Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - WWDTM Best Of: Summer Fun Edition

Episode Date: June 5, 2021

During this week that marks the beginning of summer fun, WWDTM revisits some of the funnest people we know., with Desus Nice and The Kid Mero, Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody, as well as Este and Alana Haim.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. It's June, and the weather is heating up. Get ready for a hot summer in the Billy. I'm Bill Curtis, and here's a man convincing himself that technically a beach body is anybody you bring to the beach. Peter Sagal. Thank you, Bill. The summer of 2020 was canceled, so everybody is very excited for this summer, except we're rusty. It's been a while since we've had very much, oh, damn it, what is that word again? Fun, F-U-N, noun from the early English word meaning to kick back with some buds and bruise, crank the tunes, and maybe get out the slip and slide.

Right, fun. So we thought as a tutorial, we'd bring you some of the most fun segments we've done in the last few months. The top of that list was a visit with talk show hosts Desus and Mero. In March, the Bodega Boys had rocketed from podcast hosts to their own premium cable show. And as soon as Peter welcomed them, you could see why. Truly, they are the click and clack of Generation Z. Desus and Mero, welcome to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Thanks for having us.

BX in the building. Get you ready for some chaos. Yes. We may not be ready for you. Let's go. You know, one of my first questions was, are you guys like you are on the show in real life? And I think I now know the answer. Yeah. Yeah.

A lot of people have this problem because sometimes we'll do like a 7 a.m. talk show. We'll do an 8 a.m. talk show. And people are like, how do you possibly have this amount of energy and the truth is it's a lot of cocaine yeah did i get your origin story right because i mean your your rise was extremely rapid but my understanding is it started on twitter you guys had twitter accounts and people were like yeah these guys are great it was like a reconnection via Twitter. It was like the Craigslist ads. Like, I saw you on the train.

You were wearing a blue hat. You were listening to French Montana. Let's connect. It's amazing that two people on Twitter actually got along and created this thing. Because usually when you find someone that's opinionated, you just start cussing each other out. You know what?

We had similar opinions. And also we both extremely hated our jobs at a time when it was all right for you to tweet verbatim how much you hated your job. So I created a whole characters that I worked with. And people were just logging in. Because they were like, what's going on with Keisha? Your co-workers.

People who knew who my co-workers were dating. And Mero was going through the same thing. So we were just going back and forth about who hates their job more. Mero, what were you doing when all this started? I was working at a school, at a junior high school that I attended. Shout out to Junior High School 117, BX Stand Up. It is what is referred to in the DOE as a high-need school,

which means you might get stabbed if you're a member of the faculty. So I was the only male paraprofessional in the school, and I was like six feet tall. So they put me in the class that was just like, yo, these dudes are about to age out of here, and they're all in gangs. So please just help the teacher not get murked by them, and we'll be fine. And I used to take 30-minute bathroom breaks and be like, yo, I'm going to the bathroom, and just sit in there and tweet. 30-minute bathroom breaks and be like, yo, I'm going to the bathroom and just sit in there and tweet. And then I got caught by the principal and I made up this whole elaborate lie about how I was pre-writing tweets and sending them to my manager and having him tweet them out during the day. And then it all came to an end when it was just like I was on the cover of the New York Times arts and culture section or something like that.

And the assistant principal walks in. This is Irish dude, John Skelly. He walks in. He's like, the Kid Mero, huh? The Kid Mero. Well, the Kid Mero is actually Mr. Martinez. You need to get your ass in the room because it's 8.05. Whoa.

And I was like, okay. I was like, all right. You're tweeting. You're blowing up on Twitter. You're on the cover of the New York Times Arts section and his only reaction was, you need to be in the classroom? Yeah. He was like, I don't give a **** that you're in the New York Times, though. You need to get over there

because it's the kid throwing a desk. You need to be the authority figure marrow right now. The adult marrow. Right now. Not the kid marrow anymore. No more the kid marrow. You're the adult marrow. We're never going to get through your whole career, but you went from the tweeting to the podcast to the show. Now you're on Showtime. Showtime.

I've been watching you guys for a while. You seem to really like each other. Is that real or is it like a system? It's like you ever see when they do the boy bands? Yeah. It's like that. Scooter Braun put us together. I'll go even further.

Like everything about the show is fake. Josh is not funny in real life. Josh is mean. Nah, we like each other because you know what it is? Because we started at the same just when we first started the podcast, we had to literally share a MetroCard to get home. So once you have that and then our experiences, we've had experiences that bond you for life. We got banned from the VMAs because I sat on a pregnant Kim Kardashian. Okay.

You sat on a pregnant Kim Kardashian at the VMAs. Yes, he did. Sorry, Saint. Yeah. So let me tell you this. So we go to the VMAs. This is the first time ever we've ever been invited to anything like this in life. Stop.

