Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - HTDE: AI, War, and Exercise, with Arnold Schwarzenegger

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

On today’s episode, how to get rid of Google’s AI summaries, and we help a listener who wants to exercise in her car during a long commute–with an assist from a very overqualified exerciser and a very overqualified driver. Plus we talk about a possible connection between pizza and war with The Washington Post’s Tim Carman.You can check out Tim’s piece here and Juan's training routine here. And you can email your burning questions to [e-mail] To Do Everything won’t live in this feed forever. If you like what you hear, scoot on over to their very own feed and give them a follow.How To Do Everything is available without sponsor messages for supporters of Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me+, who also get bonus episodes of Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me! featuring show outtakes, extended guest interviews, and a chance to play an exclusive WW+ quiz game with Peter! Sign up and support NPR at plus.npr.org.How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. It is produced by Heena Srivastava. Technical direction from Lorna White.******(Once again) after listening:“I am OOO from (INSERT DATES HERE). For any urgent concerns, please email Mike and Ian at [e-mail]. Please bear in mind that Mike and Ian don’t know anything about anything and their help may in fact make your urgent concern worse, but they did promise to answer any email they get from this out of office message.”Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, everybody. It's Ian and Mike. We're going to be doing a YouTube live event on Wednesday, October 1st, 2 p.m. Eastern on the NPR podcast YouTube channel. If you have any weird questions, you can want to see our faces when we try and answer them, this is your chance. No question is, is too weird, or too big, or too small. We're excited to see what you need. We're excited to help you. We'll see you there. Hey, everybody. It's Peter back with another episode of our sister's show, How to do everything. This week, Mike and Ian are joined by, well, let's call him an OG fitness influencer to answer a listener question about working out in the car, which is something I do all the time if, you know, exercising your rage counts. Anyway, enjoy the latest.

Everyone hates that Google AI overview that you get at the top, whenever you try and do a It's never what you want. It's often just wrong. Kyle Orland from Ars Technica has a tip on how to avoid it. Yeah. So if you want to get rid of those AI overviews, all you have to do is put a curse word into the search engine box and you'll get that old list of 10 links instead of the annoying AI telling you something that might possibly be made up. So, like, if I wanted information on the Declaration of Independence, if I type Declaration of Independence, or Declaration of Independence. Yeah, something like that. So the AI overviews tend to come up more when you're asking a question I've found. So if you're like, what time is the Super Bowl?

You might get something like, oh, the AI review says, the Super Bowl usually starts at 4 p.m. And historically, the pregame show starts at it. And then if you say, what time does the Super Bowl start? they will just give you a list of, you know, 10 probably search engine optimized links. There's no risk, is there, Kyle, of there actually being something called the Super Bowl? I'd never really thought of that, but yeah, you might want to have safe search on for that one. You know, there's been some documentation about how Gemini has some explicit instructions not to use curse words in its responses.

So it might be related to that, where there's something also short-circuiting it, where it says, if you give it a curse word in the prompt, then they say, oh, this is not something that Gemini wants to do. So it just goes around AI overviews for those and goes back to standard Google search. I don't know if that's, you know, officially what's going on behind the scenes, but it's the best guess that we have. You know, I realize we talk so much about the environmental impact of AI and the massive amounts of energy that the servers required to run it use. It is a way to help the Earth in such an easy way just to do this when you search. Yeah. And to get your catharsis out too when you're doing it. Yeah.

Does sound like it. I've done some research into this. You know, I don't want to downplay the impact of artificial intelligence energy use. You know, it does use more energy than a regular Google search. But also, you know, I think people worry about the impact of an AI search more than they worry about the impact of saying, getting DoorDash for their burrito, where really the DoorDash burrito is probably doing more harm than thousands and thousands of AI searches. Yeah, I wonder how much energy is used when I order that burrito. Let's ask Google. Maybe they'll have the answer. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Ian.

And I'm Mike. On today's show, How to Exercise in Your Car. And we answer more of your out-of-office needs. But first... Yesterday, Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of military generals and admirals from around the world to Quantico, Virginia, and no one knew why it was happening. Is it a loyalty test? Were they planning a war, a surprise party? You may have been one of the people trying to figure out what was happening, and you may be one of the people who turned to the Pentagon Pizza Report. which some people say can predict when the U.S. military is planning something big. If you've never heard of this before, Tim Carman wrote about it for the Washington Post.

