Bill Curtis

speaker

2,080 appearances 38 recordings 2 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 30 May

Bill Curtis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 14 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 5.

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Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! · We admire dimes and Aasif Mandvi gives breakup advice · 21 Mar 2026 podcast

Sure.

Here's your first question.

Wedding cakes have been around since at least ancient Roman times, but the tradition back then was a little different.

Instead of the bride and groom cutting the cake together, what would happen?

A, the bride would throw the cake as far as she could and the groom would go find it and bring it back.

B, they would break the cake over the bride's head.

Or C, they would put a live squirrel inside it and wait for it to eat its way out, thus cutting the cake.

I'm going to go with B. Yes, you're right.

They would break the cake over the bride's head.

Oh, they lost a lot of good brides back then.

All right, here's your next question.

Wedding cakes, of course, are a tradition now.

But if you were getting married in 17th century Europe, you and your guests would most likely be cutting into what at the wedding celebration?

Would it be, A, what was known as the bride's pie, a savory pie filled with oysters, lamb testicles, and occasionally live snakes?

B, potatoes, basically just dozens and dozens of potatoes, or C, just the air, or as wedding planners of...

The Time called it a cake of the mind.

No, it was actually A, the bride's pie.

According to Wikipedia, in addition to the other tasty things, they would occasionally put a live snake there to, quote, help guests to pass the time in a wedding.

I guess they did that because at the time they needed entertainment and they had no DJs.

Exactly true.

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