Wait a minute. Before you start. Before you start. Key to the note. We people don't know this. The VMAs are open bar. We didn't know this. So we thought we had a pregame.

So we had a limo. We took the limo to a convenience store and we just got like liquor. So now we're at we're on the we're at the VMAs. We are sourced up. We take a picture with the limo driver. We're scaring people. We're so excited to be there and like you know we it hasn't dawned on us we're on tv as well so what we're

doing is just pointing at people like yo vanessa hodges yo oh wow that's beyonce i mean oh that's rita aura all right whatever so we're just running around and we're just bothering everybody you can see they're just like who are these two everyone's like who are these two people why are they talking to everybody and we're not talking to them like, hey, do we work on a project together? We're going to, hey, Jaden Smith! And they're like, yo, we're trying to record. And because, you know, we're a little out there, a little drunk, a little smizzy,

I see this gotta be like seven feet four tall Russian guy talking down to my guy Mero. You know when you're like a little intoxicated, everything is like hazy and you don't really hear anything. All I'm just like, oh, you trying to fight my bronze brother?

I'll let Mero take it from you. So I see Kanye West and I'm like, this is it. This is our opportunity to get a photo with Kanye West. So I'm just like, hey, I'm like, yo, Kanye, what up, yo, big fan, you know what I'm saying? Like, just keep talking, like hoping that he's like, do I know you? Like, then like these are said zangie from street fighter 2

stands in front of me he's like uh my friend you cannot come any closer to kanye west you cannot come but your boy had had you know a little you know a little springsteen juice you know what i'm saying please feel me uh i was i got very bold you know what i'm saying please tell me i was i got very bold you know what i'm saying and i i grew to his height magically and i was like nah if kanye doesn't want to take a picture with me and my man jesus i want him to tell me that not you and then he's just and then kanye's just like i don't know if it's like out of pity or what he's just like he's like all right man come over, come over here. Come over here. So then we go over there.

He makes no effort to get out of his seat. And so we have to crouch down to take the photo. So as I'm crouching down, I back into a pregnant Kim who's sitting there. Because I did not realize she is tiny in real life. Yes. So then I back into her. And I guess she's like, Kanye. And Kanye turns to me and says, the greatest quote.

And I want this on my gravestone when I go home. She goes, watch out for my wife, dog. That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, Desus and Mero, I have a feeling we really could talk to you all day, but we have, in fact, some business to do. We have asked you here to play a game that we're calling

Knowledge Darts. Try these darts. So you've got a book out called God-Level Knowledge Darts. We thought we'd ask about real darts, the game, you know, that we play for fun, the Brits play seriously, and everybody plays drunk. So you've got to answer two out of three questions correctly. Do that, you win our prize. That's the voice of anyone they might like on our show on their voicemail.

So, Bill, who are Desus and Mero playing for? Sarah Long of New York, New York. There you go. Here we go. Here's your first question. In the 1920s, a researcher from Johns Hopkins made a revolutionary discovery about the game of darts. What is it? A, an ancient cave painting in France is really a dartboard, making it the world's oldest sport. B, they discovered that men don't actually enjoy darts.

They just enjoy explaining the rules of darts to women. Or C, the drunker you are the better you shoot hmm oof i want to say c but i feel like a is probably correct yeah i mean in my reality my real life it's c definitely for the purposes of this game i'm gonna go with it you're gonna put aside your instincts to choose c and you're gonna go to go for A. Should we go to a breakout room for this, or should we just go with A? You know what? We're going for A. We're going with A.

You're going to go for A. We're going to go with A. I tried to talk you out of it. It's C. It's the drunker you are, the better you shoot darts. Yeah. That is true, because when you get drunk and you do bowling, you get better at bowling.

But all my ex-girlfriends disagree. So, I mean, we have to see. We have to see. All right. You got two more chances here have to see. We have to see. All right. You got two more chances here. This is not a problem. Okay. As you know, in England,

darts, hugely competitive sport, very serious people watching on TV. And controversy hit the 2018 Grand Slam of darts in England with both players in the final match accused the other player of doing what? A, farting constantly to ruin the other's game. B, muttering miss, miss, miss, miss under their breath. Let me see. What do you think, Amirul? I think...

We really blew it on the first question. We can't do it. Yeah, I know. And I feel like the more ridiculous the answer is, the more right it is. Yeah. So I'm tempted to go with the farting. I think flatulence is it.

