Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - HTDE: The Breakfast Rule

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

This week: How the Wait, Wait team decides what jokes are too inappropriate for the airwaves. Plus Mike and Ian help a caller with a personal grammar problem.Featuring author Keith Houston.You can email your burning questions to [e-mail] 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 Schuyler Swenson. Technical direction from Lorna White.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. We want to share a little behind-the-scenes thing from our other jobs producing, wait, wait, don't tell me. It's something called The Breakfast Rule. Here to talk about this with us are host Peter Sagle, who you all know, and Lorna White, who is our technical director. Hi. This is very exciting to be on the air with Lorna. This rarely, no, this never happened. This never happened unless it's a mistake. Oh, well, there you go. This isn't a mistake,

but it could have been. It could turn into one. Yeah. Could turn into a mistake. Very quickly. Lorna, I should say, is with us because when it comes to avoiding mistakes that might get the show canceled, Mike thinks of Lorna as the last line of defense. It's true. If you're comfortable, with that description. I'm comfortable with being the mom of the show. I'm not comfortable with it because I don't know what it means. What is Lorna defending us from? If there's ever anything

that is on the line and we're still uncertain about whether or not it's going to offend the audience, Lorna is often one of the last, if not the last person to hear the show before it goes out. So if it's if her radar goes off, then

we know we have to address it. And that way, she is the last line. of defense. So we have this rule, which is called the breakfast rule, which is how we decide whether or not something is too gross to go in the air. If you were eating breakfast while listening to whatever story, how grossed out would you be? Recently there was a question on the show that made the show, but there was a part, I was editing this, and there was a part that happened at the end that I found to be the funniest part, but it also felt like,

I don't know if we can put this on the radio. So first, let's just take a couple minutes. We'll listen to what ran on the radio. This is the edited version. Peter, Times are stressful. We know that, but the New York Times has offered advice for achieving, quote, Nirvana. Just do what?

Subscribe to the New York Times. I'll take it. It's okay. I mean, not only do you achieve absolute inner peace, you also find out if you have polyps. Get a colonoscopy? Yes, go get a colonoscopy. A writer was finally forced by his advancing age to get a colonoscopy, and he discovered that they're actually wonderful, a secret known only to all the people who have gotten a colonoscopy. Why do you think we're smiling all the time?

I'm sorry, I've had two. I do not agree with this. I like the being knocked out and not being awake for it, but have you prepped for a colonoscopy? Here's the thing. So, like, most people who enjoy colonoscopy, it's all about the drugs. They give you the procedure. You're out. You wake up.

You feel good. It's okay. You feel good for the rest of the day. This guy even loved the prep. That's when, yes, that's when you have to drink gallons of horse laxative until your organs liquefy and exit your body. He says, quote, it was as liberating as a spa day.

He called it, quote, my diarrhea vacation. Oh, my God. And I will admit it is kind of fun to discover that your own body is a clown car. I had no idea how it all fit in there. You know, people get on the New York Times for so many, like, political left and right reasons

who they support. This is the last straw for me. I'm not interested in their opinions on colonoscopy. Yeah, this guy is going to be so amazed if he ever takes an actual vacation. You mean I don't have to spend all day lying next to the toilet? This Wisconsin Dells is heaven on earth. Okay. That's fine.

All right. For me, the D word is always on the line. Whenever that shows up, I'm never sure I want to hear it. But, okay, so I'm going to play now what we cut, and it'll just pick up at the very end of what you heard. Oh, okay. Wisconsin Dells is heaven on earth. Of course, he got into trouble because my diarrhea vacation is the trademark

for Carnival Cruises. They got mad. I had norovirus once. I would not describe it as nirvana. No. It was quite painful. You did say that like a character in a film noir movie.

I had norovirus once. That's the most fantastic week of my life. Oh, those were the days. My salad days were salad little eat came out of my butt. Uh-huh. So, Lorna, would that have crossed your line? Yes. I think it would have, based on how visual it is.

