Rexy (ph) anymore because he's basic.
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ROCCA: Well, they had - there was tension. I mean, you heard about what happened over the salad.
SAGAL: Yes. Please, Mo.
BODETT: No, I don't know this.
ROCCA: In China...
HONG: I don't know about the salad.
ROCCA: In China, when they were in Beijing, that they were served a salad that apparently was a wilted Caesar salad. And Rex Tillerson was sitting next to the president. And when - and Trump turned to Tillerson and said, Rex, eat the salad.
SAGAL: Yes.
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SAGAL: And once he did eat the salad, he allowed Secretary of State Tillerson to have a cookie.
ROCCA: Yeah.
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ROCCA: But, I mean, I thought, like, "Wilted Caesar: The Biography Of Donald Trump (ph)."
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SAGAL: Now, Secretary Tillerson's successor is apparently going to be current CIA director Mike Pompeo. And he's getting the job because - and this is true - the president likes his, quote, "lively intelligence briefings."
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HONG: What?
SAGAL: What does that mean?
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SAGAL: Is Pompeo, like, OK, Mr. President, (intimidating air plane) here comes an update on the ISIS situation. Open wide (intimidating air plane).
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SAGAL: Why, Mr. President, what's behind your ear? Why, it's a shiny threat assessment.
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HONG: Is he using sock puppets?
SAGAL: It's possible.
HONG: Like, this one's Kim Jung Un.
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SAGAL: I am Mr. Putin. I am bad.
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SAGAL: All right. Your next quote is a protest sign among many we saw carried on Wednesday of this week.
KURTIS: I should be writing my college essay.
SAGAL: That part - that sign was part of a national anti-gun protest led by whom?
FRASCA: The students, I guess - they were walking out.
SAGAL: Yeah, the students, teenagers, children basically.
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SAGAL: On Wednesday, students across the country, elementary schools on up, walked out of their classroom to protest guns. The whole country was watching with the exception of Betsy DeVos, who's trying to keep her perfect record of having absolutely no idea what's going on in America's schools.
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SAGAL: These kids - and like I said, many of them are children - are incredible. They're organized. They're articulate. They're motivated. You hear them talk and you think, man, people of my generation were terrible teenagers. They're going to change policy in this country. All we did was figure out how to make a bong out of an apple.
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ROCCA: So this is great. So we can just keep tweeting while they actually do stuff.
SAGAL: Exactly right.
HONG: These kids were amazing. I mean, they were amazing.
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HONG: They were so articulate and eloquent and impassioned. I mean, I was on my speech team when I was in high school. But we were making speeches about whether the cafeteria meatloaf was spicy enough.
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BODETT: Yeah, well, I mean, we've seen this before. You know, the anti-war movement and, you know, the anti-draft stuff and the protests. These were all young people. And then, you know, and then they came of age to vote and swept George McGovern into office in 1972 as...
SAGAL: It worked great.
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BODETT: ...As we all remember.
SAGAL: Yeah, I know.
BODETT: There's no stopping this juggernaut.
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SAGAL: These kids are so - I have no - I don't have time for your cynicism, Tom.
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SAGAL: Andrew, here's your last quote. It's from the world of commerce.
KURTIS: Drunk me has weird taste.
SAGAL: That was a person quoted on the financial news site MarketWatch talking about the fact that she, like millions of other Americans, does what while she's drunk?
FRASCA: Snack, I guess. I don't know.
SAGAL: No, no, no. Snacking is old and tired. This is the new, hot and exciting activity to do when you're drunk, especially at home in front of your computer.
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FRASCA: Oh, drunk order stuff online.
SAGAL: Yes, drunk shopping.
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SAGAL: This is apparently a scourge.
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SAGAL: Last year, Americans spent on average $448 in drunk purchases. That's billions of dollars that nobody can remember spending. You know how it is. You go to the bar. You knock back a few shots. The next morning, you wake up next to some new blender. And you can't even remember it's brand name.
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BODETT: You know, if we'd only get drunk and, like, you know, support our public schools instead.
SAGAL: I know.
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BODETT: Like, can you imagine? It would fix it, right?
HONG: Yeah.
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SAGAL: Well, drunk...
HONG: This audience might get drunk and support their local NPR station.
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HONG: Oh, I made this drunk donation last night, and now I'm getting a tote bag. It's crazy.
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HONG: Wild.
ROCCA: Yeah, drunk pledging.
SAGAL: One drunk shopper interviewed by MarketWatch said she'd sobered up to find that she had bought 500 candy canes. She doesn't know why.
HONG: What?
SAGAL: Another said she'd purchased a police officer costume for her cat...
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SAGAL: ...Which she said was quote, "one of the best things she'd ever bought."
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HONG: Yeah.
BODETT: You know, I just realized that one of the most fortunate things about my life is that I got sober before there was the Internet.
SAGAL: Yeah.
ROCCA: Yeah. It's one thing to be an analog alcoholic.
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HONG: Yeah.
ROCCA: But not a broadband boozer.
BODETT: No, no.
ROCCA: Then you're in trouble.
BODETT: I mean, it was in Alaska. I would have been a dial-up alcoholic. But I could've still done some damage.
SAGAL: Bill, how did Andrew do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Andrew's been studying. He got three in a row. Thanks, Andrew.
SAGAL: Congratulations, Andrew.
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FRASCA: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROOMFUL OF BLUES SONG, "LOST MIND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.