Podblast! Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

People out there know me.  They know I'm a tree-hugging liberal hippie.

It should be absolutely no surprise to people that I listen to NPR on a regular basis.  It's my primary source for news (both American NPR and the broadcasts from the BBC), it's my go-to source for interesting music I don't normally listen to, and it's where a lot of my entertainment comes from.

For instance, there's a program I absolutely love called Says You!  I've seen it twice in person, and plan on seeing it many more times in the future.

But on Saturdays, there's a comedy news quiz that comes on that, I'll admit, I avoided for a while.  It's not that I didn't like it, it's that I was completely ignorant as to what a "news quiz" could be.  I figured it was just some guy trying to be funny to draw people in to what was essentially pop quizzes about news articles where specific names had to be read.

It turns out that's only part of the show.



The actual set-up of the show is that there's a host (the rather sharp-witted Peter Sagal), a "judge/announcer" (legendary broadcaster Carl Kassel), and three "guests/contestants."  These are usually comedians, but can also be actors, sports figures, and in at least one instance, a Jeopardy champion.  Regulars include Paula Poundstone, Mo Rocca, Maz Jobrani, Tom Bodett, and numerous others.  Some I prefer more than others, but it's usually always an entertaining crew.

For the record, if you ever want to fill time, just ask Mo Rocca anything.  It seems to take him five minutes just to decide what his favorite color of socks is.

The show is an hour long, and is broken up into segments, most of which involve someone calling in to take part in a game (events such as naming who said a quote or telling what the quote from the news is about, figuring out which panelist is telling the true news story from three outrageous ones, figuring out the last word to a limerick, and other occasional ones).  The last round is the panel doing a rapid-fire question/answer quiz to a set time to see who can get the most points.

The highlight, regularly, is the "Not My Job" segment, where they bring on special guests to answer questions about, as they say, "things they should know nothing about."   A recent guest was a man who walked a tightrope over Niagara Falls, so they asked him questions about people clumsy at their jobs.  They had Tom Hanks on once and asked him about the "bad boys" of classic Hollywood.  Martha Stewart was asked questions about prepared junk food (apparently she really loves Velveeta).  President Bill Clinton was asked questions about My Little Pony.  I kid you not.

If they get two out of three right, a listener of the show gets the prize of Carl's voice doing their voice mail message.  (The same prize is for any call-in contestant, the panelist who wins just gets bragging rights). 

It's often surprising to find out just how entertaining a guest is.  Certain celebrities or sports figures are amazingly self-deprecating.  Others are extremely generous (Penn Jilette, in a classic show, lost the quiz but stated that he'd get any celebrity friend of his the listener wanted to do the voice mail instead).  Others are amazingly funny, and the most recent example I can think of is Al Gore, who was absolutely hilarious.  ...to be fair, I knew he could be funny on 30 Rock, but to hear him tell so many of the jokes about himself he's heard was just amazing.

The show is on every Saturday morning, but I also download their podcast version since life frequently gets in the way of an uninterrupted listen.  It's educational and frequently funny enough to make me crack up laughing, it's like a game show version of The Daily Show without the need for vulgar humor.

I'm not opposed to that kind of humor, and in fact I think The Daily Show is great...it's just I can only really watch it in spurts because sometimes the jokes just go a bit too far for my tastes, or it feels like the material gets stale.  I've been listening to Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me for years now, and it's always fresh.

So hey, give it a listen.  You can get the podcast episodes for iPod or other mp3 device on their website, or you could just turn on your radio and listen for free wherever you are.  You might learn something.