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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. We are in our annual fall membership drive, and during the beginning of this 11:00 AM hour of the show, every day during the drive, we're bringing back this perennial favorite, a low-stakes pop quiz for a little mostly educational fun. We did a climate quiz on Tuesday, a population quiz on Wednesday, and other things like that. Today, we are thrilled to have joining us for this, the person who actually does this kind of thing on NPR stations around the country, and who I shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as when it comes to public radio news quizzes, none other than Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me.

Wait, Wait will be doing two nights at Carnegie Hall here in the city, Thursday, December 14th, and Friday, December 15th. For right now, we'll call this 'The news of the week plus things you may or may not know about Peter Sagal' quiz. Who wants to play? Get two in a row right, and you'll win a Brian Lehrer Show baseball cap. 212-433-WNYC. Call up and get in line. We have a few open lines, 212-433-9692. Hi, Peter. Thanks for coming on for a few minutes today. Welcome back to WNYC.

Peter Sagal: It's always a pleasure, Brian. I should tell you, though, that I am in no position myself to be answering any questions about the news. I had taken the week off from Wait Wait and because I have an almost three-year-old at home who I've pitched in doing my best to help take care of, all I know about is dinosaurs. I am ready to answer any questions you might have about dinosaurs. Given how long I've been doing this, Brian, it might be weirdly appropriate that that's my expertise. A little self-knowledge. I'm willing to try [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: I thought dinosaurs were a hoax.

Peter Sagal: Oh, no, no. It turns out that I've got a number of books that indicate they were quite real. Although, if you were to talk to my son, he would tell you that many dinosaurs, despite their reputation as terrible predators, were actually quite nice. That's his contribution to the field of paleontology. Tyrannosaurus rex, quite nice.

Brian Lehrer: I don't believe it because the new Speaker of the House told us somebody snapped his fingers and created human, but that's another show.

Peter Sagal: Yes, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Well, I'll give you one more question before we go to the listeners.

Peter Sagal: Yes, go ahead, please.

Brian Lehrer: Let's say you're interested in doing your show at Carnegie Hall, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Peter Sagal: I actually, I don't know why, but I anticipated that question and I am so sleep-deprived from this week of childcare, and ladies don't write in. I know. I know this is what mothers deal with all the time. I am just getting a little taste of it. Believe me, I know that my wife does 99% of this. I'm so sleep-deprived that I can't even answer in an amusing way. Basically, I've checked Google Maps and basically, you leave where I live you go through downtown Chicago, you get on I-80 heading east, and I'll be there in about a day and a half.

Brian Lehrer: That works for me. The other way is you take up the viola as a kid because nobody plays the viola. Everybody plays the violin or the cello. Piano, you're really in trouble.

Peter Sagal: Is that how you do it? They're so desperate for violists, they'll take anyone at Carnegie Hall.

Brian Lehrer: There is a viola shortage in this country to rival the blood short, like you have no idea.

Peter Sagal: Instead of fundraising for NYC, we should try to create violists. We should do a radio telethon to encourage people to take up these bizarre, inflated violins.

Brian Lehrer: That's how you get to Carnegie Hall. Jack in Manhattan. Are you ready for a quiz question?

Jack: I'm ready.

Brian Lehrer: All right. I'm going to ask the first one because it's about Peter. We don't want to have to ask about himself. Peter Sagal hosts a show on NPR. What's the name of the show?

Jack: Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me.

Brian Lehrer: That was just to see if you were awake. Now, Peter was on the show in 2018 for a book about one of his passions, was it called The Incomplete Book of Tennis, The Incomplete Book of Running, or The Incomplete Book of Completing Things?

Jack: Running, and I now run without headphones because of Peter Sagal.

Brian Lehrer: Ooh.

[fanfare music]

Peter Sagal: My legacy ladies and gentlemen.

Brian Lehrer: Isn't that funny? That's just the thing I was going to bring up as a follow-up. Jack, hang on, we'll take your address off the air for Brian Lehrer Show Baseball Cap. I remember talking on the show about how I like to listen to music usually when I run. You're anti-headphones. Are there certain things you tend to think about when you run?

Peter Sagal: Basically, I plot vengeance on my enemies. They'll be hearing from me soon. Let me tell you, because I've been doing some long runs lately. The longer I run, the more elaborate my plots become.

Brian Lehrer: That's the American pastime. It used to be baseball, now it's plotting revenge on your enemies.

Peter Sagal: Plotting revenge, yes. I don't know what the national motto will be, but however you say 'I am your retribution' in Latin will be it. I'm getting a jump on that.

Brian Lehrer: Selena in Brooklyn, you're ready to play? Selena, you are there? Is it Selena?

Selena: Hi, I'm there. Sorry.

Brian Lehrer: You're there. Good.

