BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. Put your candy in my bucket. It's Billoween (ph)...
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KURTIS: And I'm Bill Kurtis. And here is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
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SAGAL: Thank you, everybody. We have a very fine show for you today. We really do. We are very excited to be talking later on to best-selling author John Grisham later on. You know him for his books "A Time to Kill," "The Firm," "Rainmaker," "The Lincoln Lawyer." We will ask him if it's a believable plotline for a judge to shout out, I like beer...
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SAGAL: ...Under oath and end up on the Supreme Court.
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SAGAL: We need your help to unravel the mysteries of this week's news, so give us a call. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT - that's 1-888-924-8924. Now let's welcome our first listener contestant.
Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
ZACH: Hey, this is Zach from Washington, D.C.
SAGAL: Hey, Zach. How are you? What's all going on in Washington?
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SAGAL: I'm sorry, I forgot myself. Don't answer that.
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ZACH: Yeah, not much that I'd like to talk about.
SAGAL: Yeah. Now, do you work in the permanent government in the city? What do you do there?
ZACH: No, I work in the tech industry. I work for Uber, actually.
SAGAL: Really? You actually...
ZACH: Yeah.
SAGAL: ...Found something more evil to do. I think that's great.
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SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Zach. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's the comedian who'll be headlining at the Wilbur in Boston on Saturday, October 26. It's Hari Kondabolu.
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SAGAL: Next - yes, it's her, the syndicated advice columnist behind Ask Amy. It's Amy Dickinson.
AMY DICKINSON: Hey.
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SAGAL: And, finally, it's a correspondent for "CBS Sunday Morning" and host of "The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation" Saturdays on CBS. It's Mo Rocca.
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MO ROCCA: Hi, Zach.
SAGAL: So, Zach, welcome to the show. You, of course, are going to play Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis is once again going to perform for you three quotations from the week's news. Your job, as I'm sure you know - identify or explain two of them. Do that, and you win the prize - any voice from our show you might choose on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
ZACH: All set.
SAGAL: Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: You know, here we go again with you know you're guilty until proven innocent.
SAGAL: That was President Trump defending what purely innocent country that is definitely guilty?
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ZACH: That's Saudi Arabia.
SAGAL: It is Saudi Arabia.
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SAGAL: Yes.
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SAGAL: So journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared in a Saudi consulate last week. And, at first, Saudi Arabia said, you know, he just left. And then they said, well, we don't really have any idea what happened to him. And then, finally, they said, OK, what if we told you he went to live on a farm upstate?
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SAGAL: So it became an international scandal. But, fortunately, detective Trump is on the case.
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SAGAL: He's just like Lieutenant Columbo. He's just about to leave, but he stops, and he turns, and he says, oh, one more thing. You totally didn't do it, right? I thought so.
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ROCCA: Oh, that poor 400-pound guy in New Jersey.
SAGAL: I know.
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ROCCA: You know, he's going to be...
SAGAL: He's up to it again.
ROCCA: He's going to take the blame again.
SAGAL: Trump says he believes the Saudis, who say they didn't do it - especially Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who's taken over that country, imprisoned his enemies and now gone after dissidents. Isn't it weird? Trump finally finds one Muslim he does not hate, and it's the worst Muslim in the world?
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SAGAL: Trump compared the Saudis to his other favorite totally innocent person, Brett Kavanaugh...
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SAGAL: ...Which I'm sure...
ROCCA: It's just got to be.
SAGAL: ...Mr. Kavanaugh appreciated, yes.
DICKINSON: (Laughter).
SAGAL: There are similarities to the Kavanaugh case, if you think about it. The Saudis say they couldn't have done anything to Khashoggi because, according to this calendar, they were lifting weights with Squee and P.J.
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DICKINSON: Oh, my god.
ROCCA: That's disgusting. It just makes me want to boof (ph). I'm sorry, I mean barf.
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HARI KONDABOLU: I think people are giving Saudi Arabia a pretty rough go at this. I don't think it's completely - there are some positives in this.
SAGAL: Really? What are they?
KONDABOLU: OK. People...
DICKINSON: Oh, god.
KONDABOLU: So they do a lot of terrible things. However, the getaway driver was a woman.
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ROCCA: Oh, shit.
DICKINSON: Right, it's Saudi Arabia.
