A surprise snow day for the White House press corps

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

Recorded live at the Orpheint Theater in Omaha, Nebraska, this episode of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! features host Peter Sagal and a panel

Key takeaways

• John Cook reflects on the record-breaking 92,003 crowd at a Nebraska Cornhuskers volleyball game.
• The George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has officially opened in Los Angeles.

Main topics

• Nebraska Volleyball
• White House Press Access

Notable quotes

The longer I coach, the less I know.

Conclusion

A high-energy blend of sports history and topical news satire that pro

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:04) From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Alzo Slade, your judge and scorekeeper. And if it helps, you can picture me in a little referee uniform. Here's your host at the Orpheum Theater in Omaha, Nebraska, Peter Sagal. Thank you all. Speaker 1 (0:30) Thank you. What a delight to be making our debut here at Long Last. Later on, we are going to be talking to Speaker 5 (0:37) the legendary former coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers volleyball team, John Cook. Speaker 1 (0:44) His team once played in front of the largest crowd ever to see a women's sporting event. 92,000 people. Speaker 1 (0:56) Whose regular games, season after season, drew a crowd of 10,000 people. So when he walks out here in this sold-out 2,600-seat theater, we assume he'd be like, yeah, so where is everybody? Speaker 5 (1:13) But first, we want you to compete in front of this crowd when you call in to play our games. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Now, let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Hi, Peter. This is John calling from Syracuse, New York. Hey, John. How are things in Syracuse? Speaker 8 (1:32) Not cold yet, but they will be. Speaker 5 (1:33) I know. You get that every year in upstate New York. What do you do there? Speaker 8 (1:36) I work as a legal aide in our local district attorney's Speaker 7 (1:40) office. Speaker 5 (1:40) Oh, wow. Speaker 5 (1:42) My expectation would be that the district attorney in a place like Syracuse gets to deal with all kinds of raffish kind of criminals. Oh, Speaker 8 (1:50) definitely, yeah. Speaker 5 (1:52) A wide variety. So what your job lacks in pay makes up an entertainment. Speaker 7 (1:57) That, yes, it definitely does. Speaker 5 (2:00) Well, let me introduce you to our panel, John. First off, it's a comedian out on tour who you can see this very weekend at the Laughing Tap in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It's Dulce Sloan. Speaker 5 (2:15) Next up, a comedian who's on tour all fall with the next stop October 2nd and 3rd at the Comedy Fort in Fort Collins, Colorado. It's Josh Gondelman. Hello. Speaker 3 (2:24) Thank you for having me. Speaker 5 (2:27) And a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning and co-host of the new Speaker 1 (2:30) podcast, You Could Make This Beautiful, it's Faith Saley. Speaker 5 (2:34) Hey, John. Speaker 1 (2:38) So, John, you're going to play Who's Alzo? Speaker 5 (2:39) This time, Alzo Slade, standing right here, is going to read you three quotations from this week's news. As you probably know, your job is to correctly identify or explain just two of them. Do that, you will win our prize. Any voice from our show, you might choose for your voicemail. Are you ready to do this? I'm Speaker 7 (2:54) ready to go. Speaker 5 (2:54) Let's do it. Here's your first quote. It's from a CNN journalist. Very happy to be getting back to work here. That journalist said she was happy to get back to work where, after journalists from CNN, MSNOW, and Politico had been banned all week? That would be the White Speaker 1 (3:11) House. The White House, yes. The journalists were banned. Speaker 5 (3:17) Oh, no, without White House press briefings, how will we hear how great the war in Iran is going? So the president banned these three outlets. The networks immediately went to court, got an order, letting them back in. But were they really happy about that? Getting banned from this White House must be like when a friend cancels plans and you have to pretend you're upset. Oh, shoot. I was really looking forward to hearing you yell next to a helicopter. They