We're going with the fart. We're going with the farting. Of course it was farting. That's what happened. They both said that the other guy farted so much they were distracted. One said to the other, it'll take me two nights to lose this smell from my nose. But was he farting on purpose or did he have like Chipotle or something before? Well, the accusation was he was doing

that, he was making it very hard to play because I was so distracted by the stink and then they each denied it. One guy said, look, I'll tell you, you know me. Because professional dart players look and act exactly as you would expect professional dart players to act. Oh yeah, yeah. I have a vision in my head. Every dart tournament ends with

oh, I'm late to pick up my kids. I got them this weekend. Oh, my God. All right. You got one more question here. So, believe it or not, there is an enthusiastic population of blind darts players, some of whom are pretty good. Okay. Britain, in fact, has a team entirely made up of blind players of darts.

What is the team name? A, the Three Mice. B, we apologize in advance. Or C, the Optimists. Optimists is big Monty Python energy. How do you feel, Mero? Yeah, no, I agree. You're right.

That's the one, the Optimists. You just nailed that. Bill, how did Desus and Mero do in our quiz? Two out of three. That means they are winners. Champions. Yes. Season three of Desus and Mero is on Showtime now. Their book is God Level Knowledge Darts.

Desus and Mero, thank you so much. You guys are awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Later, y'all. When we come back, the king and queen of TikTok, by which we mean two septuagenarian Jews who are only vaguely aware of what TikTok is. We'll be back in a minute with more Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPL. It's time to emerge from our homes and get outside you have no idea what you're going to see there you think you might know but every time there's a mystery there that you're going to unearth all this week life kit is headed outdoors with episodes on camping birding biking and more

listen to the life Kit podcast from NPR. From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Bill Curtis, and here is your host, the man who secretly never stopped wearing white pants. It's Peter Sagar. Thank you, Bill. This week we are getting ready for the summer by reminding ourselves what it is like to enjoy ourselves. It has been a while. Speak for yourself. My private menagerie is expensive and tough to clean.

But it pays off when the monkeys get frisky. Now, not everyone has a private menagerie with which to impress their friends. But back in 2017, we brought you a story in our Bluff the Listener game about new ways to impress a date. Here it is, featuring panelists Nagin Farsad, Mo Rocca, and Alonzo Bowden. Hi, this is Abigail from Seattle, Washington. Hey, Abigail, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you? Oh, we're pretty good here in Salt Lake. So tell me, what do you do there in beautiful Seattle? I am a elementary music teacher. Oh my gosh. I have been known to make fun of people for their jobs, but never music teachers. You guys are doing

God's work and I appreciate it. You're the best. Abigail, you're going to play our game in which you have to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Abigail's topic? Best date ever. All right. Just before we get into this, Abigail, are you single by any chance? I sure am. All right. Well, then this might be of particular interest to you because as you may know, we often go to great lengths to impress our dates. You get a great reservation. You buy flowers or in extreme cases, we look vaguely like our profile picture. This week, we heard about a new way to impress one's date. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Pick that real one, you'll win our prize, the weight of your choice on your voicemail. Are you ready to play? I am. All right. Your first new dating strategy comes from Alonzo Bowden.

Every woman loves a hero. Now you can be one for a fee. First, you invite your date to Hirakata Park in Osaka, Japan. Then, as you stroll around, a group of tough guys approach and insult your lady. You step up to the biggest one and flatten it. Now, if all goes according to plan, your girl is incredibly impressed with your manly courage and you live happily ever after. Admitting to her that this was all a prearranged paid stunt is up to you. So chivalry is not dead. It's available for a reasonable price.

Hirakata Park sells various hero packages. If she's not into fake violence, you can defuse a bomb and save the masses. Or be the only possible donor of a rare blood type that saves a life. So for a small fee and with a small rehearsal, you can be any woman's dream. Let's just hope she doesn't see the ad for the service or the charge on your credit card. And above all, you better hope she doesn't start taunting for the service or the charge on your credit card. And above all, you better hope she doesn't start taunting tough guys outside the park saying, my man can take any of you. A park in Japan where you can pay to be attacked so you can beat up the bad guys and impress your date. Your next story of a new mating strategy is from Nagin Farsad. So you're trying to impress a first date, but you really have nothing engaging

to say because you have no personality and you've lived an uninteresting elevator music version of a life. Don't fret. There's a new service based in Florence, Italy called Banter for the Boring, or as the Italians call it, Flirtere per il noioso. This service writes stories from a better life than yours that you can casually deliver on those tricky early dates when you're expected to speak. They'll cook up stories like that one about how you spent a summer building houses for the poor while hunting wild boar in Equatorial Guinea. Their master researchers will even tell you where Equatorial Guinea is. This Italian company guarantees you'll get a second date. However, they caution that once things get intimate, you're on your own.

There are some things even they can't make more impressive. This is such a mean company. An Italian company that will provide you the interesting life stories that you yourself lack. And your last story of an impressive date comes from Mo Rocca. In Paraguay, chili means love, specifically Hormel chili.

