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0:14From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm the guy whose voice is bigger than John Hancock's signature.

0:31Bill Curtis, and here is your host at the Studebaker Theater in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, everybody. Thank you all so much. This 4th of July, we are celebrating the 249th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, meaning this is the last year the country can say it's in its 240s. And let me tell you, once you get to your 250s, it's all downhill, baby. But before that happens, we party by revisiting some great times with our favorite guest, starting with actor Lauren Graham, who is most famous for playing Lorelei Gilmore in the beloved TV show, The Gilmore Girls.

1:16When she joined us in March, Peter started by asking her about her new show in which she plays a middle-aged professional forced to work with kids these days. I have to ask, I watched the first episodes of Z-Suite, and are there actual young people writing this show? Because I have to say, not being a young person myself, the young people seem like lunatics to me. There are. We consulted with actual young advertising people, and obviously it is making fun of all of us, so it's not being overly critical of anyone, because it's overly critical of everyone. It's fun because of the show, I've heard even worse stories.

2:01I have a friend whose young employee called in sick because his eyes were baggy. He had under eye bags and he needed more time for them to settle before he felt comfortable. That's true. That is a thing that happened. Wow. I want to talk about the fans of the show, but I have to engage in just a little speculation. One of the things that I have learned about the Gilmore Girls is that it's famed for its references. There are webpages giving the explanation of every reference in every episode of the Gilmore Girls. In the very first scene of the first episode of the Gilmore Girls, your character Lorelai offers some flavored lip gloss to your daughter Rory.

2:46In one of the very first scenes of Z-Suite, your character describes one of the colleagues as so young, she still uses flavored lip gloss. Was that most NPR. And I'm like, this has got to be a subtle callback, right? On somebody's no, no, no. I mean, I love, I don't think so. No one, no one, I did not make that association and no one said, hey, that's a little Easter egg for you. I think it's just you're a very smart man. And you're a very lovely woman, but we knew that. Let's talk about the Gilmore Girls. Gilmore Girls is so beloved that there are two fan conventions this year in Connecticut alone.

3:36Have you ever gone to one? No. I haven't. And we are, it is the 25th anniversary this year, and we are in discussions by we, I mean myself and Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of the show, to say, what can we do? What can we do to give people the experience they seem to crave of community around the show? You know, maybe getting all of us together in some way. So we're working on it. You're working on it. So there might be something. I hope so. There will be something. Will it be at an inn in Connecticut? I don't know. It'll be great to have all the people wear plaid. That'll be exciting. Many years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Leonard Nimoy.

4:29He had a thing early in his career where he got very upset that people thought he was Mr. Spock. He later embraced it. I wonder, you played a similarly iconic character. Do people think you are you, Lauren Graham, actual human being, are Lorelai Gilmore fictional creation. Yes, and I don't think I've worked hard enough to dissuade them from believing that. I think the show, you know, as any long-running TV show, you become it and it becomes you, and sort of the reason I gravitated toward this way back when I first read the pilot was it felt like familiar somehow. It felt like the way I speak or think already.

5:14So it was kind of meant to be in that way. And, um, and, and yes, I, in general, it's really positive. People view me as their cool mom and, um, I don't, you know, that's not bad. No. Does it, has it ever gotten awkward? Has anybody like come and like laid out their troubles and ask for Lorelai's advice? Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's not even awkward so much as it's, and this is just being on TV and playing someone who's like not Walter White, you know, like if you play a friendly kind of, uh, warm person, like people just feel that they know you and, um, you know, people cry sometimes and, you know, it gets awkward.

5:58Like if I'm in the bathroom and like coming out of a stall, like that's not my favorite. They're like, oh my God, can I? And I'm like, let me just, let's leave this room and somewhere else. Lauren, going back in your life way before Gilmore Girls, you were in your college acapella group. Is that right? Yes. Yes. And you're on Broadway in Guys and Dolls. How often do you sing now in your life? Not often, but I do, I am still on a text thread with the Columbia Metrotones, my group of songs we think would make good acapella songs. We're not going to perform them. We're not going to arrange them. We're not going to get together and even like rehearse it, but there is kind of a, it's always there.

6:45Once you're an acapella, you never leave. I know. In that group, we had, because we traveled to other colleges on the weekends, and we had to have, and perhaps you can employ this if it's a problem in your life, a no harmony in the car rule. Because people would be like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, singing along to songs in thirds, and it was really irritating. Well, Lauren Graham, it is a joy to talk to you. And we have asked you here to play a game. And we are calling it Gilmore Girls Meet Girls with Gills. I know. All right. Work with me here. Work with me. I will.

