BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We are playing this week with Amy Dickinson, Peter Grosz and Hari Kondabolu. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Right now - thank you, everybody. Right now it's time for the WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air.
Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
KAREN WARNER: Hi, Peter. This is Karen Warner (ph) from Anderson, Ind.
SAGAL: Well, how are you, Karen?
WARNER: Well, I'm pretty good.
SAGAL: I'm glad to hear it. Now, where in Indiana is Anderson?
WARNER: It's sort of halfway between Muncie and Indianapolis.
SAGAL: Oh, I see.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So you're the place where people from Indianapolis and Muncie go to to really have a good time.
(LAUGHTER)
WARNER: That's it (laughter).
SAGAL: Well, Karen, welcome to the show. You're going to play the game in which you have to tell truth from fiction. What is the topic, Bill?
KURTIS: It's 4 p.m. on a Sunday. Do you know where you are?
AMY DICKINSON: (Laughter).
SAGAL: Four p.m. on Sunday is the worst time of the weekend. There's absolutely nothing left to do, and it's too early to go to bed.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This week, we heard about someone who came up with something interesting to do exactly at 4 p.m. on Sunday. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Pick the real one, and you'll win our prize - the WAIT WAITer of your choice on your voicemail. Ready to play?
WARNER: Ready.
SAGAL: All right. First, let's hear from Hari Kondabolu.
HARI KONDABOLU: With more restaurants in town than ever before, Henry Lawrence's (ph) diner, The Polar Bear, in Brunswick, Maine, hit hard times. Hope was in short supply until Mr. Lawrence had an epiphany. Everyone offers brunch now. It's, like, the hip new thing from New York City that people can't get enough of. But how about a meal between lunch and dinner?
(LAUGHTER)
KONDABOLU: Dunch (ph), as Mr. Lawrence...
(LAUGHTER)
KONDABOLU: ...Calls it, has been served at The Polar Bear every Sunday at 4 p.m. for the last month. Mr. Lawrence claims 4 p.m. is the ideal time to eat on Sunday since people do not stay up late before the work week starts, and research has shown that people tend to put on the most weight when they eat late dinners on Sunday. We found no studies that prove this to be true.
(LAUGHTER)
KONDABOLU: So far, the experiment has not taken off. One local resident said they felt uncomfortable with the word dunch.
(LAUGHTER)
KONDABOLU: It sounds like a racial epithet...
(LAUGHTER)
KONDABOLU: ...Or an act of sexual perversion.
(LAUGHTER)
KONDABOLU: I am a God-fearing man who has no interest in such activities.
(LAUGHTER)
KONDABOLU: The criticism hasn't stopped Mr. Lawrence, though, who has taken a second mortgage on his house to keep his diner and Sunday dunch alive.
(LAUGHTER)
KONDABOLU: I thought my wife would stop me, but instead, she left and took the kids.
(LAUGHTER)
KONDABOLU: I'm fine with it - more dunch for me.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Diner owner decides that 4 p.m. Sunday is the best time for a whole new meal he calls dunch. Your next story of a super Sunday comes from Amy Dickinson.
DICKINSON: Good news for that subset of people who go to church on Sunday mornings hungover or maybe still drunk from Saturday night - and I'm not just talking about the clergy.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: You know the feeling. Sure, you love Jesus. But on Sunday mornings, you just hate the sunlight. The smell of the communion wine makes you vomit in your mouth just a little bit.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: Or maybe you want to punch out the choir for singing so loudly. Rev. Mark Montgomery, an Anglican priest in Kent, England, asked churchgoers why they were skipping services on Sunday morning. A lot of them said they had to take their kids to sports games or that they wanted to go to the farmer's market. The ones who weren't lying said that, sometimes...
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: ...They were just too hungover from partying the night before. Now members of Rev. Montgomery's parish have the option to worship a little less hungover on Sundays at 4 in the afternoon. That's the perfect time - an hour after the headache has finally faded and an hour before the drinking begins.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: I'd like to suggest some simple changes to tailor this service to the needs of the congregation - for instance, sermons titled, I Love You, Man...
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: ...I'm Not Even Tired...
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: ...Or Oh, My God. We Should Totally Hang Out More.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: A church service in Britain at 4 p.m. on Sunday - just right for people who couldn't get out of bed on Sunday because of the Saturday night they had. Your last story of the Lord's day improved comes from Peter Grosz.
PETER GROSZ: Cyberdyne Systems is a budding software startup in notoriously competitive Silicon Valley. Founder and CEO Joshua Hirsch (ph) was looking for a way to boost output from his staff when he read a study in the New England Journal of Work-Life Balance that found that most people start thinking about going back to work at around 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon. Scientists identify this as the precise moment when people give up on both finishing the Sunday crossword puzzle and having fun with their family.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: I had a brilliant idea, said Hirsch. Well, to be fair, I was micro-dosing when I thought of it, so it may have been just a regular idea that I thought was brilliant. He instituted an optional 4 p.m. Sunday work session for his employees who wanted to get a jump on the work week.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: On the first Sunday, 45 of Cyberdyne's 50 employees showed up while five future former employees didn't understand that at work, optional really means mandatory. Of course, once everyone comes in early, then early is on time, so the following Sunday, enthusiastic software designer Frank Romansky (ph) showed up at noon.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: So then people started coming in on Saturday night and then Saturday morning. And then this week, not a single employee of Cyberdyne Systems went home for the weekend at all. Many have even begun sleeping at their desks - all except Romansky, who said, sleep? Why do you need to sleep? I'm telling teacher.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: So somebody somewhere decided to start doing something exactly at 4 p.m. on Sunday. Was it, from Hari Kondabolu, a man who decided that'd be the perfect time to serve in his restaurant a new meal between dinner and lunch called dunch; Amy, in England, a church service for people who just can't get out of bed because of the drinking they did and can roll in at 4 p.m.; or, from Peter Grosz, a tech company that decided that the workweek really starts at 4 p.m. on Sunday and made his employees adhere to that?
Which of these is the real story of something happening at Sunday at 4?
WARNER: Well, they all sound totally implausible. And as much as I would like to have dunch, I think I'm going to go with Amy's church service.
SAGAL: You're going to go with Amy's church service, the 4 p.m. church service for people who need to sleep it off.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: The audience seems to agree. All right. Well, we spoke to someone familiar with the real story to bring you the correct answer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LISA HACKNEY-JAMES: St. Gabriel's has added an additional 4 o'clock in the evening service to reach out and serve others, even those who've been over-served the night before.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That was the Rev. Canon Lisa Hackney-James, the sub-dean at St. James Cathedral here in Chicago, talking about the 4 p.m. hungover church service. Congratulations, Karen. You got it right. Well done.
(APPLAUSE)
WARNER: Thank you.
SAGAL: You've earned a point for Amy, and you've won our prize - the voice of your choice on your voicemail. Congratulations.
WARNER: Thank you so much. It was really fun.
SAGAL: It was fun to talk to you. Take care.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUNDAY WILL NEVER BE THE SAME")
SPANKY AND OUR GANG: (Singing) Sunday will never be the same. Sunday will never be the same. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.