Turns out the word Hormel in the Indian language of Guarani translates as passion, which is why Hormel has been marketing its chili in new romantic ways to appeal to Paraguay's indigenous teens. There's a Hormel jewelry line. Quote, when my boyfriend gave me a locket, I blushed, said 17-year-old Miley Ixtapapical. When I opened the locket to find it filled with a scoop of Hormel Chunky, I nearly passed out. At the Hormel Love Hotel outside of the capital city of Asuncion, you and your squeeze can luxuriate in a heart-shaped tub filled with Hormel's cheese sauce.

And at the Hormel-sponsored 75th wedding anniversary party for Paraguayan grandparents Hume and Jessica Mixtacacuatl, family and friends showered them not with confetti, but with ground beef and pinto beans. All right, Abigail. This is what you heard. This is something that can be contributing to a date perhaps in your future. From Alonzo, a park in Japan which will provide paid people to pretend to be beaten up by you

so as to impress your date. From Nagin Farsad, a company that will provide you the interesting stories about your life that you don't have because you haven't had one. Or from Mo Rocca, how Hormel, the chili brand, is an aphrodisiac among the indigenous people of Paraguay. So, Abigail, one of those is something that is real. Which do you think it might be? Well, I think I'm just going to have to go with the one

that I really would like to be real, because I think it would be helpful, and that would be Nagin's Making My Life More Interesting to Date. Really? Alright, so you're going to choose Nagin's story of the service in Italy that will provide you with interesting fictional stories about yourself.

Well, we spoke, and I'm pleased to say this, we spoke to one of America's foremost experts on relationships and dating to tell us about the real story. There's a theme park in Japan where you can arrange to stage this altercation in front of your girlfriend to impress her. That was Dan Savage himself, the columnist and the host of Savage Lovecast, telling us indeed about this theme park in Japan, where, as Alonzo told you, you can arrange to have some guy come up so you can beat him up and impress your date. You didn't win our prize.

However, Nagin got a wonderful point, a fabulous point. Thanks for being wrong. So thank you so much for playing, Abigail. I don't know if anybody had more fun during the pandemic than Mandy Patinkin and Catherine Grody. during the pandemic than Mandy Patinkin and Catherine Grody. The married actors started doing videos at the urging of their son and became social media stars just by being, hilariously, themselves. Peter began by asking Mandy, after four decades of performing, what role is he most recognized for? I would say the most common, aren't you that guy from The Princess Bride,

is probably the thing that happens the most. Right. Now, for people who don't know, of course, he played Inigo Montoya, progenitor of the famous line. Do you want to go ahead and say it? Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

And we're done. Yeah, we're done. That's it, you guys. We're going home. I'm so done i'm screaming there are there are worse things to be unknown for that movie came out god i was just out of college it was the late 80s 88 around there and it is still hugely popular did you guys have any idea when you made that that this was going to be like this cultural touchstone for

like the rest of your life oh god no it was i i certainly had fun you know william goldman wrote the greatest sword fighter ever so i had the task of learning to be a sword fighter which was sort of like a sporting event very much like a sporting event and that was my job and uh while wearing that bomb ass wig yeah i Yeah, I had, well, actually, back then, three-quarters of it was my own hair. No, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm wrong about that. It was called a three-quarter wig. So the front part was my own, and I wish I had it now. But then the movie came out, and nobody saw it. It just, you know, what came and left. And then I heard that other movies had that similar treatment, like The Wizard of Oz and many other films. And then people in

college started watching it and they told their kids and their kids told their kids. And then all of a sudden it became what it became. Can I talk to you about your musical theater life. No. But you have to. You have to let me do this because you don't know this, but when I was 12, we had a very intense relationship. I learned every single lyric of the musical Evita.

I became obsessed with it. And I didn't know how professional theater worked. And one day it dawned on me, what if Mandy Patinkin is sick one night and can't be in the show and people show up? And I know all the lyrics to Che. I need him to know that he can get in touch with me in case he needs to take the night off so all those people aren't

disappointed and I can be a 12-year-old Che Guevara in Evita. So I just want you to know that I'm available. Your mother had called me about this years ago, and I've had your number in my book ever since. I tried to get you twice, and you were busy. Mo, do you still know the lyrics to the Che part in Evita? Oh, what a circus, oh, what a show. Argentina has gone to town over the death of an actress called Eva Peron. You can take it from here. We all went crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night, falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right.