Tim, can you explain it for us? Sure. So the Pentagon Pizza Report, as it's known, on its social media handles, it is a sort of index that shows how busy pizzerias are around the Pentagon. and you will see that there's these big spikes at certain times. And sometimes, very occasionally, I would say very rarely, those spikes correlate to a major world event like when the U.S. bombed the nuclear facilities in Iran in June. Right. But most of the time, it doesn't seem to mean anything.

The idea being that maybe we can see from how busy these pizza places are, that people at the Pentagon working hard, ordering pizza because they're there, because something's about to happen, or something's going on. Right. That's exactly right. That's the general idea. The interesting thing here is, like, so just take it at face value. Say that, okay, sure, the Pentagon brass is working late, maybe on some top secret operation,

but they're ordering a bunch of pizzas which seem to correlate. with something that may be happening. The idea that you can get pizza into the Pentagon, not so easy. Oh, yeah. You cannot be a delivery driver and just pull up to the Pentagon and walk in and have 12 pizzas. You have to have clearance from the Pentagon. The pizzas have to actually go through this surveillance and inspection system that is not actually part of the main Pentagon, but in a building north of it.

So it would have to go to this processing place north of the Pentagon, then come into the Pentagon. So even if they wanted to get pizza, it's not so simple as just, you know, your Uber Eats driver pulling up with your 12 Domino's Supreme Pizza. Wait, Tim, what do they do to the pizza when they inspect it? So I think it goes through an X-ray machine. Okay. There's this agency that is sort of the police for the Pentagon. It's called the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. which sounds like it should be part of the MCU.

They actually are the place from the Pentagon, and I asked them if a large pizza would fit through the X-ray machine, and they said, yes, it would. Wow. And to our knowledge, there's no food taster there who's just making sure. Oh, yeah, no, that's a good question. I didn't ask that, but I'm assuming no. Hey, Elizabeth, what can we help you with?

Well, how can I get some exercise during my long commute? It's an hour each direction, and it's a lot of sitting, and I'd like to maximize my time a little better. Are you the one driving? Yes, I am the one driving. Have you tried any car exercises? I'll play on music and dance. I have like putty And so I'll play with that in my hands

To kind of strengthen my fingers Yeah I've tried to do some ad exercises But that's not so easy Oh You're reclining the seat and then just doing sit-ups Is that? Oh no no no

No like trying to Hold it in And you know maybe do a twist or something Yeah Oh that's smart You ever think Would it makes sense for a car manufacturer

To make the gas pedal like heavier so that you would have to push down on it kind of like a leg press but like a foot press where you could then also select the weight resistance so you maybe get some calf work in that way or the brake pedal for that matter so there's some incentive like if you want to not hit something you better let me ask you a couple more questions

just because I'm not sure how we're going to address this but I feel like some details are going to be helpful to us does the car have heated seats Yes, it does. What about a sunroof? Yes. Does it have a peloton? No.

Because that would be a quick fix. No peloton. There's really just one person to call to help Elizabeth with this problem. Hello, Arnold. Hello. Hi there. This is Mike, and I'm joined by Ian. We're here to talk to you today from NPR. Very nice.

This is, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here's a fun game while you listen to this interview. Try and hear the exact moment, Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of my heroes, starts hating Mike and I for asking him about this. So our question for you, is there anything Elizabeth can do in her car to exercise? Well, I would say when you drive, you should really concentrate on the traffic because that's challenging enough. But I was always fighting with my stomach. So you're bodybuilding days.

