PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Hey, everybody, it's Peter Sagal. As many of you know, we lost our dear friend Carl Kasell this week. So this week, let's let him start the show as he did in 2010.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. And here's your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
SAGAL: Thank you, Carl. Thank you so much.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: So this week, thousands of people reached out to tell us how sorry they were and how much they'll miss Carl. And we will, too. But remember, Carl had a great life. He loved his work. He was able to do it happily as a broadcaster from ages 16 to 80. He traveled the world and the country. And he was beloved by his friends and family. And best of all, he never had to learn to imitate Donald Trump.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So we know what Carl would want for us is for us to do the show he loved doing with us for 16 years. And who are we to argue? We'll have more to say later about Carl. But first, we are excited to talk to Edie Falco, the actress, later in our show. But first, give us a call, play our games and win our prize. The number is 1-888-WAITWAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Now let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
KEVIN PETTIT: Hey, this is Kevin Pettit with western Belchertown, Mass.
SAGAL: It took you a second to remember. I understand. With a name like Belchertown, presumably, you wouldn't want to. Where is Belchertown?
PETTIT: It's in western Massachusetts.
SAGAL: I see.
PETTIT: I think it's Bel-sher (ph), you know?
SAGAL: Oh.
PETTIT: So beautiful.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: It's French. It's French.
HELEN HONG: That suddenly made it fancier.
SAGAL: That's what you should - just keep telling everybody that.
(LAUGHTER)
PETTIT: Yeah.
SAGAL: Kevin...
MO ROCCA: The real estate prices just doubled.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Kevin, let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's a comedian performing in Texas May 10 through the 12th at the Addison Improv, and May 18 through the 20th at the Houston Improv. It's Maz Jobrani.
MAZ JOBRANI: Bonjour, Kevin. Bonjour.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Next is the host of the comedy trivia podcast Go Fact Yourself on the Maximum Fun network, taping live in downtown Los Angeles Sunday, April 22 at the Angel City Brewery. I'm talking about Helen Hong.
HONG: Hey.
PETTIT: Hi.
(APPLAUSE)
HONG: Hi, Kevin from Belchertown.
PETTIT: Hi.
SAGAL: And finally, it's a correspondent for "CBS Sunday Morning" and host of "Henry Ford's Innovation Nation." It's our friend, Mo Rocca.
ROCCA: Hi, Kevin.
(APPLAUSE)
PETTIT: What's up, Mo?
SAGAL: So, Kevin, welcome to the show. You're going to play Who's Bill This Time. Of course, Bill Kurtis is going to read for you three quotations from this week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain two of them, you'll win our prize, the voice of your choice on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
PETTIT: Yes, I am.
SAGAL: All right. Your first quote, you might be surprised to hear, is not the president of the United States. No, it is somebody talking about him.
BILL KURTIS: As I shook his hand, I made a note to check the size, and it seemed like he had average-sized hands.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So who has spent the last year writing a whole book to let us know that the president has normal hands?
PETTIT: James Comey.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: James Comey.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: The former FBI director, last seen fired by the president a year ago and hated by just about everyone, has started the biggest comeback tour since Jesus emerged from the grave and went on every talk show in Jerusalem.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Jesus was really great on "Crossfire."
(GROANING)
HONG: Too soon. Too soon.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Not to mention "Meet the Christ."
(GROANING, LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Trump, of course, was furious about this book. That was a huge surprise to Comey. He thought he'd hidden all the things he had said about the president in the one place Trump would never find them - a book.
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: He's hated by the Hillary people. He's hated by the Trump people. I mean, if he's trying to stand out in some way, and he was already doing that, I mean...
SAGAL: Yeah. He's a very tall guy.
ROCCA: Yeah.
SAGAL: I think at this point, the only people who like James Comey are the people who have something on a very high shelf they need to get.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And a lot of it - but there's been also this tremendous disappointment of - for example, the tour began last Sunday night with George Stephanopoulos. And apparently, ABC News interviewed him for five hours, but all we got to see Sunday night was just a supercut of Comey saying pee tape over and over...
ROCCA: Right.
SAGAL: ...Again over a music bed of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun."
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: I feel bad for him, though. Now I'm thinking, like, it must be so hard for him to pee on an airplane. If you're tall...
SAGAL: Is that where your mind went when you were, like, looking at him?
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: It's just - no, no. We were talking his height, and then we're talking about the pee tape.
HONG: (Laughter).
ROCCA: And it's just - it's difficult, and I'm only about 6 feet tall.
SAGAL: Right.
ROCCA: And on a really small aircraft, it's very difficult to fit in there. I don't know what he does.
HONG: I don't want to think about it, frankly.
(LAUGHTER)
JOBRANI: Maybe he holds it in.
SAGAL: Yeah.
HONG: Yeah, Comey's just too - you can tell he has a huge ego.
ROCCA: And he's probably even too tall for a urinal.
(LAUGHTER)
JOBRANI: You're still - he's still concerned about the peeing.
SAGAL: Really, you seem to be - I mean, we're in the middle of a national crisis about which this man may or may not have important information, and you are mostly concerned about his difficulty using the bathroom.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Here is your next quote.