I'm not going to say a word. I'm a baby talker. Ladies and gentlemen, Mo Rocca. Every thought I had in preparation for this interview has flown out of my head now. We have to talk about your latest form of fame, which is you've become a viral internet star on TikTok. I've seen some of the early ones that you did with your wife, Catherine, and it seems as if you have no idea what your son has gotten you involved in. Well, that's fairly true on any given day at any given moment. It is all because of our son, Gideon, who has this enjoyment of taking out his cell phone and asking us questions for, I would assume, family archives is what he often says. And so that's what we would

do. And then we had a fight on our, what anniversary was it, honey? The 42nd anniversary of our first date. 42nd anniversary of our first date. Stopped at a forsythia tree and he asked us what's going on. And she said, well, we just had a fight. It was our anniversary. We had a fight. And then Catherine talked about it. And the next thing he he said can we put this out on your social media which we began to um with the international rescue committee to highlight the uh flight of refugees and help them have a beginning that was the whole purpose of our social media and Gideon hijacked that and so that's how it began it. It seems as if Catherine is there with you. Why don't you bring her on then?

Yes, it is. I recommend for everyone, you should tell your guests, never do an interview without your family members around. We're joined now by Catherine. Hello, how are you? Hello, hello everyone.

So you guys are now influencers. You're TikTok influencers. I mean, honestly, to this moment, no insult to the young people that love TikTok. I, honest to God, do not understand it. It makes Twitter look like Shakespeare. I don't even know how to find TikTok. I don't even know how to find Instagram. I'm completely, you know. Happy. Yes. That's the word you were searching for. You did have, you had your anniversary of your first date 42 years ago?

Yeah, yeah. It's extraordinary. We heard a story, I don't know if it's true, something to the effect that Mandy, you said to Catherine on your first date, I'm going to marry you. Yeah. Yes, and then I believe she said to me with her finger up like this, pointing at me, you don't know what you're talking about, and I went click.

I took a picture of it, and she said, you're an actor and a baby, and you're going to get hurt. And I said, that's okay. Now, she's pulling her hair out of her head. Oh, my God. It's all right. Because no matter what story I tell about this, it's the wrong version. No, we don't have time on this program for that. Catherine, your rebuttal.

Michael Weller, who wrote the play, came up to me and said, what do you think about Mandy? And I said, oh, he's great. Wait a minute. You mean for me personally? I said, forget it. He's an actor. He's a baby. He's a little bit crazy.

No, the next person I'm with is going to be the father of my children, and he's not. He was 25 years old. I was 31. We wanted to use this occasion to tell you that Mo Rocca is actually the father. What's amazing about you, Catherine, and I want to say I genuinely admire this, even though when you're telling a story about how you were completely mistaken about something,

you're still the smarter person. About memory, yeah. No, no, she is the smarter person. She's the smartest one in the family. Oh, God, that is so true. It is so true. It is true. It is true.

Catherine, you deserve at least 50% credit. You said, the next person I'm with will be the father of my children, and he won't be you. And you were half right. I think that counts for something. Well, Mandy Patinkin, it's great to talk to you and Catherine, you too. But we have asked you here to play a game we're calling... TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. So you are TikTok stars now. So we thought we'd ask you three questions about the original TikTok stars, which, TikTok. So you are TikTok stars now. So we thought we'd ask you three questions about the original TikTok stars, which are clocks.

Get two questions about clocks right, you'll win a prize for one of our listeners, the voice of anyone they might choose for their voicemail. Chioki, who is Mandy Padinkin, and may I say Catherine Brody, playing for? Danny Rosen of West Hartford, Connecticut. Here we go. Here's your first question. Before the invention of inexpensive clocks, people in Britain had to manage their time in different ways. Here we go. Here's your first question. wake them up by shooting at their windows with pea shooters, or C, getting out of meetings by saying, oh, I'm sorry, I have a witch burning to get to. Pea shooting.

Pea shooting? What was the pea? Shooting at the windows. Okay, yeah, that sounds great. That's the answer. Congratulations. That's the right one. These human alarm clocks were called knocker uppers. That was the name of the job.

They used pea shooters, at least in one instance. Sometimes they used canes or clubs to bang on the windows to get people up in time to get to work. Wow. Next question. Clocks are not beloved everywhere. In fact, schools in the UK announced they were removing clocks from classrooms. Why?

A, students were stealing the clock hands and stabbing each other with them. B, to prevent students from yelling, 10, 9, 8, etc. as the period came to a close, or C, because students are simply no longer able to tell time. Oh, wow. C.

There you go. You're right. That's exactly it. Students can no longer read analog clocks, so they're just removing them from classrooms. Oh, my God. I know. All right, here's your last question.

People pretend to hate daylight savings time, but most don't know the origin of daylight savings time. Was it A, Ben Franklin invented it as a joke, B, Mussolini came up with it because he couldn't figure out how else to get the trains to run on time, or C, Napoleon invented it, so his army would always surprise the other side

by getting there one hour early? I'm pretty sure it's Ben Franklin. You're right! It is Ben Franklin! I knew it, I knew it. He sent a letter to the editor when he was in Paris as ambassador, saying that, hey, if we all get up when the sun rises and go to bed when it sets, we'll all save money on candles. Jokey, how did Mandy Patinkin and his wife, Catherine Grody, do on our quiz?

