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Paula Rant

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

If there's one thing that our listeners love, it's what we've come to call Paula Rants. That's when Paula Poundstone gets very, very exercised about some topic or another.

BILL KURTIS: It actually has cardio benefits.

SAGAL: Here's a particularly aerobic rant from earlier this year about a particular NPR news report with guest host Tom Papa.

PAULA POUNDSTONE: There was an NPR piece one time. When Colorado first legalized pot, they also came up with this really stupid idea to do a thing like the wineries do. It was like a pot dispensary tour...

UNIDENTIFIED PANELIST: Tastings.

POUNDSTONE: ...Which is just so painfully stupid it's hard to conceptualize. But, like, a vehicle comes and picks up the customer. And the NPR reporter rode around. And they begin - and the woman that gets in the car - I forget her name, but...

UNIDENTIFIED PANELIST: Susan Stamberg.

POUNDSTONE: No, the client.

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: No, it was - so they go to the first dispensary. And the woman was so enthusiastic. She was, like, 60 years old - so enthusiastic. And she goes in. For some reason, the reporter didn't go in with her. But when she comes out, they go, well, what did you buy? And she was like, oh, I got this chocolate. I got this joint. I got this thing - like, already so much that - you know, and then they get in the car to go to another place. And the lady had been very chatty at first, and now all you could hear over the audio was the woman laughing uncontrollably.

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: But it was, like, creepy. She was like, (imitating laughing).

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: And then they - the reporter comes back and says that they had to - they were on their way to another dispensary and that they had to - (imitating laughing)...

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: They had to discontinue the trip because she had become incommunicable.

(LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: (Imitating laughing) And I had a trip to Colorado coming up before I heard that piece. And I thought - I thought, you know, maybe I could partake 'cause it's legal now. And I could do that maybe when I went there. And I heard that piece, and I'm like never - (imitating laughing).

(LAUGHTER)

TOM PAPA: I don't know how I feel about the whole weed legal thing. I live in California, and when you - it used to be, if you'd smell weed, you were like, oh, I'm someplace cool. This is a - I'm at a concert. Now you're like, I'm in a nursing home visiting my grandmother.

(LAUGHTER, MUSIC)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) I love to laugh (laughing) loud and long and clear.

SAGAL: Coming up, a never before heard Bluff The Listener game and a visit with singer Alex Boye. That's when we come back on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME from NPR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.