were Speaker 2 (3:49) really sad. Or is it one of them days? It was like a snow day as a kid. Yeah. The president. Speaker 2 (3:59) Oh, no. Speaker 3 (4:01) Totally, right? Because they must be such dedicated journalists because they were probably just forgetting what stale Big Mac smells like. And they had to go back. Now, Speaker 5 (4:12) I want to say that the judge's decision said that the White House pulled the passes without really explaining why. And you cannot do that. The Constitution forbids the government from being a dad who sends you to your room on the grounds. You know what you did. Speaker 2 (4:31) So you're telling me that there are things that this president is doing that's not constitutional. Speaker 1 (4:39) I'm sorry if I broke that to you suddenly. That doesn't sound right. Speaker 3 (4:47) That's not the Speaker 1 (4:48) Donald Speaker 3 (4:50) Trump I know. Speaker 1 (4:52) All right, Speaker 5 (4:53) John. John, your next quote is from a New York Times commenter. Speaker 7 (4:58) It remains to be seen whether or not the force is with the museum. What new museum opened Speaker 5 (5:04) in L.A. this week? Speaker 7 (5:05) Two mixed reviews. Speaker 1 (5:07) Would Speaker 8 (5:07) that be George Lucas' Star Wars Museum? Speaker 1 (5:10) Yes, the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art finally opened in Los Angeles this week. I can't believe it's been open Speaker 5 (5:19) just three days and they've already had to rename it the Donald J. Trump and George Lucas Speaker 1 (5:25) Museum of Narrative Art. Speaker 1 (5:32) This new museum houses 40 Speaker 5 (5:34) ,000 pieces of George Lucas's personal collection of memorabilia and collectibles from pop culture. So the experience of visiting it is described as being just like when your nephew asks you to come see my room. Speaker 5 (5:51) Wait Speaker 3 (5:51) a Speaker 2 (5:51) minute. Hold on. So y'all paying admission in his storage unit? Is that what this is? Pretty much. Star Speaker 3 (5:56) Wars slash storage wars. Yeah, Speaker 5 (5:59) exactly. It's Speaker 3 (6:01) a Speaker 5 (6:01) storage unit with a gift shop. There were tons of celebrities at the big opening. There was Oprah Winfrey and Nicolas Cage and Samuel L. Jackson. And the most exciting exhibit, though, has got to be Natalie Portman still in her original packaging. Speaker 3 (6:16) I'm excited for like 25 years from now when George Lucas opens a way worse museum and is like, this is the museum I've always wanted to go. Speaker 2 (6:24) Exactly. Speaker 1 (6:26) And you have to see the bad museum first. That's right. Speaker 7 (6:30) All Speaker 1 (6:31) right, John, we have one more Speaker 7 (6:32) quote for you. Here it is. Multi-cat ownership among the group rose a whopping 117 % since 2018. That was our number one Speaker 5 (6:42) news source, petfoodprocessing.net. commenting on the trend of who becoming out and proud cat owners. Oh, Speaker 8 (6:51) I'm going to have to ask for a hint. Speaker 5 (6:53) Well, it's not just crazy cat ladies anymore. Oh. Speaker 8 (6:57) Can I get another hint? Speaker 5 (7:01) I understand it's a new world and the binary is outdated, but in general, what is the opposite of ladies? Speaker 1 (7:09) New cat men? Yes, cat men. Speaker 1 (7:17) This week, the New York Times profiled the growing number of cat dads, Speaker 5 (7:23) and they use that term repeatedly as if there's nothing wrong with it. Cat dads are men who are happy to show pictures of their cats and brag about their cats to anyone who will listen, which is no one. Speaker 2 (7:36) wait a minute. Just pardon me. I don't like what we doing here. Now here, I love a cat, but we're saying cat ladies and then we're calling them cat dads. Exactly. No, we're giving them, they barely take care of human children. No. Speaker 1 (7:55) All right, you object. Speaker 6 (7:56) But the point is, when a woman has a cat, she's a childless cat lady. But when a man has a cat, he instantly becomes a parent, a cat dad. Speaker 1 (8:08) You're right. I didn't see the injustice in this. Speaker 6 (8:10) How does that work? Not injustice. Speaker 1 (8:12) How about Speaker 2 (8:13) childless cat men? Yeah, cat men. And he don't get no thing. It ain't da-na-na-na-na-na-na cat man. No. Speaker 2 (8:23) Catman! One Speaker 5 (8:24) man, one cat, childless cat guy. Is that making you