Selena: It's been cutting out.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Here's another Peter Sagal question. Peter went to Harvard. That's true. Was he a pre-med major who secretly wanted to do comedy, an English literature major, or a broadcast journalism major who invented Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me on the campus radio station?

Selena: Ooh. I don't know if the broadcast journalism is too obvious.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, this is like a professional contestant.

Selena: I'm going to say he was an English--

Brian Lehrer: Peter, that's right. Isn't it?

Peter Sagal: That is right. Although, I have to say the idea of going to medical school and wanting to be a comedian at the same time, I think we all shuddered at the idea. We want our doctors not to be funny. We want our doctors to be very serious. That's just a plea. Yes, that's right. I was an English major because I'm not good at many things, including serious academic inquiry. I spent my time kibitzing books and hanging out in theaters and putting on shows.

Brian Lehrer: Something, in all seriousness, that, listeners, you may not know about Peter or you may have come across some of these, as I guess consistent with his college major, he has sometimes, besides being funny on the radio, he does book reviews for the New York Times. I see earlier this year, for example, you reviewed Simon Wincheste's book Knowing What We Know. I'm just curious if between baby feedings, if there's anything you're reading right now-- I know you don't do the feeding. If there's anything you're reading right now that you would like to recommend that people pick up or that people avoid.

Peter Sagal: Well, first of all, Brian, they're on solid food now, so yes, I do.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, they are. Okay.

Peter Sagal: Of course, I'm steeped in juvenile literature. I can't recommend the works of Jon Klassen enough, including the Hat Trilogy. Let me just say, actually, there's a serious answer. A friend of mine, a colleague of mine, Miles Doornbos at Wait, Wait handed me his quite battered copy of Watergate: A New History by Garrett Graff. I was a small child during Watergate, but I thought I knew the general outlines of it. It is extraordinary to read this story from 50 years ago, because it turns out that our former President Trump was not quite the innovator that he might have seemed or even thought he was in terms of the various things he got up to in the office.

He just talked about it more openly than his predecessor. I don't know what the lesson is that so many of what we thought was new in the Trump administration, specifically in terms of their plots, in their attempts to use the machinery of government to protect the person at the head of it, let's put it that way, weren't as new as we thought. This very detailed history of those times, I should say, is really interesting in looking at these times and I recommend it.

Brian Lehrer: Good book tip. All right. Selena got one right. We didn't forget you, Selena. Here goes your second question for the Brian Lehrer Show baseball cap. Now, we move to 'News of the Week' questions rather than Peter Sagal questions. Peter, do you have these in front of you? I'm not sure if you have this sheet.

Peter Sagal: I do. I was sent by--

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to do the honors here? Do you have it?

Peter Sagal: As soon as I--

Brian Lehrer: You want me to do the first one?

Peter Sagal: You do the first one while I desperately try to find the right emails. Sleep deprivation. Yes. Okay. I got it. I got it right in front of me. Okay, here we go. Yes, I've got them. Go ahead, but you do the [unintelligible 00:09:19].

Brian Lehrer: I'll do the first one. All right, Selena. For the hat, the new Speaker of the House is named Michael Jackson. Michael Jordan, or Michael Johnson? Pick one.

Selena: I think it's Michael Johnson.

[fanfare music]

Brian Lehrer: That is correct. Hang on, Selena, we're going to take your address and send you the hat. Of course, they call him Mike, not Michael Johnson. I couldn't resist those references. Peter, that goes against the trend these days, which is to ask people to use their full first name. Like, "Stop calling me Chris. My name is Christopher." I don't think I've ever heard anyone call you Pete. If I called you Pete Sagal, how would you react?

Peter Sagal: I'd say, "Hey Jim, how are you?," because of all the people I've ever known in my life, I've only, for reasons I can't explain to you, only allowed one to call me Pete. That was my dear friend in high school, Jim Sanders, who by the way I saw, still lives in New Jersey, I saw him when he came to see us at Carnegie Hall last year. I hope he is listening because he has that privilege. For some reason, I've never liked the name Pete at all. When Jim uses it, it's okay. Maybe someday I'll figure out why.

Brian Lehrer: All right, Jacob in Brooklyn, you ready to play?

Jacob: Yes, I am.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Now, in a direct ripoff from a format on Wait Wait, we're going to ask the listeners who's Peter this time. Peter will repeat a quote from someone in the news this week and we'll see if you know who it is. Okay. Peter, you got this.

Peter Sagal: I got this. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to take on. This is fun. This is a little code-switching for me. I'm ready to go. Let's do it.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. You have that first quote. You have it right there?

Peter Sagal: Yes, yes, yes. Ready? Here we go. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, not born equal, created equal."

Brian Lehrer: Who said that? Who's Peter this time, Jacob?

Jacob: I just heard it this morning. Oh my goodness. Wait, do I have options or no?

Brian Lehrer: Oh, no. This is not a multiple-choice question.