So when I drive with the car, I would just suck in my stomach and hold it as long as I can be to discipline myself to keep the stomach in. So that really helped me. Then when I got out of the car, eventually kind of like have your stomach in. And you can do that kind of a training while you're driving. And it doesn't take your eye away from the road or anything like that. Well, let's assume Elizabeth is going to be safe that, you know, if she needs to do it, exercises she could even pull over. She told us that her car has heated seats and that it has a

sunroof. Does that raise any more possibilities for you? No. Forget about the idea. I would strongly recommend for Elizabeth to think about one thing, and that is that we have 24 hours a day. That one hour then she drives to work and the one hour back, those two hours are just driving. That's just the way it is. But then Shifu should find an hour out of the 24 hours, because now we have still 22 hours left. I'm a big believer in gyms, even though I have a home gym. But I go to the public gym simply because I get inspired when I see people left and right of me working out of the machines and sweating and huffing and puffing and trying to do the same thing I do

is get some more firm muscles and stay in shape. Well, Arnold, let me ask you this then. If she shouldn't exercise in her car, and is there a safe thing that you would recommend Elizabeth do? I think she'll listen to you if you would say if there's something else that she should do during that hour-long commute. I say no. I just don't think that we should kind of like milk this situation any longer because it's it. There's 24 hours. We sleep six hours.

Then we have 18 hours left. She drives two hours. so we have 16 hours left. And then she works, let's say, eight to ten hours, and we still have six hours left. So, therefore, what are we doing that time? Is there anything we could suggest to Elizabeth? Once she gets to work, she's at her desk,

is there anything you would suggest she'd do there? No, because there she should work. You don't cook in the toilet. In the toilet, you just sh-h-h-k. And that's what you do in the toilet. And then you're in the kitchen, you don't-s-h-you-cook, and you eat your food. So we have to find places where it is appropriate.

So when you go to work, you work. When you go to the gym, you don't work. Get to your iPhone into your pocket or get rid of it and don't answer any phone calls or anything like this and just go and work out. Well, Arnold, thank you so much for talking to us today. Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Okay, since Arnold Schwarzenegger hates us, we've gone another way to try and help Elizabeth. We've asked a trainer, Juan Camilo Acevedo, a coach at self-mastery training, to write up a car training plan.

We're going to have somebody drive us around while we try some of these exercises. I'm going to have you, can you introduce yourself? Sure. I am a three-time NASCAR champion, Joey Legano. I drive the number 22 Shell Penzel Mustang in the NASCAR Cup series on Sundays. And today we're going to pump iron while we're driving cars. You are a professional driver. I get paid to drive that makes me professional, so yes, I am.

Okay, this first exercise is a Jefferson curl named for Thomas Jefferson, who was famously ripped. Yeah, the gym at Monticello is actually fantastic. Basically, when you do this, you're bending your neck slowly up and down, kind of taking your chin to your chest. So I think what you want to do is you have a straight back, straight back, and you're going to start with your head, and you're going to lower. it vertebrate by vertebrate all the way down as far down as you can go that's a bad idea already this is already bad my head is facing down at my feet i gotta look where i'm going this one no this is a this is a hard no you can't put your head down and look between your legs while you're trying to drive so it can't do that but whatever if we're at a stop light no i don't like that either

because then you're that guy right you're the guy that when the light turns green you're here looking at your feet and you're going to miss and then all the cars are going to it then you get honked at someone's trying to get to work someone's trying to pick up their kids from school and you have to tell them i'm not on my phone i'm just doing a jefferson curl here you are with your neck between your legs so what are we what are we doing hey by the way don't do any of this we don't recommend any of this just want to say whatever we need to say so that whatever happens is not our fault consider us to have settled here's one this is a modified hamstring curl okay you have plenty of room down there right bring your feet okay so bring your feet

towards the accelerator so you're towards the accelerator and now drag them back on the ground causing as much as much friction as possible as if you're cleaning the floor with your legs okay so that's what is so we're going to grunt that out how's it now tell me talk me through it i feel the burn i feel the burn um so here's come we're out with this one if you're driving down the highway got to have cruise control for this exercise because your feet are not on the pedals as you drag your feet back so can work

but you've got to be ready to get to the brake pedals so you're still paying attention your feet aren't far from the pedals and the only negative as I see to this one is that your floor mats are going to wrinkle up yes so be aware of that I feel that already how the hamstrings feel after that

I'm feeling them you know I'd say it works I'd say it works. You have a few reps of those down the highway? I like this. I'm going to do this one. I'll do this one. You think you'll do this on Sunday at the race? My mat is just not, no, I would not do it in the race.

