Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - Wait Wait Wayback Machine: December 2003

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Host Peter Sagal and producer Miles Doornbos challenge a Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me listener with questions about news events from our actual show — but the catch is they're shows that aired 20 years ago! The Wait Wait Wayback Machine is normally a bonus episode that only Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me+ supporters can hear and play. Today, we're making it available for everyone. If you want a chance to play the Wait Wait Wayback Machine, sign up for Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It can be hard nowadays to find a space where we're able to listen to each other, where we can agree to disagree. It's why I'm proud of 1A, a show that's made for you and by you. We're not about snark, we're about dialogue. Join the discussion and me, your host, Jen White, by listening to the 1A podcast from WAMU and NPR. Hey everybody, it's Peter Sagal. And it's producer Miles Dornbos. We are continuing our season of giving over here at Wait, Wait, Don't

Tell Me. Well, as everyone knows, we're very giving people on this show. That's right, because we don't want to be visited by three ghosts who punish us with visions of our past. Again. Right? Last week, we dropped an extended interview into the feed for everyone, just as a special little treat.

And normally, that bonus episode would be just for our Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me Plus supporters. But we're not stopping there. Today, we are giving everyone a chance to hear a quiz game that we play just with our Plus listeners. It's called the Wait, Wait, Wayback Machine. Now, no, we do have an ulterior motive. We're trying to tantalize all of you, tempt you, because if you like all of this and you want to hear more of this bonus content and find out how you can be a future contestant in a Wayback Quiz,

all you need to do is sign up for PLUS at plus.npr.org. And, of course, I should mention, because you're all giving people yourselves, by joining PLUS, you're also supporting the work of NPR as well. That's right. All right, Miles, it is time to play the Wayback Machine. Okay, so first things first, let's bring on our contestant, a Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me PLUS listener from Dallas, Texas. It's Anne Edmonds Aguirre. Hey, Anne.

Hi, guys. I'm honored to participate. I'm a big fan of the show. I've seen it live in Nashville, in San Antonio, in St. Louis. And then just last month, my husband and I got to the Studebaker Theater to see it. No way. This must be what it feels like to be in the Grateful Dead, to have somebody travel like that for us. I was about to say, you're our first camp follower, and I love it. Do you have an RV that is decorated with all our faces, I hope? No, but I happen to have lived in all of those cities. We did travel to Chicago, though. That was a travel trip. Well, Anne, in addition to obviously following us across the country, we hear that

one of your big passions is baking. The holiday seasons are here. Is there anything that you particularly love to bake kind of during the holidays? So I typically do a lot of baking during the holidays. Pumpkin chocolate chip bread is a staple this time of year. Bread is a staple this time of year. There's some peppermint mocha, chocolate cookies. So there's a lot of variety, but lots of cookies, brownies, quick breads, pound cakes, those types of things. I mean, and who eats this? Yeah.

So that's a lot of... I do, Peter. No, it's not like who would eat that, but that's a lot of baking. Do you have a big family? Do you go to parties? I keep inviting Anne to our shows so that I can eat them. I'm certainly a personal taste tester, and my husband is also the number one taste tester. I bring to share with my students and my colleagues. I bring and sometimes ship to

share with family and friends. Oh, wow. Well, what do you teach? You just mentioned being a teacher or students. Not a teacher. I actually am in college counseling. So I help support students and their families to navigate the college search. I mean, I kind of had a premonition that you were in that field when I suddenly, just on seeing you on the Zoom call, felt the weird fear of disappointing you somehow. So clearly, I emotionally understood what your line of work was. Well, Anne and Peter, as always, this is how the Wayback Machine works. So I'm going to give you questions about news events that aired on this very show. But the catch is they aired 20 years ago in the month of December 2003, back when we were still recording the show on giant wax cylinders.

I'm Carl Castle. And I'm Peter Sagal. Wait, wait, don't tell me first went on the show on giant wax cylinders. I'm Carl Castle. And I'm Peter Sagal. Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me first went on the air on January 3rd, 1998, which means for five years there's been a criminal lack of oversight at both National Public Radio and the Federal Communications Commission because, my friends, we are still here. So that was a celebration of Wait, Wait's first five years back in 2003, and we're now at our 25th anniversary.

