WWDTM: Carissa Moore, Bob Costas, and Jim Rice
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What are the highlights and reflections on 2025?
Hey, it's Peter Sagal. We are almost at the end of 2025. And if I may, I will speak for everybody at NPR and at your local stations and in public media and say, good riddance. But despite the loss of federal funding for public media, despite attacks on the free press, we are still here for you. And we will be next year. With your support, NPR will keep reporting the news. And here at Wait, Wait, we will try to, you know, lighten the load at the end of the week with some jokes about the news and some fun conversations with interesting people. And yes, the occasional fart joke. If you are already an NPR Plus supporter, thank you so much. We see you and we are so grateful for you. If not, please join the community of public radio supporters right now, before the end of the year, at plus.npr.org.
Signing up unlocks a bunch of perks like bonus episodes and more from across NPR's podcasts. Plus, you get to feel good about supporting public media while you listen. Visit plus.npr.org today. And thanks.
From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm the gift you get for the person who has everything. Alzo Slade. And here's your host at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal. Thank you, Alzo, and thank you, everybody. Thank you so much for being with us. Well, everybody, we made it. We made it through 2025, a year that began with terrible apprehension about the future and has ended the exact same way. My motto is, instead of worrying about what's about to happen, enjoy some things that already did. So, this hour, we're going to relish the great things we got to do in 2025, such as talking to the legendary sportscaster Bob Costas, which we did in September, along with guest scorekeeper Che Reinfest-Smith.
Now, I asked Bob if, as per the cliche, he had started talking about sports because he couldn't play them. You know, I wouldn't say that I failed. I wasn't that bad by schoolyard standards, but I couldn't make my high school baseball a basketball team. And the baseball coach, who was also a math teacher, that's the way it works in high school, he actually said to me something to the effect of, you're not bad with a glove and you can run a little bit, but I don't think you can hit your weight and I don't think you weigh 130, which might have been true when I was 16 years old. And then he actually said, you know... you're always talking about baseball and you know more about baseball than any of my players.
Have you ever thought about broadcasting? And I said, that's pretty much all I think about. And he actually said, as if it was a movie, good, try that. Whoa. That's awesome. And have you ever gone and like found any of the guys who didn't make the team and say, how long did your career in sports last? One of them actually pitched in the major leagues for two years. He did make it to the big leagues. The rest of them have scattered to the four wins, and I'm sure they're aware of me, and I'm not quite aware of where they are, and I don't care. Yeah! And you went off to Syracuse University, right? The Newhouse School, to learn your trade. This is, of course, if you don't know, it is the Harvard of broadcasting schools.
But I'm curious, how do you learn to do sports broadcasting? Like, what are the skills you have to study? You know, you cannot learn it in a classroom. You want to get as good and as well-rounded an education as you possibly can, and to be a reader, because it improves your appreciation of language and terms of phrase, and the broader your frame of reference is, the more you can bring to bear where appropriate in a sports broadcast or any kind of broadcast. But the only way you actually learn to be a broadcaster is by doing it. You can't sit there in a classroom and learn it. You just have to find out if you have a knack, and then you work on that knack as you move along. So, okay, you're a Hall of Fame broadcaster, an absolute legend in the industry.
Nobody's perfect all the time. Can you remember a time when, like, you just blew it on live TV?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What are the highlights and reflections on 2025?
0:00–8:21
2
How did Bob Costas start his journey in sports broadcasting?
8:21–14:09
3
What skills are essential for sports broadcasting according to Bob Costas?
14:09–16:02
4
What memorable mistakes has Bob Costas made on live TV?
16:02–45:44
5
What unique experiences does Carissa Moore share about her surfing career?
45:44–49:20