I got plenty of other things to think about in the moment. But when I road trip, Joey, tell me what is sore on you after a race? Typically, kind of your traps, your shoulders and arms are the most sore. You become lopsided because we turn left a lot. Wait, so what does that look like? It means that there's some muscles you have when you're working out. You can do significantly more with one side compared to the other. Because we don't turn left and right all the time.

We're usually just left. So you become a little crooked from that standpoint. And then, like, everyone's a little different, but, like, your left leg becomes a lot stronger because you're breaking with your left foot. You drive it with two feet. So you're breaking with your left foot. So if you were going to arm wrestle someone, you're going to arm wrestle with your right arm. Yes.

And then do you ever leg wrestle? No. No. No. All right. So this is the one. I'm excited about this one because I think this can work. This is with a resistance band.

Heena, can you... So basically on this, you just... You need a resistance band. You put it on the backseat headrest, and then you just pull it from your driver's seat back and forth, like you're stretching your arm out. Yeah, kind of doing bicep curls. Yeah.

This Mustang doesn't have a back seat. headrest, so Hina is holding the other end of the resistance band. Which is actually then another great workout for Hina. So hold up, yeah. Okay, so this is our arm extension. So this is our tricep extension.

All right, Joe, give this a shot. This is pretty good. I like this. I even like this while I'm driving. People will look at you on this one. And people are going to say, what in the heck is this weirdo doing? But if you don't give a crap what people think about you, and you just

trying to get your pump on. Yes. You can do that. You can do that. You're going to have one hand on the wheel, and you're going to have to ask Jesus to take the wheel with the other hand. It's not the smartest thing I've ever done. What do you think, okay, so what do you think at 200 miles an hour?

Is any of that possible? No. Well, here's a thing, too. When we're in our race car, you're strapped in, you're not moving. Your seat is fully around you. You can't even move your head. head like you're literally are locked in um so you can't move my legs i can't even lift my legs up like i am literally not moving at all so you know besides like pressing the pedals it's the only

mobility i have so uh all of this is impossible like even the deal when you're dragging your heels there yeah no can't you can't move my heels back that far because it gets all up in the dash It can't do it. No. No options. The workout is driving the race car, which is plenty. Trust me. I don't need to add more.

How many calories do you think you burn during a race? I mean, my heart rate at least averages around 130, depending on the race sometimes a little more. And you're in there for three hours. So you have moments where your heart rate's really up there. But then there's moments where there's cautions and you can relax. minute just because it's hot your your your heart starts pumping because it's 30 degrees 40 degrees warmer than the outside air temp so a 90 degree day it's effing hot do you do you what do you how do you

stay hydrated uh so i get a water bottle in pit stops and so they'll they'll hand me a water bottle or drink that um and you you hydrate a lot before well hold on a second then if you've hydrated a lot before you get into the car. At some point, we've all gone on road trips. You said you're in that car for three hours. Right. Yeah, but you're fine because you're sweating. You're sweating it all out.

You're usually dehydrated by the end of the race to where you don't need to go to the bathroom more times than not. I've never been put in that spot. I have been putting that spot before, and there's really no good answer on what to do because you're not going to pull over. So it's just, put your pants. Sorry, a little nasty, but it is what it is.

Hey, man, we get it. I mean, that's the game, right? Yeah. I think, maybe. Sure. Okay, the last thing that we do, this is the last part of the warm, the workout, is we get out of our car, we're 100 feet short of our, where we want to park, and we push the car in.

Who's steering? Exactly. We will put a link to Juan's training plan. for any of you that want to try it. Again, always do this only when you are safely parked or with a professional driver on a closed course. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe.

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In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors. On our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people, helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app. or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're out there listening and you have a question you want us to try and figure out,

send it to us. Send it to us at how to at npr.org. Who knows, maybe we'll call up Arnold Schwarzenegger and he'll dismiss the question entirely and make both of us feel quite small. I mean, at this point, we've got nothing to lose. He's already mad at us. Get us your questions at how to at npr.org. That's our ewe. email address where we receive email.