happy? Catman. Catman, profiled by the Times, is a long-distance trucker who replaced his Speaker 1 (8:34) passenger seat in the cab with a cat tree so his two cats could accompany him on his routes. Yes. This is such a predicament for the hitchhikers. Would I rather get a ride with that cat guy or with a murderer? Speaker 2 (8:51) Ain't nowhere to sit. The cat tree got shotgun. That's Speaker 1 (8:54) true. You Speaker 2 (8:54) can hop in the back with these salmon. Speaker 1 (8:56) Now, these Speaker 5 (8:57) guys say the stigma around cat guys being, quote, less dateable is gone now. But this is true. They also all told the Times that they are absolutely still not putting cats in their dating profile pictures. Because they are crazy cat guys, but they're not crazy. Well, Speaker 3 (9:12) how are you going to put a cat in the picture when you've already holding up the fish? Exactly. Speaker 1 (9:16) Well, the fish lures in the cat, right? Alzo, how did John do in our quiz? John did Speaker 7 (9:22) great. He got three out of three. Perfect score. All Speaker 1 (9:25) right. Well done, John. Thank you so much for playing. Speaker 5 (9:35) Right now, panel, time for you to answer some questions about this week's news. Faith, this week, the Mamdani administration in New York opened the first of 17 new high-tech public restrooms. Now, these bathrooms have an important feature. After exactly 10 minutes of use, what happens? Speaker 6 (9:54) Rats come out and start chewing the toilet paper. Speaker 5 (9:57) No. Speaker 6 (9:59) Give me a hint, Speaker 5 (10:00) please. Well, okay. Well, we've all had this experience sometimes when we've forgotten to lock it. The door opens? The door opens. Oh, the shame. At 10 minutes, no matter what you are doing, the door will open. Exposing you to anybody out there, a voice will say at 10 minutes, attention, your time is expired. The door is opening now, and the door opens whether you want it to or not. And of course, as you're exposed to everyone out there, Speaker 1 (10:27) New York, New York starts blaring on the speakers. Speaker 1 (10:33) You know, start spreading the news. I Speaker 6 (10:37) mean, that's ample time, though. Ten minutes, that's fair. I Speaker 7 (10:41) don't know. Some people's bowels move slower than others. It is Speaker 3 (10:45) prejudice against the IBS community. I Speaker 7 (10:48) mean, not to give too much information, but I have to warm up like an old Chevy when I'm in there. Speaker 5 (10:57) At the opening, when they opened up the first one and he demonstrated them, Mamdani said, quote, too many New Yorkers know what it's like to have nowhere to go, unquote. Mr. Mayor, that is subway elevator erasure. Speaker 3 (11:12) That's right. The problem isn't that people had nowhere Speaker 1 (11:15) to go. Exactly. Speaker 3 (11:17) It's coming out. Speaker 1 (11:18) They were going everywhere. Everywhere. We had too many places. Speaker 5 (11:32) Coming up, a bluff for listener game 20 years in the making. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT-TO-PLAY. We'll be back in a minute with more of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR. Support comes from our 2026 lead sponsor of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, Odoo. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. And best of all, no spreadsheets. Start managing your business with one... Speaker 1 (12:14) This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, we tell stories about when things change. Like for this guy, David, whose entire life took a sharp, unexpected, and very unpleasant turn. And it did take me a while to realize it's basically because the monkey pressed the button. That's right. Because the monkey pressed the button. Surprising stories every week, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (12:39) As the political landscape shifts beneath our feet, we're all vulnerable to a well-funded distraction economy determined to take our eye off the ball. Our weekly politics series, If You Can Keep It, is here to help, where our focus is not the horse race, but the state. We tackle the big political stories of the day and why they matter for our democracy. Join me, Todd Zwilich. And me, Jen White, on the 1A Podcast from WAMU and NPR. Speaker 7 (13:06) From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Alzo Slade. We're playing this week with