After more than 40 years in show business and more than 40 years of marriage, I think it's safe to say this is the high point. Mandy Patinkin and Catherine Grody are celebrated actors, singers, writers, and surprise TikTok stars. You can find them both on TikTok at Mandy Patinkin. Thank you so much for joining us on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

Enjoy yourselves, guys. Stay safe. Be well. Bye-bye. Bye. When we come back, our panelists show your kids how it's possible to have fun all on your own in the best band ever to play Cantor's Delicatessen. We'll be back in a minute with more Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR. This message comes from NPR sponsor Odoo. Do you run a business or manage a team?

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So stop wasting time and start getting stuff done with Odoo. For a free trial, go to odoo.com slash wait. From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Bill Curtis, and here's your host, who's searching Amazon to see how realistic those fake six-pack abs t-shirts have gotten. It's Peter Sagal. Thank you, Bill. It is our Practicing for Summer Fun edition, and we want you and your kids to know that it's not necessary to buy expensive toys or invite famous people over to talk to to have fun. No, you can find fun all on your own. Expensive toys are great, though. I have a working model submarine the size of an actual

submarine. Well, still, all you really need to amuse yourself is... Seriously, it has three nuclear-tipped Trident missiles on board. That's really great, Bill, but... Defy me and die in fire. Here is our panel showing you how to enjoy yourselves peacefully. Yasser, very exciting news. There's been a major advancement in the Nerf arms race. Nerf has invented a new gun that can do what? It has a laser scope i don't know i'm trying to think of something like violent it has it has armor piercing ammunition

uh wow um okay wait hold on an extended No, no, I'll get it. It's sort of, you could say it shoots it like Beckham. Wait, it has like a kickback? No. Just tell me. I'll never get this. It shoots around corners. That is, by laws of physics, impossible. But yet it does.

Tell me. You thought you were safe in the next room or crouched behind that couch. Think again. The Nerf rival curve shot fires foam ammo that can turn left or right or down, which means truly there is no place for America's younger brothers to hide. I like that Nerf thought to themselves. You know what America needs right now is more of a sense that there's no escape. How can you be annoying? The vibe we're picking up is that no one's on edge.

People will think this is so chill. Kids just love playing insurrection. This story is yet another example of how adding nerf in front of something turns it from a horrifying thing to a cool one. Like, new gun shoots around corners is really bad, but nerf gun? That sounds like fun. It works for everything, as in, I tested positive for nerf COVID. Adam, this week GQ did an in-depth interview with someone entirely about their famous hairstyle. Who was it? It was Elvis.

No, it wasn't. He's dead. Really. Trust me. Oh, wow. It was somebody with really famous hair, and I'm going to need a hint. Okay, well, remember we were just talking about pressure when you urinate. What do you take to combat

that, a depressurization of your urinary tract? I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You take Flomax. Okay. I didn't know that. Okay. Flomax. And then Flomax sounds like something you cut your hair with.

A Flowbee. Right. Yes. And who uses a Flowbee to cut his hair to give himself that famous Caesar haircut and everything else afterwards? Peter, I'm going to need a hint. George Clooney? It's not George Clooney, which is why. Oh, I thought it was George Clooney.

It wasn't George Clooney. I would also point out. Peter, I'm going to need a hint. I revealed my urinary tract problems just for that. You did. Just to clue me into the wrong answer. Adam, you'd like a hint. All right, here we go.

Dearest Martha, today I washed my tresses in the Susquehanna and combed them into what my adjutant calls a mullet. Your devoted Samuel. Dearest Martha. It's George Washington. No, I need like the Ashokan farewell playing behind that. Is it Ken Burns? What are we talking about here? Yes, it's Ken Burns.

Ken Burns has What are we talking about here? Yes, it's Ken Burns! GQ interviewed... Ken Burns has famous hair! For decades, Ken Burns has been his own personal nine-part series on the history of the bowl cut.

But during lockdown, he has had to let his hair grow out. And I gotta tell ya, it is, like, Fabio-level sexy. That filling in your loins, that's the Ken Burns effect.

So... I haven't seen that. It's amazing. I mean, it is amazingly good looking hair. Part of what he's doing is he conditions it with sepia. Give it that tone, you know? Yeah, I know.

December 4th, I feel I shall never see Del again. His luxurious shoulder-length hair looks so good that GQ declared a style alert and called him for an interview. We're really excited for their next feature on Werner Herzog's rippling thighs. I love that the pandemic has turned Ken Burns into that librarian who takes her glasses off and lets her hair down. Pretty much. Yeah, exactly. In every music video. He is a veteran

of the battle of split ends, which is decisive. Tom, conspiracy theorists have long accused Bill Gates of being an evil genius who's trying to implant humans with microchips. That, of course, is ridiculous. As it turns out, Bill Gates is really working on a plan to do what? Get everybody to just carry the tracking device in their pocket. No. No, he did that. I need another hint. Well, I mean, it's part of his concern for health.