7:30You played a Gilmore Girls. So we're going to ask you three questions about Gil Girls. That is mermaids. Okay. Makes sense. Answer two to three questions correctly. You will win a prize for one of our listeners. the voice of anyone they choose from our show on their voicemail, perhaps mothering them. Well. That's a great gift. It is, I think. I think it's the only one we could possibly afford, so it better be. Bill, who is Lauren Graham playing for? Aoife Murray of Oak Park, Illinois. Ah. A place I know well. Here we go, Lauren. You ready to play? I am. All right. Here's your first question. The old 20 ,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride at Disneyland, now gone.

8:07Well, for a brief period in the 1960s, had actresses dressed up as mermaids lounging on rocks in the lagoon and waving to the visitors. They had to end that part of the attraction just after a few years. Why? A, one of the mermaids got a tail caught in the submarine and got dragged through the lagoon. B, visitors kept jumping in the water and trying to hit on the mermaids. Or C, somebody who said they represented the real mermaid community said it was offensive stereotyping.

8:42I believe that people would get in the water to meet them. Yes. You apparently have met some people. Yes. That's right. It was, unsurprisingly, mostly men who were jumping into the water to go talk to the mermaids. I don't know if the men had noticed that the mermaids are fish from the waist down. All right. Very good. Very perceptive. Here's your next question. The most famous mermaid attraction in America is, of course, the Mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs, also in Florida. If you were to dive to the bottom of the Weeki Wachee Springs where the mermaids play, 75 years after that show started, what would you find down there?

9:24A, about 10 metric tons of loose plastic mermaid scales. B, a carton of cigarettes that was dropped by a mermaid in 1968 who actually thought she could have a smoke break down there. Or C, nobody has any idea because nobody's ever seen the bottom. Ooh. Well, scales, I guess? Scales? No, it's not scales. It's that nobody knows. The wiki wachi springs is the deepest natural springs in the world, and nobody has gotten down there. All right. You have one more chance. If you get this right, you win. An aquarium in China also offers a mermaid show with performers dressed as mermaids, performing, this time, in a giant fish tank.

10:07But they were recently accused of covering up an incident in which what happened? A, the tail fell off a particular mermaid, revealing it to be a merman. B, the head fell off a mermaid, revealing it to be a giant sturgeon. Or C, a giant sturgeon tried to eat a mermaid's head. The audience is yelling C. No, no, they're just an acapella group. Yeah, I know. I was about to say they're yelling C in C. Am I being booed? No, no, you're not being booed. You're being helped. You're being helped. C, C, it's C. It's C, it is C, yes.

10:52The giant surgeon, which was in the tank, just swam it over and just tried to swallow that mermaid's head. And I have to say, having seen the video, it is horrifying, but in a good way. and the mermaid was fine. She's okay. In my own defense, I believe that you could have a shell brazier that was deceptively inhabited. I think you're right. I think with modern techniques, I think that would be possible. I'm going to grant you that. Bill, how did Lauren Graham do in our quiz? Lauren got two out of three and that is a win, Lauren. Congratulations, Lauren. You did that like Lorelai. You were thoughtful.

11:34You struggled a bit, but you won in the end. You came through. Lauren Graham is now starring on The Z Suite. You can find it on Tubi. Lauren Graham, thank you so much for joining us on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Thank you so much. It's such fun. It was a delight. Thank you, Lauren. Take care. Bye. Bye-bye.

11:55When we come back, comedian Roy Wood Jr. denies stealing our shtick, And Amanda Seyfried teaches us how to dance like you know someone's watching. That's when we return with more Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR.

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12:51From 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 at the Studebaker Theatre in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal. Thank you, Bill. So we are having a blowout celebration for our nation's 249th birthday, because this is the last year we can credibly claim to be young. Once you hit 250, your flag starts to say. before our crow's feet land we're revisiting some of our favorite moments from the last year including this visit with comedian Roy Wood Jr. from March Peter asked him where he got the idea for his latest gig hosting a comedy quiz show about the week's news I have another show that I'm getting ready to host called Fortune of the Wheel

13:49letters. Yeah, smart. Very smart. Very smart. I want to talk about your new special, Lonely Flowers, which is truly great on Hulu. And I found out some things about you, including that you started doing standup when you were 19 years old. Yeah. Which is amazing. I was still in school at Florida A &M. Right. And what inspired you to pursue that difficult life? I was going to school for journalism and I would get laughs. And so I was like, all right, well, this feels like comedy. I'm going to go do that. And I would just sleep in bus stations and do standup, get back to Tallahassee on Monday and go to Golden Corral that night, work, and just go to class the next three days.

14:29That was my life. There are a couple of things about that that I wanted to ask you about. One of which is that you have said that that job at Golden Corral, which is a buffet, was like one of the most important formative experiences of your life. Yeah. I think that every American should either serve in the military a year or the food service industry for three years. Because when you work in a restaurant, especially a midsize like that with a staff of about 40 to 50 back in front of house, that job, your first job as a teenager, that's the first time you encounter adults who don't give a s*** about you.

