This week, special guest Nathan Lane joins panelists Shantira Jackson, Luke Burbank, and Roy Blount, Jr.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the NPR funding situation and how does it affect this show?
Hey, a quick note before we start today's show. You may have heard that President Trump has issued an executive order seeking to block all federal funding to NPR. This is the latest in a series of threats to media organizations across the country. This puts everything you love about NPR in danger, including even our show.
And without us, where would the nation get its essential supply of dad jokes? We are proud to be here doing what we do for you, and now we have to ask you to be here for us. Visit donate.npr.org to give. And if you already support us via NPR Plus or another means, thank you. Your support means so much to us and, of course, to the dads who need material.
From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Alzo Slade filling in for Bill Curtis so I can finally tell Peter Sagal what to do. Here he is at the Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois. Start talking now, Peter.
Thank you, Alzo. And thank you, everybody. Thanks for being here with us. It is a good day. It's an exciting time. Later on, we're going to be talking to Nathan Lane, who is star of Stage and Screen, and now he's the star of the new sitcom Mid-Century Modern, which people are calling the Gay Golden Girls. LAUGHTER So, what does that make the Golden Girls?
But first, before we get started, it is really nice to have Alzo Slade filling in for Bill this week. Alzo, I got to say, what made you want to leave the panel and take on the grave responsibilities of judge and scorekeeper?
It pays more.
And I'm glad you believed that when we told you. And we are glad you listeners out there are ready to do your job, which is to call in and play our games. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.
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Chapter 2: Who are the panelists and listeners playing the news quiz today?
Hi, Peter. It's Allison Becker from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Indianapolis, that beautiful place. What do you do there?
I actually administer a grant to provide solar opportunities to income-qualified individuals.
That is very exciting. Thank you. Solar opportunities, I mean, I assume you mean tanning, sunbathing.
It might come to that after the inauguration. That's true, yes.
All right, well, welcome to the show, Allison. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up is the host of the daily podcast, TBTL, and the public radio variety show, Livewire, which will be live back at the Alberta Rose Theatre Thursday, May 15th in Portland, Oregon. It's Luke Burbank. Hey, Allison. Hey. Hello. They're booing for rolling back the subsidies for solar power. Exactly.
Next, it's a writer for Clean Slate, which is now on Amazon Prime. It's Shantira Jackson.
Hi.
And a writer whose absolutely essential sub stack is Take Another Little Piece of My Heart Now. It's Roy Blunt Jr. Hi. So, Alison, welcome to the show. Your job is going to be the first person ever to play who's Alzo this time. Alzo Slade, filling in for Bill, is going to read you three quotations from the week's news.
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Chapter 3: What are some funny news quotes and their stories this week?
The Cubs won the World Series? Yeah.
They did. Now, the Pope has not lived in Chicago for decades, but that does not matter to us. We are so thirsty. We will say you are a Chicagoan if you have a long layover at O'Hare. And is there any other kind? I know.
I like it because I grew up Southern Baptist, and I don't really know too much about the popes. But I will say that this feels like the Olympics is the only time where I'm like, go America, go. Really, yeah. We're all patriots. We won something, and I'll take the gold, even if it's a chalice.
You're like white water canoeing? That's a sport?
Okay. I was like, go America, go baby. Let's beat them in something.
I know. It was so great when the smoke came out. It was white, then red, then blue. We knew. It was awesome. Yeah. And I need not tell everyone that we are incredibly proud here in Chicago that one of our own has gotten the big chair. And by that, I mean the big chair. One commenter on a news story here. This is true. He's like reading the news and he likes that. Oh my god.
This guy's been to my house And and this is true. He he was reported to be a Cubs fan Everybody assumes were Cubs fans and his brother called the news to correct the record. He is in fact a White Sox fan, right? Yes, imagine You really need the Lord if you care about the whites exactly imagine suffering that much and still believing in God. I
Honestly, I think that's so funny that a White Sox fan became the Pope to try to help them. That's actually going to be... That's love for Chicago, baby. I'll become the Pope to try to get you a little bit of help.
That will be an interesting data point for the White Sox, who have not been so great recently. Not good, no. To see if their fortunes improve now that they have a direct line. Exactly. The creator.
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Chapter 4: What is the story behind the 2016 Honda Civic in the Bluff the Listener game?
What's going to happen to the butterfly kiss industry?
And then all the men are just going to have pink eye. You know it.
Coming up, our panelists give you a civics lesson and a bluff the listener game called 1-888-WAIT-WAIT-TO-PLAY. We'll be back in a minute with more of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPO.
This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Hey, it's Peter Sagal with a quick plug for a recent bonus episode.
A former contestant fesses up to cheating. I got scared. I got nervous about looking foolish on national radio. So we gave him a Bluff the Listener do-over. I had no real idea. Wow. Really? To hear it, sign up for NPR+. You get other perks, too, like sponsor-free listening and discounts at the NPR shop. Just head over to plus.npr.org.