Hey, as you know, we recently offered to be the emergency contact for your out-of-office email messages. And to our great surprise, many of you are actually doing this. If you're interested, there is an out-of-office message in the show notes to this episode that you can copy and paste into your emails. You can do this. We're going to go through a couple mysterious emails we've received as a result of this. Yeah, let's get to work and see who needs our help.

This is Peggy. Hey, Peggy, it's Mike and Ian calling from How to Do Everything. We got your note about Jane needing to get a signature. You need a signature and sign now? Yes. Is it regarding the, this is G. Right? Honestly, I don't know.

we are, I think we were in Jane's out of office email, and you sent us a note. Oh, oh my gosh. Yes. She did sign it. Oh, well, there you go. So we, that was taken care of. So thank you for following up. I feel like maybe we're too late.

Well, it was from when she was out of the office last week. And her out of office said contact you guys, so I did send an email. But she had already signed it. So I thought, well, wow, they got the message to her so. No, that's right. It's been all taking care of. All right. Let's live under that narrative that we took care of it.

That's great. Yes, you did. Hello, this is Jennifer. Hi, I'm looking for George Chen. He's in the lab. Did you email him? Shoot, no. I was hoping to just get him on the phone quick.

Hello? Hello, is this George? Yes, this is he. Hey, George, it's Mike and Ian. from How to Do Everything Calling. Oh, hi. Hey, how are you? I'm good.

How are you? Good. We're just checking. Did you, we got a, we were copied on an email thread. And I guess our question is, did you use us as your out of office email? I did, yeah. Yeah, okay. So here's the email.

It says, hi, George, good morning. I hope you and your family had a good summer. I'm CCing undergraduate assistants who would like to get trained on the con focal microscope. Could you please let us know what time or day would work best for you? So I guess first of all, did you have a good summer? Yeah, yeah. It's been a pretty good summer. It's been a very busy one, but can't complain. Good. That's great. And then tell us about the microscope. Were you able to schedule those three students, or is that something you still need us to help with? I was actually, I was able to. Yes. Thankfully, there was a time that we were able to make work.

Can you tell us what it is? What is it confocal microscope? Oh, sure. So it's a high-powered microscope for scientific research. So I work in a research lab. So one of the pieces of equipment I maintain is this microscope that allows you to, you know, look at high-resolution, like sub-cellular-level details of tissues and cells and things like that. Wow. I think we keep being surprised that people are actually responding to these out-of-office messages. Did anybody say anything to you on a side channel? Like, who are these guys? I did get one person who emailed me afterwards just to say, I saw the Mike and Ian where you're out of office,

and that made my day because I just listened to that episode. Oh, that's awesome. So you have another fan that happened to be. emailing me while I'm out of office. Oh, that's fantastic. And they know enough not to reach out to us for whatever it is that they needed help with. If we get any, if we should get any more out of office needs about a con focal microscope, is there just a sentence we could reply with that would make it sound like we know what we're talking about?

Hmm. I would say, always be sure to turn off the laser after you leave. Otherwise, it becomes a very expensive problem afterwards. I feel like whether or not you're talking about a confocal microscope, it's good advice to always turn off the laser before you leave. Yep. Right. Don't look straight at it and turn it off after you exit the room. That's, yeah, generally good general pieces of it. Again, if you would like us to be your out-of-office emergency contact, just copy and paste the message in today's show notes into your email when you go on vacation or leave the office, and we will do our best to help you. Well, that does it for this week's show. What did you learn, Ian? You know, the solution to not getting the AI search results? Yeah. There's something so human about that, really.

Because I think, like, what you want from Google is the information you want. Yeah. And so you say, like, when is the Super Bowl? Yeah. And if you really wanted that information from another person who was maybe chit-chatting, you might say, when is the Super Bowl to a person? Uh-huh. I feel like computers, they're becoming more human every day, and it's something nice about it.

So if you asked a person when the Super Bowl was, And the person responded, well, the Super Bowl traditionally happens in February of the year preceding the start of that. What is the fucking Super Bowl? How to Do Everything is produced by Hina Shravastava with technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is Elizabeth, who we hope is out there getting jacked on her way to work. Safely. Safely. Safely.

You can get us your questions. Send them to us at how to. at npr.org. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thanks. Thanks. events mean for the price of your coffee. Listen to the state of the world podcast from NPR.