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Chapter 1: What are reflecting pools and why are they significant?
This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, but most times, the little mysteries are the best.
Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know what, I've never seen this happen.
Wait, this is true? This is true. Mysteries of every size, each week. This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts.
From NPR in WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm a household name, as long as you're in my household. I'm Alzo Slade, and here's your host at the Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal.
Thank you, Alzo. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
We've got a great show for today. Later on, we're going to be talking to indie rock icon Stephen Malcolm as leader of the band Pavement. But first, we want to congratulate Alzo Slade on his first month as our official judge and scorekeeper. That means he has lasted longer in the job than five British prime ministers.
But you never know what might happen, so you better call before there's a vote of no confidence. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, wait, wait, don't tell me. Hi, this is David from Brooklyn. Hey, David from Brooklyn. Can you differentiate yourself? There are a lot of Davids in Brooklyn.
Well, father of two, run two half marathons, and I can see Barclays Center from my house.
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Chapter 2: How do hydration breaks affect sports events?
David, you've got three out of three already. Well played, sir. Well played. All right, your first quote is from a White House spokesperson speaking on Tuesday about a body of water gone completely green with algae. The pool is clear and reflecting beautifully. What pool was she talking about? He is talking about the reflecting pool. Yes, the reflecting pool on the National Mall.
In May, the president announced he'd be renovating the reflecting pool, quote, ahead of schedule. And just a month later, it is a fetid mass filled with algae, floating debris, and a few dead ducks. But to be fair, it is ahead of schedule. Trump said the pool had actually been damaged by vandals with knives, quote, probably in the dark of night, unquote.
And do you know how bad a lie is that even Donald Trump used the word probably? I'm sure you guys have been following this national drama with rapt attention. Yeah, I don't know. The dead ducks, it kind of feels like the new Groundhog's Day.
Like, if you find a dead duck around the pool, that means four more years of Trump. Oh, God.
Yes.
Yes.
It's funny that he said it was damaged by vandals when there's like video that they drove the motorcade through it.
Yes, this is actually true. Yeah. When it was empty, he had his motorcade, which as you know, he's the president. It's a huge thing. Drive into the reflecting pool and down the empty bottom and out. Yeah. I think he should do it while it's full. Yeah.
The damage to the reflecting pool after this renovation includes holes, cracks, peeling caulk in the seams, and long sheets of the supposedly waterproof bottom coating floating to the surface. At the end of the week, this is true, they just, with all these people coming to gawk at the damage, they just fenced off the entire thing so nobody can see what they're doing to it now.
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Chapter 3: What is the story behind the 'hot podium guy'?
I'm not a soccer fan at all, but now I call it football because I'm a British person.
But I am a fan of men who don't skip leg day. So I have been watching. Y'all better not skip leg day. John Marco got his gams out right now under the table.
I do. I do. I guess we should have these breaks. I don't know why. Don't call them water breaks. In the theater, we call them intermissions.
Yes. And I think they're wonderful. Yeah.
I mean, they have to run so much in soccer, and they have to hit the ball with their head. I would need a break.
As you can tell, this is the least athletic panel that's ever been on this show, which is saying something.
Do you ever hear the sound of a ball hitting the goalie's hand?
You just want to go like, ow! Like, imagine a ball hitting your hand like that.
Well, that's why they wear the big Mickey Mouse gloves, right? I don't even know.
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Chapter 4: How does Stephen Malkmus reflect on his career with Pavement?
Thanks for playing. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Right now, panel, time for you to answer some questions about this week's news. Joyelle, after the TSA kept stopping international travelers trying to bring it home in their carry-ons, Kraft has introduced, quote, TSA-compliant three-ounce bottles of what? Something disgusting.
It was like cottage cheese or something?
No, it's the thing that all the European tourists, foreign tourists have decided is the best thing about American cuisine.
What is the best thing about American cuisine?
Okay. Craft. Craft makes... Cheese. I'll give you a hint. This is even true if you're traveling home. They'll take it away from you even if you're traveling home to the Hidden Valley. Ew, ranch dressing? Ranch dressing.
Wow.
You've been in Europe, so you've missed this. All the tourists are going nuts for ranch dressing. The soccer players drink it on their breaks. It's crazy. I know. They make it travel-size ranch dressing? Kraft has announced travel-size bottles of ranch dressing to go through TSA because people are like, oh, my God, this American delicacy, and they're buying bottles to bring home.
But the TSA keeps confiscating the ranch dressing from passengers because technically it's a liquid, and you can't have that much liquid. Imagine... You're in that situation, and you just do what you always do when you have a bottle of water in the TSA lane. You just chug it. This is getting grosser.
You put a new sticker on it that says lotion.
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Chapter 5: What construction issues are discussed in the episode?
Follow It's Been a Minute wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll break down the zeitgeisty topics that are filling your feed.
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 Gianmarco Seresi, Joelle Nicole Johnson, and Emmy Blotnick.
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 Bluff, the listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you are on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.
Hi, this is Glynn calling from West Lafayette, Indiana.