We've all been there, running around the city, looking for a bathroom, but unable to find one. Hello. Do you have a restroom we could use? A very simple free market solution is that we could just pay to use a bathroom, but we can't. On the Planet Money podcast, the story of how we once had thousands of paid toilets and why they got banned. From Planet Money on NPR, wherever you get your podcasts.
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From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Alzo Slade. We're playing this week with Shantira Jackson, Roy Blunt Jr., and Luke Burbank. And here again is your host at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal.
Thank you, Alzo. Right now, it's time for the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Right now, it's time for the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me bluff elicitor game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Or you can always check out the pinned post on our Instagram page, at WaitWaitNPR. Hi, you're on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.
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Chapter 5: Who is Nathan Lane and what is his new sitcom Mid-Century Modern about?
By the time the premise was, you were finished explaining it, people had left the room. So that didn't go so well.
So this is exciting. The show, let's talk about Mid-Century Modern. Okay. My understanding is that it was pitched to you. This was made by the creators of the classic and brilliant sitcom Will & Grace, and they came to you and they said, it's a gay Golden Girls. Is that correct? Is that how they pitched it?
Yes, and I thought, well, that's kind of redundant, but... LAUGHTER But it was actually Ryan Murphy. I was working for Ryan Murphy doing this miniseries about the Menendez brothers, and he had read this script, and he had never done a situation comedy before, a multi-camera situation comedy. But he thought the script was great, and they had written it, I was told, with me in mind.
And so I read it, and I thought it was hilarious, and that's how it all came to be.
When you were on the show last time, you talked about some odd jobs you had. But we were looking over your resume, and you are a Broadway legend. I don't know how many Tonys you've won. You just rule that street. But I found out that you're... Three. I've won three. Three. You keep count. I don't keep count. One pony for each panelist. Exactly.
But I found out that your Broadway debut was very surprising to me. It was a show called Merlin... No. No, it was not your Broadway debut.
LAUGHTER
For those who remember George C. Scott.
I remember him well, but that, yeah. But then, I'm sorry, that was not. But then you did Merlin with Doug Henning. Doug Henning was this, for those who don't remember, he was a very famous magician in like the 70s who was sort of famous for his sort of, shall we say, hippie aura. Would that be accurate?
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Chapter 6: What were Nathan Lane's previous TV experiences and Broadway debut?
So, yeah, your name being Nathan Lane, as we all know, we are going to ask you about staying in your lane and other driving-related matters. Oh, you're kidding, because, you know, I don't drive. Well, I wondered about that. I wondered about that. This is the wrong game for me. It's like a Zen thing. An empty mind leads to success here. Here we go. Who is Nathan Lane playing for?
David Young of Phoenix, Arizona. Finland is pretty serious about speeding tickets. When one guy was pulled over in 2023 for driving less than 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, what happened to him? A, the gas was drained from his car by police and he had to push it home. B, he was fined more than $100,000. Or C, he was forced to stand on a
I think the last one, he had a hard time saying, I'm sorry. In Finnish, presumably. In Finnish, exactly.
No, he was actually fined more than $100,000. You see, Finland has this system where they have a sliding scale for moving violation fines based on your income, and he was really rich. Wow. Yeah. You both have two more questions, and you have a lot of fans in this room, so I think you'll be okay. Okay. We get news accounts every week about people using dummies to drive in the carpool lane.
Are you aware of this, Nathan? Perhaps you've seen it in California. Oh, sure.
They have these high occupancy vehicles. I always travel with dummies. Exactly.
And one such person who tried that got himself into even more trouble when he got pulled over and the highway patrolman came up to give him a ticket for driving in the carpool lane with a dummy. What did the man do to get himself in trouble? A, he claimed, that's not a dummy. That's where I hide all my drugs.
B leaned over to the dummy and said loudly enough for the cop to hear, don't worry, I got this. Or C just quickly swapped seats and claimed the dummy was driving.
I say he leaned over and said, don't worry, I got this. You're right. You're right.
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Chapter 7: How was the sitcom Mid-Century Modern pitched and created?
Chapter 8: What are some humorous observations about masculinity and style trends?
Oh, no.
In a growing trend among those men who, yes, would in fact jump off a cliff if that's what their friends did. These men are going into barbershops and asking their barbers for an eyelash trim because eyelashes are now too feminine. What? It's true. What's more manly than constantly crying because of all the dust in your eyes?
Have you ever met a woman? I love a man with nice eyelashes. This is how you know men only talk to each other. Girls like eyelashes. We especially like them when they look like ours because we are egotistical.
That's how you do butterfly kisses, right?
Exactly.
What's going to happen to the butterfly kiss industry?
And then all the men are just going to have pink eye. You know it.
Coming up, our panelists give you a civics lesson and a bluff the listener game called 1-888-WAIT-WAIT-TO-PLAY. We'll be back in a minute with more of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPO.
This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Hey, it's Peter Sagal with a quick plug for a recent bonus episode.
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