He never wants anyone to suffer a sunburn again. Well, by wearing sunscreen is too obvious. By wearing leather, it would work. You know, he's going right to the source. Oh, he wants to put a sunshade up in space. Exactly. He wants to block out the sun. Oh, he wants to put a sunshade up in space. Exactly. He wants to block out the sun. Oh, wow. That seems like real evil genius stuff there.

Doesn't it, though? In an announcement made this week, Bill Gates said he is supporting the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, which sounds like the dirtiest thing Bill Gates has ever thought of doing. It kind of makes sense. You can go blind from both too much staring at the sun and too much perturbation. The SCPE, as it is called, plans to spray a sun-reflecting

aerosol into the atmosphere in an attempt to help combat the effects of global warming. The project could cost upwards of $10 billion because purchasing that many bottles of Aquanet is not cheap. Didn't Dr. Evil try this in, in like the second movie? I think so.

I'm pretty sure Austin Powers saved us from this once already. Yeah. It sounds like Simon Barsinister. It really does. If he gets a white cat, it's over. One of the most important skills people have had to master this last year was having fun with their family. And after a year and a half of that, we never want to see any of those people again. But those skills might still come in handy. might still come in handy.

So as a model, here's Esty and Alana Heim, who are not only sisters, but with their third sister, Danielle, are the Band Heim. Peter asked them about their first family band and their early gigs at a deli in Los Angeles. We had a band with our parents called Rockenheim. It was a cover band. We would only play covers. And our first gig was when i think i was either

seven or eight and it was at the kibitz room and we got paid in matzah walsu because that's like what the payment is there and that was like our first gig like my first gig was at a bar i we've now we're like actually friends with the cantor's family because they can't get rid of us where they're like once like once every couple of days you could find us at cantor's family because they can't get rid of us where they're like once like once every couple of days you could find us at Cantor's before COVID. For people who don't know Cantor's is like the classic old deli in LA it's in the Fairfax district which historically was the Jewish district and I just love the idea that one day I don't know how long ago uh 20 years somebody walked in and said hey there's a nice jewish family playing in the

other room want to have a drink well there actually was literally one person in the crowd like it wasn't like a publicized it was like one guy there was like one guy that he must have been like the guy that just goes there every night to just get wasted and he was the only person there he was sitting at the bar and i remember there's's like a, there's video of it, of me asking Danielle. We were all wearing like butterfly clips and like limited to outfits, like sparkly jeans, sparkly jeans.

Like I think my shirt said like soccer on it, like soccer or something. Or like 99% angel. Angel, 1% devil. Oh my God. And there was like a guy, there was a guy that could not believe that we were playing our

instruments and in the video you hear him screaming like this isn't real and you can you had one you had one audience member and he was a heckler he was a heckler he was a heckler and you see danielle like in the video like she's doing like Danielle's first Danielle's first solo that she ever learned was Hotel California what and she played the whole solo and she was like nine or ten and the guy was like where's the recording wait I can't even can we just back up and talk about the fact that your parents pimped you out like the Von Trapp family? Well, it's actually a pretty crazy thing.

My dad, so my parents have always loved playing music. They were never professionals. They just like, my dad played drums. My mom played guitar. And like her claim to fame is that she won the gong show like when she was around my age. Oh, that's awesome. And my dad always tells a story like that he had a dream like literally like a prophecy like a dream that he woke up one one night in the middle of the night and like woke up my mom and was like

i just had a dream that we had a band with the kids and i think we should do oh wow how old were you at the time i when you started playing guitar when we started well i was like four when we started rocking hyman the only thing that I could play was like percussions. Like my dad would give me like a cowbell, like a tambourine, like very Partridge family style. Like the only thing I could play. And Danielle, I mean, Danielle started when she was how old, Essie? Danielle started when she was like five or six. Five or six, yeah.