KURTIS: I've never retained his services. I never received an invoice. I never paid Michael Cohen for legal fees.
SAGAL: That was somebody admitting on his TV show that he never was a client of Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, even though Michael Cohen says, yeah, he's a client. Who is it?
PETTIT: Sean Hannity.
SAGAL: Sean...
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: ...Hannity, obviously.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: You're a fan. I can tell.
HONG: (Laughter).
SAGAL: So Michael Cohen, who is, of course, Trump's personal lawyer and fixer, is, as we know, in some trouble because the feds raided his office and took everything, including his files, his computers and, we presume, the post-it notes that read, remember to pay off Stormy.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So Cohen claimed attorney-client privilege for a lot of these records, but he said that he only had three clients - President Trump, this other big GOP fundraiser, who also had to pay off a Playmate or four, and a mystery client. Who could it be? Somebody who didn't want his name mentioned in court - was it maybe Mike Pence, who needed to pay off a young woman who saw him with his necktie loosened once?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: No. It was Fox News' Sean Hannity. So the question immediately arose - who did Sean Hannity need to pay off? It's horrible to think there are people who got money for sleeping with him. But it's worse...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: It's worse to think of all the people who slept with him and got nothing.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Nothing but some hair oil stains and a mumbled, I got to go. Those...
(GROANING)
SAGAL: Those are the victims here.
HONG: I love that Sean Hannity was immediately trying to be like, oh, there was not a third party - there's - nobody paid off. It's like, Michael Cohen does one thing, right? That's the one thing...
JOBRANI: Fixer.
HONG: He's like one of those kitchen appliances that only does one thing.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Yeah.
HONG: Like, if you walk into a kitchen, and someone is holding a melon baller...
SAGAL: Yeah.
HONG: ...You're not going to be, like, what do you intend to do with that melon - it only does one thing.
(LAUGHTER)
HONG: So if you're hiring Michael Cohen, you're paying off some mistress.
SAGAL: I do like the idea of, like, Michael Cohen, the melon baller of attorneys.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That's great.
HONG: He only does one thing. He only balls melons.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Which is something you can't say for his clients, as we know.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: It's all good. All right. For your last quote, we are now going to go - we're going to leave politics behind. We're going to go to a story that is rocking the food world.
KURTIS: Are you team Mayochup, or should we call it something else?
SAGAL: That was Heinz's Twitter account - you know, the Heinz 57 company - asking fans about their new condiment, which is a mixture of what?
(LAUGHTER)
PETTIT: Mayo - what is it?
SAGAL: It's called Mayochup.
PETTIT: Mayochut (ph)?
SAGAL: Chup.
PETTIT: So chutney and mayonnaise.
SAGAL: No, Mayo...
(LAUGHTER)
KURTIS: That'd be good.
SAGAL: Congratulations...
HONG: Good guess.
SAGAL: ...You've come up with something even grosser...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: ...Than what this actually is. No, it's Mayochup - C-H-U-P.
PETTIT: Ah. It is mayonnaise and ketchup.
SAGAL: Yes, it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
PETTIT: And I use it all the time on my fries.
SAGAL: Do you really? Because we were wondering about this. I did not know anybody who would ever want such a monstrosity, but you said you put...
PETTIT: All the time.
SAGAL: ...Mayonnaise and ketchup on things? On what - your own death certificate? What?
(LAUGHTER)
PETTIT: Oh, you have not lived until you've had mayonnaise and ketchup swirled together and eaten fries with that.
HONG: Oh, god.
SAGAL: Oh.
(LAUGHTER)
JOBRANI: OK.
SAGAL: I really feel like the seventh seal has broken, and out came this condiment.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: The end times are upon us.
HONG: Wait, isn't mayonnaise and ketchup just Thousand Island dressing?
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Hush.
HONG: Oh?
JOBRANI: The French do...
HONG: Fight me.
SAGAL: You're getting in the way of the branding, Helen. Stop.
JOBRANI: The French do mayonnaise with ketchup all the - I mean, with French fries all the time.
SAGAL: French fries all the time.
JOBRANI: Yeah.
HONG: Yeah, what do they know about food?
SAGAL: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: More to the point, what do they know about - what do the French know about French fries?
JOBRANI: French fries.
ROCCA: I prefer Mayotard (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
ROCCA: Mayonnaise and mustard.
HONG: Mayotard.
ROCCA: Mayotard is mayonnaise and mustard.
SAGAL: I understand.
JOBRANI: You know there was a guy - there must have been a guy in that meeting who actually suggested that.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: You mean the guy who formerly worked for Heinz - that guy. No, I mean - and like I said, if you are horrified by this product coming to American shelves, you only have yourselves to blame because what the Heinz Company did - they sold this stuff in Europe, where it's popular. And they put out a Twitter poll, and they said, America, do you want Mayochup? And 55 percent of people voted, yes. That's two elections in a row you voted for something orange and gross, people.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Bill, how did Kevin do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Kevin did great - 3 and 0. Kevin, good luck.
SAGAL: Congratulations.
PETTIT: Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thanks for calling and playing, Kevin.
PETTIT: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF G. LOVE AND SPECIAL SAUCE'S "BABY'S GOT SAUCE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.