Oh, it does paint a picture, yeah. Salad coming out of your butt is a little too visual. I will say that it was fun for me to listen to that because I remember the material that ended up in the air because it ended up in the air. But my mind just erases everything that happens during a taping usually. So I had no idea what was going to come next. And what was it that finally ended up crossing the line, the breakfast rule? And it cracked me up that it was Nguin's long walk to that remarkable destination of salad coming out of one's one's butt. It was, so that's what it was.

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see how that would be a problem, especially if people were eating salad for breakfast. Salad coming out of your butt. I think I would have kept that if I were at it again. Really? I think so.

Yeah, I think I would have kept it. What do you think? Lorny think I would have kept it? I would have questioned it. You would have kept it. I would have questioned it. Yeah. Heavily.

I like what we've done here that we So what we did is because we Because one time we removed someone talking about salad coming out of their butt Yeah We have now successfully added 10 additional 10 additional times saying salad coming out of a butt Right

Into the NPR archive It's true It'll be there It'll be at the Library of Congress forever Yeah Okay so in conclusion this is the breakfast rule Salad coming out of your butt That is too much

we just said it again. Yeah, sorry about that. And just one more time. Salad coming out of your butt. You can use this in your own life, I think. Yeah. To decide if something belongs there or not. If you're dating someone and you can't eat breakfast without being disgusted by the thought of them, I think it's time to break up.

A person would violate the breakfast rule. I know some people that could. Are you talking about me? Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. If you have a question for us, you can send it to us at our email.

Our email address is how to at npr.org. Autumn's has a question. Ottoms, what can we help you with? Yes. So I have a very unique name, and I'm wondering. how to, you know, kind of change it to make it proper to the situation, I guess. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, I guess we just said your name. It's autumn's. But I think for the purpose of this question, we should have you spell it for us. Yeah. So it's autumn like the season, A-U-M-N with an apostrophe S. The apostrophe is part of your name. It is. So my first name obviously is Autumn's, and my middle name is Hope.

So it's Autumn's Hope. So it's Autumn's Hope. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Yeah, my dad, you know, decided to make it a super easy one, right? Wait, so what did teachers call you when you were in school? Yeah, I always go by Autumn just because it's less confusing. But every time I got handed a report card or now anytime I do anything legal, people get very confused and they look at me and say, oh, hang on, there's a mistake.

And I have to go, no, no, no, no. The mistake was made at my birth certificate, you know, jokingly. If I were, do you know, so if I were writing about something that was yours, if I were talking about your car, say, would I write A-U-T-U-M-N-A-Postrophe S-A-Postrophe S car? See, that is exactly my question. That's exactly why I contacted you guys because I've always wanted to know that. Since it is inherently possessive, but of my middle name, how do I go about making it possessive of other things? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Do you have any siblings? I do, and all their names are normal. No, really? Like what? Yeah, yeah, really. So my mom wanted to name me Autumn Rain, and my dad thought that that was too hippie. So he put the apostrophe S instead because that's less weird? I don't know.

Okay. So Autumn's hope was that was the non-hippie choice. Apparently, although it didn't work because I ended up a little too hippie for his taste, too. What are your siblings' names? Yeah, Clinton, Edward, and then Kimberly Diane. I feel like those are just, those are the exact opposite of your name. Right. I don't know.

There's a missed opposite. You could have been Clinton's despair. You know, the perfect person for this is Mary Norris. Norris is spelled, by the way, there's no apostrophe before the S. Mary Norris has been a copy editor and proofreader with the New Yorker magazine for decades. So, Mary, we just got off the phone with someone named Autumn's. And that is spelled Autumn like the season, apostrophe S. The apostrophe is part of the name.

First of all, can we just get your response to this as a name? Her name is a possessive? Yes. Yes, that is correct. It is. That seems like a mistake. That's what Autumn's would tell you, too, and she's had to tell everybody that. It's not a mistake.

Oh, my. It's interesting because the world of the web, you know, digital world rejects apostrophes every chance it gets. But it wouldn't make sense to spell it without the apostrophe either, would it? I think she should change her name. Okay. Okay. Well, let me ask you this. If she didn't change her name.

Yeah. Just grammatically, if I wanted to talk about something that belonged to her, would I do autumn apostrophe S-apostrophe S? Um, autumn's is? Yeah. Well, I think that would just make it worse, don't you? Well, what would you do? What I would do? I would draw the line.