Peter, can you believe it? Do you believe in miracles, I believe, as someone said? I was just thinking, actually, that, Anne, if you are steering people into careers, make sure that whatever career they get steered into, they're never required to listen to themselves doing it badly 20 years earlier. Because hoo boy, all right, it's just a trauma that I go through every time I do this, but it's my problem, not yours. Peter, can you hear whether or not you have more hair or no? I can, because it's more, it's like there's a muffling effect. Sure, there's a real thickness to the voice.

In addition to the fact that my voice feels like it is in the process of changing as I go through adolescence, because that's what it sounds like to me, there's definitely kind of a muffling effect from the fuzz on top, which now, of course, it's all very resonant. Clear as a bell. Yeah. I appreciate your suffering for my benefit, so thank you. Well, Anne, are you ready to play? Yes. All right.

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That's Planet Money from NPR. All right, Peter, you know the rules of the game. You can guess, but only if Anne does not know the answer. Or to put it another way, I can kibitz, but that is all. That is right. You are limited to kibitzing. All right. These quotes are all from Who's Carl This Time, again from the month of December 2003. And here is your first quote. I greatly appreciate this. I've only sung one time and here I'm going to be musician of the year. Now, that was a former senator who had to constantly respond to people who thought he was a famous musician who happened to have the same name. This former senator with a famous name died this week.

Who are we talking about? Hmm. No one is coming to mind. Well, now it's a little easy for me because I've been a longtime resident of the state, Illinois, that I used to represent. So he was more well-known around these parts. But if you think about it, there's a way of narrowing it down. A senator who had the same name as a very famous musician, right?

So it's like, I mean, you can think about it and you're like, hmm, John Kerry? No, I don't think there was a musician named John Kerry. So can you think off the top of your head of a famous musician who shared a name with a senator? Anybody coming to mind? Was there a senator named Morrissey? I don't think so. Senator Engelbert Humperdinck? Senator Tom Jones.

We're getting closer. Tom Jones. We're getting closer. Tom Jones, uh, Smith. One of the great singer-songwriters of the 60s, 70s, and I guess into the 80s and 90s. He started out as part of a very famous duo. Then he broke up that duo and he realized that he had all the talent. And this, he was not entirely wrong. Oh, I'm stumped. Peter right now is trying to be your bridge over the troubled water of this question.

Who sang that song? Bridge over... Oh, it's not... It's like Peter, Paul, and Mary, or there's... Oh, so close. So close, right? Simon... It's not Simon and Garfunkel.

It is Simon and Garfunkel. Paul Simon. Yes, Paul Simon. Yay, I got it. As Peter said, Senator Paul Simon is the answer. You know, he was primarily known for his horn-rimmed glasses and for his bow ties. And he represented the great state of Illinois in the U.S. Senate and before that in the House. He also wrote 22 different books, including Our Culture of Pandering and You Want to Change the World? So Change It.

Oh, is that all it takes? No, geez. Nice work. We got there, all of us together, through Peter's kibitzing. It worked perfectly. Thanks for the kibitz. There you are. So here, Anne, is your next quote. And it comes from Linda Wertheimer, who on this occasion was sitting in for Carl Castle.

Do you suppose the Bush administration has him hidden away somewhere and will bring him out before the election? That was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Now, she was making what she insisted was a joke. She was asking a rather cynical question about whether the U.S. would now be able to capture whom. Saddam Hussein? Close. I mean, I don't blame you for saying that, because the war in Iraq had already begun. I think we had caught him by that time. So we were talking about somebody else who America had been seriously looking for, because he had done us quite wrong. Oh, let's see. So 2003.

because he had done us quite wrong. Oh, let's see. So 2003. And by the way, a spoiler alert. No, the George W. Bush administration did not bring him out before the election. He wasn't, in fact, found. And I guess the euphemism term would be taken care of until around 2011. Oh, wow. This would have been, you know, public enemy number one for the entire time.