ROCCA: That's right. That is...
SAGAL: That's true.
DICKINSON: She's only had her license for, like, three weeks or something.
KONDABOLU: That is progress. That is progress.
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DICKINSON: Oh, wow. I did not know that.
KONDABOLU: It was - well, I made it up, but...
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DICKINSON: That's amazing. Yeah.
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SAGAL: All right, very good. Here is your next quote.
KURTIS: She should have gone on the "Maury" show to reveal the results.
SAGAL: That was a Washington Post commenter reacting to whose big DNA test reveal this week?
ZACH: That would be Elizabeth Warren.
SAGAL: It would be Elizabeth Warren.
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SAGAL: Very good. Yes.
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SAGAL: Sen. Warren of Massachusetts, who the president likes to call Pocahontas, now poses a real problem for him in 2020 because, with her as his potential opponent, he wouldn't be able to decide whether to be racist or sexist.
DICKINSON: Oh, god.
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SAGAL: So Trump once said that he'd pay her a million dollars if she could prove she has Native American ancestry, as she has claimed. So, this week, she took a DNA test, and she revealed it, and it proves she's between one 64th and one 1024th...
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SAGAL: ...Native American. That's a tiny fraction. It means that, instead of losing her ancestral lands, she just had to give up a parking spot.
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KONDABOLU: Well, she's either Native American or a margin-of-error-orican (ph).
DICKINSON: There you go.
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ROCCA: I just wanted to say my friend Carol (ph) is half Jewish, half Native American, and we say that she's from the hi, how are you tribe.
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DICKINSON: I want to know, what was Elizabeth Warren thinking, doing that?
SAGAL: Well, here's the...
ROCCA: That was ridiculous.
DICKINSON: It was so - I mean, because my sister did the - one of the DNA tests, and I think she - our family - we have this much Neanderthal, right? Like, doesn't...
ROCCA: Well, how much...
DICKINSON: ...Everybody?
ROCCA: ...Neanderthal do you - how much Neanderthal do you have?
DICKINSON: Quite a bit. Quite a bit.
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DICKINSON: Quite a bit.
KONDABOLU: I feel like if you want to prove that you're not completely white the thing you shouldn't do...
DICKINSON: (Laughter).
KONDABOLU: ...Is do what - the whitest thing possible...
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KONDABOLU: ...Which is take a DNA test to prove you're not white.
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ROCCA: I think this whole controversy is a lot of Sitting Bull.
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DICKINSON: Oh, my god.
ROCCA: And I think that Elizabeth Warren has wounded more than her knee.
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SAGAL: Those are terrible.
ROCCA: The...
SAGAL: She should Sioux.
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ROCCA: I mean, she's a total Crazy Horse.
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SAGAL: All right. Here is your last quote.
KURTIS: This is never going to be smoked. I'm going to keep it forever.
SAGAL: That was a man named Ian Power, one of the first people to legally buy what in Canada?
ZACH: Marijuana.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed.
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SAGAL: Cannabis. Pot.
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SAGAL: Grass. Weed. So we've been making these Canadian cliche jokes for years, and they're all wrong. It's the coolest country in the world. When you think about it, they've been - they must have been stoned for all these years. They wear flannel, they're chill and their national dish is French fries covered in garbage, so...
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KONDABOLU: Do you know if they're changing the leaf on the flag?
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DICKINSON: Oh, great.
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KONDABOLU: That would be fun.
DICKINSON: But I love this. On the - on Wednesday, when it became legal, the Globe and Mail newspaper published on the front page an infographic of how to roll a joint. How cute is that?
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SAGAL: Do you know - this is amazing because it turns out that, obviously, in some countries or states, pot is legal, but Canada is only the second country to make pot legal countrywide after Uruguay. The only two countries - so you know they're going have to quit NATO and the G7 and just hang out with each other...
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SAGAL: ...Because the only way you can talk to a stoned country is to be stoned yourself.
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KONDABOLU: What kind of snacks do they have in Uruguay?
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SAGAL: None left.
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SAGAL: Bill, how did Zach do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Trifecta for Zach - he got them all right.
SAGAL: Congratulations. Well done, Zach.
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ZACH: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF THIRD MARINE AIRCRAFT WING BAND AND U.S. MARINE CORPS' "O CANADA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.