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Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Kali Reis

17 Jan 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

4.435 - 26.478 Bill Curtis

From NPR and WBZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm the voice so soothing, lullabies listen to me to fall asleep. I'm Bill Curtis, and here's your host at the Studebaker Theatre at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal.

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26.498 - 43.882 Hari Kondabolu

Thank you, Bill. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you. So good to be with you. You do have a great show for today. Later on, we're going to be talking to Kaylee Reese, a champion boxer who seemingly almost overnight became an acclaimed and Emmy-nominated actor starring in HBO's True Detective.

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Chapter 2: Who is Kali Reis and what are her recent accomplishments?

43.922 - 62.588 Hari Kondabolu

She's now starring in the upcoming movie Mercy. We assume that she learns her lines by punching them. If you'd like to try your hand at a non-contact competition, give us a call to play our games. That's 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

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62.948 - 66.594 Benjamin

Hi, Peter. My name is Benjamin, and I'm calling from Boston, Massachusetts.

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66.674 - 67.315 Hari Kondabolu

Boston?

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Chapter 3: How does Kali Reis balance boxing and acting?

67.415 - 70.96 Hari Kondabolu

I spent a lot of time in Boston, one of my favorite places. What do you do there?

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70.94 - 77.087 Benjamin

Well, I work as a computational chemist at a scientific software and discovery company called Schrodinger.

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78.389 - 80.311 Hari Kondabolu

Typical Boston guy, am I right?

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81.373 - 82.053 Rachel Koster

Absolutely.

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82.194 - 94.028 Hari Kondabolu

Yeah, absolutely. That's great. Well, welcome to the show, Benjamin. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, she's host of the TikTok series, Boy Room, found wherever you might watch your short form videos.

Chapter 4: What insights does Kali Reis share about her boxing journey?

94.288 - 95.469 Hari Kondabolu

It's Rachel Koster.

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97.212 - 97.572

Hey, Benjamin. Hi.

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98.902 - 123.382 Hari Kondabolu

Next up, he's a comedian and co-host of the new podcast, Health Stuff, which is found wherever you get your podcasts. It's Hari Kondabolu. Hello, sir. Hi, Hari. And he is the host of the daily podcast, TBTL, as well as the public radio variety show, Live Wire, which will be live at the Reeser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon, on January 23rd. It's our old friend, Luke Burbank.

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123.903 - 125.766 Hari Kondabolu

Hey there, Benjamin.

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Chapter 5: What humorous anecdotes arise during the quiz segment?

125.786 - 142.226 Hari Kondabolu

Hi, Luke. So Benjamin, welcome to the show. You're going to play Who's Bill? This time Bill Curtis 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 go? Yeah, I'm ready. All right.

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142.906 - 149.294 Hari Kondabolu

Your first quote is from President Trump responding to a country saying it wanted to remain part of Denmark.

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Chapter 6: How do the panelists react to current news stories?

150.055 - 158.638 Hari Kondabolu

That's their problem. Whose problem is it that they don't want to be invaded by the United States?

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160.084 - 160.947 Benjamin

That would be Greenland.

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160.968 - 182.423 Hari Kondabolu

That would be Greenland. This week, the administration met with the leaders of both Denmark and Greenland and told them, get ready to get liberated. Trump has been obsessed with Greenland for a long time, and we know why. They made Greenland one of the five words he had to remember on his cognitive test.

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184.166 - 187.971 Luke Burbank

I don't think I knew Greenland was a real place until about eight months ago.

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188.626 - 190.589 Hari Kondabolu

I don't think the president did either.

190.629 - 191.47 Luke Burbank

Yeah.

Chapter 7: What unexpected lessons does Kali Reis learn from her experiences?

191.49 - 197.558 Luke Burbank

That's why neither of us should be trying to take control of the place we only learned existed eight months ago.

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197.578 - 225.867 Hari Kondabolu

Now, people have speculated, and the White House, like, has not been able to deny this, that Trump wants Greenland so badly because it looks so much bigger on flat maps, right, than it actually is. Their Mercator projection is if I needed to tell NPR people about that. Yeah, right, right. We should never, never have given him any of those map of the world placemats. It's oil, right?

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225.907 - 230.312 Hari Kondabolu

What is up there? No, there's rare earth minerals. Oh, okay, right.

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230.353 - 231.033 Unknown

Which ones?

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Chapter 8: What predictions do the panelists make about the future of space exploration?

231.194 - 237.902 Hari Kondabolu

I don't know. He doesn't know. They're rare, though, and they're in the earth. We have to go get them, right?

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237.922 - 240.405 Unknown

There's got to be aliens there or something. Like, he knows something.

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240.786 - 241.106 Hari Kondabolu

You think?

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241.126 - 253.363 Unknown

Yeah, of course. Why would he be so excited and be keeping it such a secret? Rare minerals? No one's going to look into that. An alien? I would live there if no one else is there and... I haven't thought this one through.

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253.383 - 273.774 Hari Kondabolu

Sorry, guys. Well, pretty much neither has anyone else. You want to be president? Exactly. All right. Very good. Here is your next quote. We will be installing a few bidets in Gracie Mansion. That was somebody moving into his new residence in New York this week. Who is it?

274.776 - 276.238 Benjamin

That would be Zoran Mamdani.

276.258 - 300.645 Hari Kondabolu

Zoran Mamdani. Very good, Benjamin. Thank you. Two weeks after his inauguration, New York's new mayor Zoran Mamdani and his wife Rama are moving from, this is true, their one bedroom apartment in Queens to the 11,000 square foot mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that he gets to live in for free. See, he told you he would make housing more affordable.

302.178 - 313.602 Hari Kondabolu

And the bidets that he is, in fact, having installed there are just confirming for his many enemies that he is one of those effete European types. Real Americans don't even wash their hands.

315.807 - 321.84 Peter Sagal

He's installing bidets, or as we say in New York, he's taking care of the subway.

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