Osama bin Laden. Yes, that's the guy. Very good. Yes, the answer was Osama bin Laden, that comedy goldmine for us. Of course, bin Laden eluded capture, like Peter said, until May of 2011, when under orders from President Obama, a special operations unit raided a compound where he was living in northern Pakistan and killed him. Nothing really leads to big humor from us than and killed him. And having Linda Wertheimer, one of the most serious and substantive people ever to work at NPR, do it. I feel like you could feel in that clip, Peter, you being like, oh, boy. All right. We're going to make some jokes about Bin Laden.

Here we go. Well, amazing work, Anne. We're going to get us out of this particular quagmire with your last quote. None of this would have happened if she had been named Washington Marriott. That was Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen talking about the sudden rise to prominence of what socialite and now TV star? One of the Kardashian, oh, Hilton's, Paris Hilton. Yes. Nice.

That's right. The answer was Paris Hilton? Yes! Nice. That's right. The answer was Paris Hilton. At the time, Hilton and her fellow socialite Nicole Richie were starring in the new reality show The Simple Life. The pair would be put into situations unfamiliar to their Beverly Hills sensibilities, like working on an Arkansas dairy farm or just kind of slopping around, I guess. farm or just kind of slopping around, I guess. Hilton recently marked the 20th anniversary of The Simple Life on Instagram using the hashtag, that's hot, a catchphrase from the show. So just a heads up, we are celebrating our 25th anniversary. The Simple Life is celebrating its 20th anniversary. You get to choose whose party you want to go to more. I'll come to the Wait, Wait party. Oh, Anne! A very flattering but poor choice.

Well, Anne, that was amazing. You went three for three, and we're going to make sure that you get a voicemail greeting from anyone of your choice from our show. That's fabulous! Well, before we wrap up, is there anything that you have been dying to know about the show or a question that you have for Peter to know about the show or a question that

you have for Peter? Anything that you'd want to know? I do have a question for Peter. Sure, go ahead, please. You know, one of my favorite parts of the show is when it comes to the not my job guest and that particular part of the game is wondering what they're going to ask the not my job guest. So if you were the not my job guest on wait, wait, don't tell me, what do you think that they might ask you about? That is a good question. Because technically, that's not my job. It's something that they don't know anything about. And the universe of things I don't know anything about is vast, as capacious as our actual physical universe. So there's a lot of choices there. But generally speaking, what we do is a silly joke based on somebody's name or something else about them. I don't know. Miles, what do you think? You actually might beed with this person a bit, but if we could find three questions that were good enough about the director who almost shares your name. Oh, yeah.

That might be it, because there's a director named Peter Segal that you sometimes will get calls for, right? Yes. On two occasions, I have gotten calls from very big time Hollywood agents. And, you know, in the way that you get, I don't know if anybody's ever experienced this, but you get a call and you hear somebody saying, would you hold for very serious agent from very serious agency? And I say, yes, I will hold for that person. And then they come on the line and they go, Peter, hey, how are you?

And I go, I'm great. And they said, listen, I wanted to talk to you about this project you're doing. At which point I have on both occasions had to say to them, I think you've got the wrong guy. And they, in both cases have said, yes, they have got the wrong guy. One of these days, I'm just going to say, yeah, it's me. How much money are you offering me? And see if I can finally get out of this radio biz that way. But yeah, that would be an excellent idea. Third time's the charm for that, Peter. I'm really looking forward to you

directing the next like Will Ferrell movie with zero directing experience. Come on, guys. Do what you do. I'll sit here and oversee. And Paula and Mo Rocca can be extras in the cast. That's right. Yes, exactly.

That's how people will know it wasn't the other guy. Well, Anne, I hope that that answered your question. Thank you again for joining us. And thank you so much for supporting NPR in Wait, Wait,'t the other guy. Well, Anne, I hope that that answered your question. Thank you again for joining us. And thank you so much for supporting NPR in Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. And just thank you for all the work that you all do in front of and behind the scenes, because NPR is really important to have some nonpartisan news and also some just humor

to lighten our lives. So thank you. Oh, thank you, Anne. You're very kind. Thank you soen our lives. So thank you. Oh, thank you. And you're very kind. Thank you so much. And bye bye. These days, it can feel like the news is fighting for your attention wherever you turn, but staying informed shouldn't be a battle. Everything you need to navigate the stories that matter to you is at your fingertips. The NPR app cuts through the noise, bringing you local,

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