That's a double-uponters. Yes. No. I mean, you can drive yourself crazy with this stuff. Can I ask you, Mary, so we're coming to you as our kind of ultimate authority on this, right? When you're in a similar situation as we are in, when you don't have an answer, who do you turn to? I turn to the person who was my boss at the New Yorker at the copy desk. Her name is Anne Goldstein.

I turned to her. Okay. Can we conference her in? Could we bring her into this call and see? I wouldn't know how to do that. I could probably figure it out. Hello, Ann? Oh, hi.

Okay. Hi, Ann. Hi, Mary. All right, Ann, we have called you here with a specific purpose. Mary says you're the person above her that she calls. when she has a grammar question. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, I don't consider myself above her, but she would call me again. Okay.

Office hierarchy. Anyway, well, yes, in the office hierarchy, that's right. Great. Okay, Ann, what do you think about that name, someone with that name on their birth certificate, Autumn apostrophe S? Okay. It's not a mid-clair-clair. She insists that it's not. I think people often think it is, yeah, but no. So if you were going to write it out about, you were going to say,

whose car is that, and you know it's Autumn's car, how would you spell that? Oh, that's really a trick question. Mm-hmm. I guess I'll put another apostrophe on. Wait a second. I have to look at this. Yeah. Well, the thing is, if you put another apostrophe, yes, it looks like a typo.

Well, it may look like a typo, but is that not the right answer? You could argue it either way, if the truth is the matter. I guess it's a New Yorker we would put apostrophe S. That was, we made a ruling about the apostrophe S at a certain point. Okay, so what's the consensus? Do we have consensus here? I can see, I know. I mean, the consensus is that anything goes.

All right, thank you both. Mary, thanks again. It's no interesting. That's a very interesting question. Isn't it? Yeah. I'm glad you sprung it on me. Sprung it on.

Swang it on me. Excuse me. Oh, hold on a sec. Mary, is it sprung or sprang? Which is it? Spring, spung or sprung? Oh, gosh. You know we should do?

It seems like the available punctuation marks are not sufficient for Autumn's unique needs. Yeah. We should make her a new punctuation mark. Something she can use whenever she needs to indicate that she's, has possession of something, something is hers. We're going to ring up a punctuation expert to try and help us. This is Keith Houston. Keith, when was the last time we got a new punctuation mark?

The last successful punctuation mark, I guess, was probably the exclamation mark. It looks like it was around about the 14th century. But it's not really clear. it's not really clear where it came from. I think there's a suggestion that it comes from an exclamation of joy in Latin, which was

EO, so I-O. And you can imagine how with maybe the I ends up above the O, perhaps the O gets smaller and smaller until it turns into a dot. And at this point, this is where in the mid-14th century, this is where it was first proposed

and it seemed to be, it seemed to become more common into the 15th century, And then after that point, you're pretty close to, well, that's really printing. That's when printing appears. And so it was lucky enough to appear at the point of which it could be standardized. Okay, so, Autumn's. First of all, let me just, as someone who has looked at punctuation throughout history, what is your reaction to Autumn's name?

It is a bold, a bold choice for a name, I think, on the part of her parents. And I can see her problem. Yeah, it's not an easy thing to deal with, especially when you're dealing with possessives or plurals. Yeah. And your name ends in apostrophe S. So if we were to come up with a new punctuation mark to something just for autumn, where would we begin in creating a new punctuation mark? First of all, you have to describe what the mark needs to do and then figure out what it's going to look like. So I don't know.

Imagine perhaps we want a mark which looks like, I don't know, a plus symbol with a diagonal line through it or something. And this indicates something belonging to autumn, for example. Okay. If you're lucky, that might already exist. So there's this organization called the Unicode Consortium. And this is when it gets really exciting. We get to talk about big NGOs. And so the Unicode Consortium has responsibility basically.

for standardizing the set of characters that computers can exchange. And in doing so, they more or less, they don't control language. That's far too strong way of putting it. But they are the final gatekeepers before a new mark of punctuation or a letter or a number or any other symbol

can be used on the majority of computers around the world. So you need to design your mark, you need to describe what it's going to do. And if you want to be able to type it on anyone's computer, if you want Autumn's special mark of punctuation to be available everywhere, you have to convince the Unicode Consortium that it's a good idea.