Jacob: Not multiple. Okay.

Brian Lehrer: We did play that clip on the show earlier, but I realize that was an hour ago.

Peter Sagal: Can I give a hint?

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Peter Sagal: We've already mentioned him in this segment,

Brian Lehrer: That's a good hint. Now you know it's a male.

Jacob: Okay. it's--

Peter Sagal: Well, of course, it's a male Brian. [crosstalk] I would've done my--

Jacob: The new Speaker of the House.

Brian Lehrer: That's good enough.

Peter Sagal: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Yes. What did you say about him being a male, Peter?

Peter Sagal: I was about to say that of course he was a male, because if it had been a female we were talking about, I would've done my incredibly convincing imitation of the female voice, which I guess we'll just have to wait for-

Brian Lehrer: I see.

Peter Sagal: -if it comes up later. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Probably, though I haven't heard him say it, the new Speaker of the House, given the quote that we just heard, probably thinks there are only two genders anyway. Yes, that quote, Jacob, you got it right. The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, asserting that the country was founded to be a religious state because of the term 'created equal', not born equal in the Declaration. All right, one more. You will win--

Peter Sagal: Can I throw something in, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, sure.

Peter Sagal: A historical fact that I recently learned that when Jefferson literally wrote those words in the Declaration of Independence in his, what they used to call his rooms in Philadelphia, not far from what we call now Independence Hall, he was attended to all his comforts and needs, food, drink, by a woman who was enslaved by his father-in-law. The idea of him writing, "All men, people are created equal," while a person who was held in bondage brought his tea, I find is maybe one of the central ironies of American history.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, yes. All right, Jacob, one more. Here we go, for the hat. Who's Peter this time? Peter, go for it.

Peter Sagal: All right, here we go. Ready? Let me see if I can conjure up the spirit here. "Anybody can run for president. I'm going to protect my staff." You might've heard me trying to bring my best New Yorker to that.

Jacob: Yes. Nothing comes to mind.

Peter Sagal: I'm going to give you a hint. Can I give him a hint, Brian? I don't want to usurp your position.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, you're the guest.

Peter Sagal: All right. Well, yes, you're the host, though. When he says, "Anybody can run for president," he was obviously talking about somebody who was running for president. Then he said, and again, you know it was a man, my masculine energy. "I'm going to protect my staff," so it was somebody who was trying to protect his staff from somebody who was running for president. Does that help?

Jacob: Okay. Let me think.

Peter Sagal: Remember my incredibly accurate New York accent, so it was a person in New York who said it to someone in a room in New York.

Jacob: His name is Peter, right?

Peter Sagal: No. [unintelligible 00:14:35] it was me.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I guess he's not going to get it. All right. Jacob, thanks for trying. Peter, thanks for the hint. Unless you want to give him another hint.

Peter Sagal: I will try. I'm going to give you one more hint. Say again. No, I'll give you one more hint. In order to protect his staff from the guy who was running for president, he this time imposed a $10,000 fine on the guy who's running for president.

Brian Lehrer: Like, blank me with a spoon.

Jacob: It's the judge who's overseeing his case right now.

Peter Sagal: There you go.

Brian Lehrer: Yay. [fanfare music] Boy, did you make us work to give you a baseball cap? Jacob, hang on, we're going to take your address off the air. You know what, that's all the time we have for this. Amateur joined by a professional at doing news quiz. Peter, just tell everybody one other thing. Since you have these shows coming up in New York for Wait Wait Thursday, December 14th, Friday, December 15th, how does that work? Do you just do lots of live stuff and then you edit it all down to the one-hour show for the weekend?

Peter Sagal: Yes, pretty much anybody who's come to see our shows. I'm so proud to say that our shows at Carnegie Hall are rapidly becoming a New York tradition, like the tree at Rockefeller Center. Let's go see the tree and then we'll go see Wait Wait at Carnegie. Yes, we do a lot of material. It's all crazy. It's unedited, it's live, it's uncensored sometimes. It can be pretty raucous. Then, of that material, sometimes as much as two hours of it, if things are going really well, we cut it down to, I think, technically the 52 minutes people hear on their radios on the weekend.

I think it's worth coming. If you enjoy our show, you will get more of it. I should say that if people want to come to see the show and/or our tour of our Wait Wait panelists called the Wait Wait Comedy Tour, you can find out all kinds of information over at nprpresents.org. It's a website where you can find all the live events that NPR is putting on for its various shows, including ours.

Brian Lehrer: Great. Speaking of that comedy tour, by sheer coincidence, and it really is a coincidence, Mo Rocca, one of your regulars, has a new thing also. He's going to be our next guest. Peter Sagal, always awesome. Keep it up. Thanks so much for joining us just for the WNYC listeners today.

Peter Sagal: My pleasure. Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you next month.

 

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