And surpassed me. And I was like eight or nine. And like imagine the older sister looking at the middle sister and she's just like, she's literally like the Steve Van Zandt at like six years old. And I'm sitting here like,

I can barely push on the string. So your father says, I had this dream, we're going to be a band. And the fact that you guys were not like, this is crazy, this is weird, we don't want anything to do with this. But you're like, yes. And now you're like a huge hit band you play saturday night live and guess what taylor swift this is really weird it was cool though because the thing is my parents

every every we only had radio in our car so we would only play krs 101 which was like the oldie station but like we would record songs on a tape deck and then learn them by ear like with my mom like we would all sit around and like learn the chords and like for me because we would pretty much only listen to k-art i was like learning songs that were on the radio not knowing that they were like really old songs i thought the beatles were like alive and well and playing like tori i was like we should go see these guys they're really great I mean once we got into like our teen years it was like mommy we want to play like sublime your teen rebellion wasn't like yes we're going to be in a band just like you insisted that we are but our rebellion is we're going to

shift our repertoire take that exactly and growing up, I personally thought every family had a family band. So I didn't think that it was weird. And it wasn't until I was in middle school, basically, or like fifth grade, when I asked my friends, or my friends were like, we're gonna go to the mall on Saturday, SU, do you want to go? And I was like, I mean, yeah, but like, aren't you in rehearsal? How did you guys tell once you guys hit it big? How did you guys tell, once you guys hit it big, how did you tell your parents they weren't in the band anymore?

Yeah, we kicked mom and dad out of the band. I mean, they were just stoked that we wanted to be in a band with each other. Like they thought we weren't like killing each other by the time we were teenagers. It was never like a, you will play music and you will be a rock band. Oh my God.

It was the opposite of anything. Yeah, we're like, we think it's fun, but also get a job and go to college. Are they still like that? Or they're like, yes, playing Saturday Night Live is nice, but you know there is like a post-BA pre-med thing you guys could do. I mean, my mom and I still talk about it. My mom's like, do you ever think you're going to get like, you know, a math degree?

Do you think you can go now? What is it that hard to get in? I'm like, Mom, Mom. We have to go on tour. We have to go on tour, Mom. Education's important in this family. My parents gave up on me and Danielle. Danielle and Alana were hanging out behind the dumpster at our high school smoking cigarettes.

Yeah. Well, that also works if you're going to go into music. Well, Esty and Alana, if you're going to go into music. Well, Esty and Alana, it is a joy to talk to you, but we have invited you here to play a game we're calling You're My Wonderwall. So you two, with your sister,

are part of a successful sibling band. And basically, you have one job. Don't be like Oasis. That band's founding brothers, Liam and Noel Gallagher, became legendary for the feuds that led to the eventual breakup of the band. So we're going to ask you three questions about the Gallaghers. And if you answer two of them correctly, you will win our prize for one of our listeners.

Oh, my God. Okay, here we go. Bill, how are Esty and Alana Heim playing for? Amy Lee of Phoenix, Arizona. All right, here's your first question about Oasis and the Gallaghers. Liam and Noel Gallagher's fights and feuds were notorious for most of the band's career. In fact, someone once capitalized on their reputation for fighting by doing what? A, a special Liam and Noel edition of Rock'em Sock'em Robots was released by Mattel. B, a nine-minute recording of one of their arguments was released as a single by a record label. Oh my God.

Essie, do you know? I actually, I think it might be B. All right, it's B. That's what happened. This single was released under the name Wibbling Rivalry and went to number 52 in the British pop charts. Wow. Crazy. We should cover it on our next record.

All right, here's your next question. In 1996, the band appeared on MTV's live concert show Unplugged, but Noel announced when he got on stage that Liam wasn't going to be there. Where was Liam? Was he A. Locked in the dressing room, exactly where Noel had left him, B. At Noel's house, setting fire to it, or C.

In the audience, heckling Noel. Should we go with A? I think he locked him in the dressing room. Let's go with A. Let's just see what happens. Let Liam lock Noel in the dressing room. No, in fact, Liam was sitting in the audience and he heckled. Oh, that makes me angry. You just need one more and you win. No one will ever remember you got one wrong as long as you win. Otherwise, it's lifelong shame. The brothers were famous for dissing each other in the press. Which of these was once said by Noel about Liam? A, quote, the only thing that keeps

me for punching him in the face every minute of the day is that he looks like me. B, quote, the only thing that keeps me for punching him in the face every minute of the day is that he looks like me. B, quote, he's like a man with a fork in a world of soup. Or C, quote, I have immense respect for his musical talents, but sadly we have differing visions of what we next wish to explore. I think it's B, the soup one. Do you agree? Oh my god, I'm so scared. Yes. It's B, yes. Bill, how did two of the Haim sisters do on our show? They got two right, and here you win with two. Absolutely, it's all you needed. Yay! That's all I wanted. Esty and Alana Haim are two-thirds of the band Haim with their sister Danielle. Their new album, Women in Music Part 3, is up for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance at this year's Grammy Awards. Esty and Alana, what an absolute joy to talk to you.

Thank you so much for being on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Thank you guys so much for having us. That's it for our fun tutorial edition of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Support for NPR comes from NPR St stations and Cyber Reason, a cybersecurity company dedicated to helping enterprises stop ransomware. While attackers hold businesses to ransom, Cyber Reason works to protect them. More at cyberreason.com slash ransom. DuckDuckGo, a privacy company committed to raising the standard of trust online.

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