JENNIFER MILLS, BYLINE: The following program was taped in front of an audience of real, live people.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ALZO SLADE, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Alzo Slade, the guy they bring in when it's too windy for Bill Kurtis to land his jet pack.
(LAUGHTER)
SLADE: And here is your host, at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Alzo. Thank you so much.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thank you, everybody. Yeah. Later on - we do have a great show. I'm just as excited. Later on, we're going to be talking to the singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus, who is also part of the Grammy-winning supergroup Boygenius, arguably...
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Woo.
SAGAL: Yes. Get excited. Boygenius is arguably the most successful musical act ever named after "Young Sheldon."
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: First, we want to test your IQ. Give us a call. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant this week. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
BLYTHE: Hi, this is Blythe (ph), calling from Long Island, New York.
SAGAL: Long Island. What do you do there in Long Island?
BLYTHE: I'm an assistant district attorney specializing in financial crimes, but right now I'm on maternity leave with my first baby.
SAGAL: Oh, my gosh.
(CHEERING)
SAGAL: I'm thinking about this. I wonder if your skills as a district attorney, a prosecutor, will be of any use as a mother.
(LAUGHTER)
BLYTHE: Maybe once he can start negotiating back.
SAGAL: Exactly.
BLYTHE: Right now, I'm just in a hostage situation.
SAGAL: Exactly.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Blythe. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, a comedian whose new special "Unamerican" is available now on Amazon, Apple TV, and streaming services everywhere. It's our friend Adam Burke.
ADAM BURKE: Hi.
BLYTHE: Hey, Adam.
BURKE: Hello.
SAGAL: Next, the host of the trivia show "Go Fact Yourself" on select NPR stations. She'll also be at Emerald City, Seattle, on December 19. It's Helen Hong.
HELEN HONG: Hello. Hi.
(APPLAUSE)
HONG: Hi, everybody.
SAGAL: And a humorous woodworker whose new podcast "The Bodett Problem" debuts. Listen to the pilot episode at hatchspace.org. It's Tom Bodett.
TOM BODETT: Hello, Blythe.
BLYTHE: Hi, Tom.
BODETT: Nice to talk to you.
SAGAL: So, Blythe, welcome to the show. You're going to play Who's Alzo This Time? Alzo Slade is going to read you three quotations from this week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain just two of them, you will win our prize - any voice from our show you might choose for your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
BLYTHE: Yes, sir.
SAGAL: All right. Here's your first quote.
SLADE: From two DVDs a week to owning Hollywood. Very impressive.
SAGAL: That was a New York Times commentator on news that who has struck a deal to buy Warner Brothers studios for just $83 billion?
BLYTHE: Netflix.
SAGAL: Netflix. Yes, very good.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Netflix announced they'd be buying Warner Brothers, which includes, of course, HBO and, you know, CNN, DC, all the other letters of the alphabet, not currently owned by Disney. Netflix assured consumers who are worried about a Hollywood monopoly that even if they do end up owning every single streaming service, you will still be able to pay a separate subscription fee for each of them.
(LAUGHTER)
HONG: I know this is supposed to be horrible, and it's a monopoly, and it's going to drive up prices and kill creatives but think about the mash-up possibilities.
SAGAL: Please.
HONG: Like "Kpop Demon Hunters" sing along featuring Frodo and Gandalf.
(LAUGHTER)
HONG: (Impersonating Gandalf) You shall not pass (singing) 'cause we're going up, up, up.
(LAUGHTER)
HONG: (Singing) It's our moment.
SAGAL: I was just going to wait for you to do it.
HONG: Yeah.
SAGAL: I was going to sit here in silence until you gave us a sample. Thank you.
HONG: I was hoping for you to jump in, Peter.
BURKE: (Laughter).
SAGAL: No.
HONG: You left me hanging.
BODETT: Your comment that we're still going to have to pay separate subscriptions...
SAGAL: Yes.
BODETT: ...That was the only hope I had was that, like, half of those tiles on my screen would disappear.
BURKE: (Laughter).
BODETT: And there would just be, like, the end would just get bigger...
SAGAL: And bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And all of your waking hours will now be taken with scrolling through choices.
BURKE: (Laughter).
SAGAL: You know what I think would be cool? I think if Netflix bought them all up, shut them all down and just went back to mailing us DVDs.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Ha.
BODETT: That's sounding better all the time.
BURKE: But aren't - Netflix are $18 billion in debt, and they're spending $83 billion. Who do they think they are, me?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now, people are worried - this is true - that if Netflix, which streams, of course, video, buys one of the last movie studios, Warner Brothers, that will be the end of movies in theaters. What about a shared communal experience? Shouts the one guy you know who's always going to the movies alone.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: Yeah. But also, I mean, how are they going to recreate that feeling of being in the cinema, you know, sitting there through 45 minutes of ads?
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODETT: Yeah.
SAGAL: You know what? I got to say - this is true - I went and saw a movie the other day, and I'll just say I didn't enjoy it very much in the theater, and it wasn't so much I wanted to leave, but that I wanted to be able to point something at the screen and find out how much more of it I had to endure.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: Yeah. I - you know what? That happened to be in the movie recently, too. I was like, how long is - yeah.
SAGAL: Exactly.
BURKE: (Laughter).
SLADE: You want to just move the mouse around.
BURKE: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SAGAL: All right, Blythe, here is your next quote.
SLADE: It's driving like a New York City taxi driver.
SAGAL: That was one of many people who have noticed that what kind of cars have started getting a lot more aggressive on the road?
BLYTHE: Is it self-driving car?
SAGAL: Yes, it is self-driving cars.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Specifically, Waymos. Waymo's driverless taxis are already operating in some cities, and customers had complained about trips being slow, because the cars were too polite, right? They stopped behind double-parked delivery trucks instead of driving around them in the other lane. They slowed down to check on the people they hit.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So - and this is true - the car's programming has been tweaked to make it a little bit more human. Nobody coming in the opposite lane? Well, drive around the truck. No other cars around? Well, just roll through the stop sign. School zone? If you say so.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So some people say, well, now it drives, like, aggressively, like a New York City cabby. As a matter of fact, many Waymo passengers have noticed the sudden appearance of, like, pine tree air fresheners on the rear-view mirror. Although, of course, it's not really a New York cabby unless the car itself says, oh, I wish Giuliani was still mayor.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: Who was complaining that they were too polite?
SAGAL: Passengers.
BODETT: Yeah. I went through - it was actually more hilarious than unnerving was I owned a Tesla when - and it had the beta self-drivi
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