And they have a whole set of criteria. You have to write this little formal document, send it off to them. Perhaps they'll call you to ask to discuss it. And if you're lucky, the Unicode Technical Committee will decide to include it. And at some point in the future,

it then becomes ratified. It becomes a standard mark. And then if you're further, if you're even more lucky, then all of the companies that care about what Unicode say, like Google and Facebook and Apple, all the companies that actually control the text that we can see and we can type, perhaps they decide to add it to their fonts. And they can do that because Unicode has said, this is a standard mark. Okay. Okay. But it starts with Unicode. Yes. And it ends with Unicode in some ways. Is there somewhat at Unicode you recommend we call to start this process? Mark Davis was one of the founding members of Unicode. He would be the perfect person to talk to about this. I think it's amazing just that the person in charge of exclamation marks and question marks is named Mark.

I think that's an amazing thing that's happened. I've been writing about punctuation for 15 or 20 years now, and I have not thought of that previously. I have disappointed in myself. Okay, all right. Skyler has managed to arrange it. Mark Davis is on the line. with us now. Hey, Mark. Hi, how are you doing?

Great, great. Can I pitch you a punctuation mark? Well, go ahead. We'll see what happens. All right, here you go. All right, yeah, we have a, we have a listener who, we need a new punctuation mark to denote possession that we would like, in, we would like it to be part of Unicode, part of the universal system we all use as soon as possible.

Can we do that? That would be very hard to do. And I can outline some of the reasons why it gets very tricky to do. But the key issue is that you have to really show a lot of usage before it becomes a candidate for inclusion. It's kind of an emergency. Well, there are very few character emergencies that we've had. Okay. I'll give you an example.

of one is when there's a new currency symbol. And those tend to be things that are emergencies. Another one was when the Japanese emperor died, because in the Japanese calendar, the era name for each emperor is a new symbol, and then that gets encoded, and that was something we rushed out very quickly, so that it could be added to all of the operating systems

so they could actually show people dates with the right era symbol. And as I said, currency symbols are another one where those would constitute emergencies. So if our caller, Autumn, if she were to become the emperor of Japan, it's possible then that you would come up with a special punctuation or a special character for her. I can say with almost 100% occurrence that if she became the emperor of Japan, that she could get her symbol into the code. All right. Okay, well, there's a path forward, even if it's an unlikely path. Okay, there you go. Well, that does it for this week's show.

What did you learn, Ian? Well, I learned that maybe I was not, I didn't think creatively enough when naming my children. Okay. I felt for whatever reason, whatever shortcoming, I felt confined to the 26 letters of the alphabet. Yeah. When really there was all that punctuation I could have played with. That's true. When you think about it, when you're typing on your phone, there's a button you can push.

And that opens up a whole other keyboard full of opportunity right there. Yeah. Meet my daughter. Hashtag Jennifer. And yeah, this is my second. son, it's an unpronounceable super strong password. Peter. Yes. Peter, what did you learn today?

Oh. I learned about what it is that triggers, at least one of the things that could trigger our breakfast rule, which is foods remaining in their original form emerging from the human body. Oh. Right? Right. So the picture you have is... Yes. is...

Yes. The reason I... Pristine salad. Right. The reason I agree with the decision to cut Nguine's joke is that the image in my head

was actual salad in its leafy form, multicolored, you know? Yeah. And that's what I thought of. And that's a distressing image in my head. And so that's why I agreed,

you know, to, with your decision not to broadcast it. Yeah. I guess like digestion is the editing of the body. In a weird way. Yeah.

We want to make sure, you don't want to see it in a raw form. How to Do Everything. It's produced by Skyler Swenson with technical direction from Lorna White. Our interns this week are Anne and Mary, who are joining us just for this one week from the New Yorker. Send us your questions, whatever they may be, to our email address. That's how to at npr.org.

I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thanks. Support for NPR and the following message, come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org.