Well, that's fabulous. What do you do there in West Lafayette? I just finished my PhD, and my side hobby lately has been planning my wedding, which is this weekend. Oh, my gosh. This weekend? That's so exciting. What are you doing talking to us? Shouldn't you be, I don't know, planning things, talking to your bridesmaids, freaking out? I mean, this is a regular... No, they've got it handled.
It's all planned. Well, Mazel Tov to you, but it is great to have you with us to play our games. You're going to play, in fact, the game where you have to tell truth from fiction. Also, what is Glenn's topic? Glenn, come on down. Game shows, of course, those most revered and important programs that run for years, famously, always with handsome hosts, sporting beautiful full heads of hair.
Well, this week we heard a really amazing story that came from the world of game shows. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Pick the real one, and you'll get the weight-waiter of your choice on your voicemail. Are you ready to play? Let's do it. Let's do it. First up, let's hear from Joelle Nicole Johnson.
Sakonal Suos and his wife Asia won big on the only season of the Cambodian game show, Take My Wife or My Life.
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Chapter 6: How does AI influence content creation and news?
Thank you, Emmy. Thank you. A study found that men who referred to their wives with a compliment on Wheel of Fortune had more successful marriages than those who referred to their wives without one. Your last contestant is Gianmarco Cerresi.
Plans for another season of Mr. Beast's Beast Games on Amazon have been put on hold after it was discovered that an episode in season two plagiarized several of the challenges from KGB interrogation techniques.
The similarities were first spotted by former Soviet foreign intelligence officer Yuri Gordievsky, who remarked that Episode 5's grocery store challenge utilized an ultra-luminescent exposure technique that was originally designed by the KGB to make people temporarily insane, while also remarking that Mr. Beast took it to an extreme that would, quote-unquote, never have been allowed in the Soviet Union.
Since the news broke, dozens of other former KGB have come forward to say the show reminds them why they defected in the first place.
While the show's future remains in limbo, several of the previous challenges have already been implemented to optimize performance in Amazon warehouses.
So here are your choices. We found a news item related to game shows this week. Was it, from Joyelle, that there's a cult based on the host's success on game shows? From Emmy Blotnick, we heard about a study showing that if you are on Wheel of Fortune and you refer to your wife with a lovely compliment, my beautiful wife, your marriage will be more successful.
Or from Gianmarco Ceresi, a discovery that the Beast Games stole many of their most exciting challenges from the KGB, which was the real story we found in the news.
I can definitely see Mr. Beast doing something like that, and I'm a huge fan of John Marcos, so I'll go with number three.
Whoa. You have a huge fan, John Marco. That's very nice. I know. So you're going to choose John Marco's story. Well, okay, to bring you the real story, we spoke to an expert.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of using delivery robots in emergencies?
But the band, I mean, what I've heard about Pavement is something that was also once said about the Velvet Underground. Like, you know, they didn't have as many listeners as some other bands, but everybody who listened started their own band.
Yeah, I get a lot of CDs.
Remember those? CDs. People are sending you CDs saying... No, just at the shows. People come up and they go, you influenced me, here's my band. Because it's kind of...
Seems like you can do it, if you hear us. It's not particularly, like, virtuous.
Wait, are you telling me that, like, the message that people got from your seminal records in the 90s was they listened to paper? Like, I could do that.
Pretty much.
You know, we have a relationship with tone and tuning and tempo that is loose. Loose. Loose. Yeah. Can we go back to the origins? You founded the band in Stockton, California. Yes. You were sort of a juvenile delinquent, as they used to say. I think it says that on Wikipedia. Yeah. I haven't bothered to change that. I don't know. Can you change it?
Apparently you can, but the consensus is you should not edit your own Wikipedia page.
It's not done. I mean, it's just ridiculous because I know there is something about me like partying on rooftops in the high school and it was just one tiny thing of all the terrible things I did.
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Chapter 8: What humorous predictions are made about the reflecting pool's contents?
What'd you say? I mean, it's really a nice thing to do to even take the time to mention somebody. I see. So he should have been flattered by, oh, wow, you name-checked his band, rather than the subsequent mention of waste of time.
Yeah.
I thought maybe that was... They didn't have a pump in its function, but, you know, they do truly have some good songs. They do. I mean, have you run into Billy down at Pizzeria Uno, for example? No. He's, like, afraid of... You. Yeah, probably, yeah. He lives like in the beyond Evanston from what I understand. Way, way in the far north. Might as well be Wisconsin.
I know you've dismissed this question before that your tour riders for Rockstar is famously weird. Yours is very straightforward, right? I'm told like, do you in fact, you go only so far as to specify a brand of seltzer water? Well, maybe La Croix, as we say it in France. Yeah. Or Montreal or something. Yeah, we have a basic writer. I don't, I mean, the other guys want towels. Towels?
I don't use towels. Ever?
You just air dry?
I don't sweat that much. Really? Not too much. I don't, I wouldn't do that on stage.
Oh, man.
Just kidding. Yeah, I don't need them. And they're always black and kind of seem... What's wrong with that?
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