UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The following program was taped before an audience of no one.
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BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. It's a great day for a road trip. Go ahead and put my top down. I'm your converti-Bill - Bill Kurtis. And here is your host, a man who's been waiting all quarantine to put on his Sears soccer sweatpants, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. And thanks again to our completely fictional audience, who this week are the good people of Amity Island applauding when the mayor opens up the beaches. It's been a long few months of staying at home, and both Bill and I are getting a little stir-crazy from sitting in our houses.
KURTIS: It's so true. How many times can you tour the formal gardens or banquet in the great room before you begin to tire of it all?
SAGAL: Anyway, we thought we'd travel this week - back in time to when we were allowed to go places. This week's show will be our usual games and segments, but from all over the country from sea to shining sea. And to make it even more like a real cross-country trip, ask your roommate or spouse to pat you down like the TSA before every segment.
KURTIS: In May of last year, we went to St. Louis with Amy Dickinson, Tom Bodett and Brian Babylon to tackle the big stories of that week.
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SAGAL: Your first quote took up most of the space in a birth announcement this week.
KURTIS: Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.
SAGAL: That was the name that is longer right now than the person it was given to. Who is it?
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COURTNEY MORAN: The new royal baby.
SAGAL: The royal baby.
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SAGAL: Yes.
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SAGAL: According to the United Nations, one million different species of life on Earth are going extinct. But at least we were able to save the rare, useless baby royal.
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BRIAN BABYLON: I'm with that, man.
SAGAL: This is the first child of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan. The baby is, I'm sure you want to know, seventh in line to the throne after his grandfather, his uncle and his cousins. So he'd better get to killing now.
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TOM BODETT: Yeah. If that was "Game Of Thrones" he's, like, next - nearly next.
SAGAL: Nearly next, yeah.
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SAGAL: Really, to put it in American terms, it's like being the secretary of agriculture, right?
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AMY DICKINSON: So...
SAGAL: It's probably not going to happen. But you're allowed to dream about it.
DICKINSON: So I have a question about his name - a couple of questions.
SAGAL: Yes.
DICKINSON: His name is really Archie, not Archibald?
SAGAL: Archibald. It was Archie, not Archibald...
DICKINSON: Archie.
SAGAL: ...Not short for anything.
BABYLON: But I thought it was, like, isn't that that Jughead's friend?
DICKINSON: Yeah...
SAGAL: Yeah.
DICKINSON: ...Jughead.
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DICKINSON: I was hoping.
SAGAL: They're big fans of "Riverdale." Now, a lot of people say we're too obsessed with the royals. We fought a war to not have to be obsessed with the royals. But come on. It's just so exciting, after the last couple of years, to see a Brit successfully exit something.
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DICKINSON: Oh, wow.
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DICKINSON: Whoa.
SAGAL: And it's interesting - and apparently - you know, this was Meghan's first baby. Sometimes that's hard. It was a challenging labor. But interestingly, by tradition, the OB/GYN who finally pulled the baby out is now the rightful king of England.
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BODETT: Well, isn't - I mean, I don't know British history thoroughly. But is this the first royal with American blood - like, a colonial...
SAGAL: Apparently, there was somebody way back when. But certainly, it's the first modern royal.
BABYLON: Well, this is the first one that's black.
BODETT: Yeah.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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BABYLON: I mean, are we going to dance around that? Come on, guys.
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SAGAL: Now, Prince - I don't know if you saw the video of Prince Harry coming out.
DICKINSON: So sweet.
SAGAL: He was so excited. He said the baby was, quote, "amazing." His wife was, quote, "amazing." And the birth itself was, quote - wait for it - "amazing."
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DICKINSON: But you know what? He also said something that men - I've never heard a man say.
BABYLON: What?
SAGAL: What?
DICKINSON: He said, I don't know how women do it.
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DICKINSON: I have never heard a man say that. I'm sure men think that...
BABYLON: Well, men have said, oh, man...
BODETT: What kind of men do you hang around?
BABYLON: Yeah. I said that two weeks ago. Come on, Amy.
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DICKINSON: I thought that was so endearing.
SAGAL: It was. It was very - he was so delighted with everything. He was, frankly, just so happy after all the centuries of inbreeding...
BODETT: Yeah.
SAGAL: He was happy his baby didn't have feathers.
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SAGAL: All right. Your next quote is Newt Gingrich speaking on Fox News.
KURTIS: He didn't lose a billion dollars. He had a billion dollars in losses.
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SAGAL: Mr. Gingrich was explaining why, despite news of this astounding loss, who still really is a wonderful businessman?
MORAN: Could it be Trump?
SAGAL: It could be Trump.
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SAGAL: Yes - Donald Trump, our president.
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SAGAL: The New York Times reported this week that Donald Trump lost $1 billion between around 1985 and 1994. He lost money running a casino, hotels, airlines, a football team. On one occasion, he left 300,000,000 dollar bills in the pockets of his pants that he ran through the wash.
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SAGAL: Honestly, we should have figured out he really wasn't that good at business when he tried to pay off Stormy Daniels with a Groupon.
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BABYLON: Peter, can I just say one thing?
SAGAL: You may, Brian.
BABYLON: And this is what people need to realize. He lost a billion dollars back when a billion dollars was a billion dollars.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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BABYLON: That - meaning that's pre-Internet. So you couldn't, like, oh, man. I have an app. Oh, I'm a billionaire. Like, now it's a lot of billionaires prancing around. That's back when you had to destroy people's lives to get a billion dollars.
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BABYLON: He lost a billion dollars then.
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODETT: I mean, I know literally nothing about business, and I don't know if I could - I couldn't accidentally lose that much money. I would have to do it purposely.
SAGAL: Yeah.
BABYLON: Well, he said it's a sport. It's a sport. You can find a child who owns a lemonade stand, and they would make better dividends than Donald Trump.
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SAGAL: All right. Your next quote was an official statement from the PR department of HBO.
KURTIS: This was a mistake. Daenerys had ordered an herbal tea.
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SAGAL: That was the official explanation from HBO about how what appeared by mistake in a scene in "Game Of Thrones" last week?
MORAN: Starbucks. There was a Starbucks cup.
SAGAL: It was, in fact, a Starbucks cup.
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SAGAL: Well, it was a to-go coffee cup. It's unclear as to whether it was a Starbucks cup. Starbucks is saying it was a Starbucks cup. In last week's episode of "Game Of Thrones," obsessive fans - also known as people without anything real to occupy their lives...
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SAGAL: ...Spotted a Starbucks coffee cup sitting on a table in this supposedly medieval fantasy kingdom. Fans, of course, were outraged because in the books, Queen Daenerys drinks only Dunkin'.
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BABYLON: You know what I'm tripping as (ph), Peter?
SAGAL: What?
BABYLON: I thought it was supposed to be there because - there's no time machine in "Game Of Thrones"...
SAGAL: No, that's...
BODETT: I mean, it's a - they fly on dragons, you know? Like, why couldn't there be a Starbucks?
SAGAL: Yeah. I mean, they fly on dragons. They can't go to a Starbucks drive-thru...
BODETT: Right.
SAGAL: ...On the dragon. I mean, where do we stop...
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DICKINSON: I have a question.
SAGAL: ...Our suspension of disbelief? Yes.
DICKINSON: How long was this cup in the shot? Was it seconds?
SAGAL: It was, like, one shot. And you don't - I mean...
DICKINSON: So did you notice it?
SAGAL: I did not.
BODETT: But I can see, like - it's like if you've got little kids, like, you're not surprised to see a Lego anywhere, you know?
DICKINSON: (Laughter).
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODETT: Could be in your food, could be in your underwear drawer. They're just - and that's the way Starbucks cups are. Like, you don't even see them.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAMIN DJAWADI'S "MAIN TITLE (GAME OF THRONES)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.