15:03Most adults, I'm serious most adults in your life up until that point have a vested interest in you being okay right but I worked with the dude we literally called cocaine Mike this is a man who's 39 and doesn't care what 18 year old Roy and he's going to talk to you about life and I feel like it also introduces you to every type of American I've worked in North Florida so So everything from white supremacists to nuns to pastors to gangbangers to cops. You meet literally every type of person, and you have to figure out a way to connect with them. It's hands down the best life school I ever got was 213 an hour in Tallahassee, Florida.

15:50Wow. That's amazing. Just out of curiosity. This is like the best commercial for Golden Corral I've ever heard in my life. But here's the question. You've been pretty famous for at least a decade on TV. the Daily Show, a lot of other things. Has anybody who knew you back then reached out and said, I was the white supremacist. Remember me? I was the guy with the Nazi tattoo. I'm Cocaine Mike. For example. I don't know where Cocaine Mike is, but I sure hope that prison has NPR.

16:22There's another story you tell in the special which I actually, and I was unexpected because it's extremely funny and I didn't expect to be moved. you start back when you were staying in bus stations because you couldn't afford hotel and the story is that your mother found out. Somebody ratted you out to your mom. And she didn't know you were out doing comedy, right? She had a student that was a baggage handler at the bus station and he went to her class the next day and said, Dr. Wood, I saw your son sleeping in a bus station. You ain't seen none of my damn son sleeping in a bus station. My baby in Tallahassee.

16:57No, he's not, Joyce. He's downtown. He's sleeping at the bus station. And so my mom never agreed or understood why comedy was what I wanted to do. But she was the one who put down for what ended up being my first road car. And I think my mom's objective was to get me the car so that I could drive back to Tallahassee after the show. But instead, I would now just travel twice as far and sleep in the car. Right. in bus station parking lights. Well, Roy, it is so great to talk to you, and we have asked you here to play a little game with us. This time we're calling the game, Have We Got Booze for You.

17:44So you host CNN's Have I Got News for You. We're going to ask you three questions about ghosts and hauntings. Booze. I believe in ghosts, by the way. You do? Do you have any reason to believe in ghosts? Yeah, I was dating a widower, and we were trying to have sex, and I kept getting a charley horse, and I feel like it was a dead husband.

18:06Well, all right, knowing both your belief in the supernatural and the reasons therefor, I will still proceed. Bill, who is Roy Wood Jr. playing for? Peter Grieving of Clucksville, Georgia. All right, here's your first question. one of the most famous hauntings in U.S. history was the red ghost, the spirit that haunted rural Arizona in the late 1800s. People were quite relieved, though, when the red ghost turned out to be what? Was it A, a vaudeville comedian who was trying to promote himself as being, quote, dead, funny, B, a basset hound, which no one in Arizona had ever seen before, or C, a feral camel that had been a part of a failed camel cavalry in the U.S.

18:53Army? Ooh. That feels like a C. Give me C. Give me the camel cavalry. You got it, and that's correct. Nice. It was a camel. It had run away from the camel cavalry. It was out enjoying itself. People would see it and get scared. The Army Camel Corps, by the way, was created by Jefferson Davis, One of his many, many good ideas. All right. All right. Second question. Every country has their own legends of ghosts, their own versions. In Japan, for example, you could be visited in the middle of the night by a kamikiri, a ghost that does what? A, gives you a really, really bad haircut. B, just sits, looks at you, shakes its head, sighs, and leaves.

19:46or C, raids your refrigerator and invariably steals what you were saving for lunch the next day. I don't... Japan has a lot of customs around food, so I don't think a ghost would be disrespectful on the food side of things. Not even a ghost. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Give me bad haircut. I've seen some bad haircuts in Asia. I've been over there a couple of times. Maybe it was a ghost that did it. So your choice is A, the haircut. Roy is right. He picked correctly. Wow. It is. Stories spread back in olden days about people walking down the streets of Japan, and all of a sudden, their hair would fall to the ground without them noticing.

20:27It was the kamikiri. You're doing very well, Roy. One more question for you. Last question. A lot of people believe ghosts are real. In fact, so many people believe in ghosts. Which of these is true? A, in New Mexico, you can drive in the carpool lane if you have a ghost in the car. B, Vermont taxpayers are allowed to claim a ghost as a dependent. Or C, if you are selling a home in New York, you have to disclose if it is haunted. Vermont seems like a nice, fun, happy-go-lucky type of place. Give me claiming a ghost on the taxes. No, it was, in fact, if you sell a house in New York, you have to tell people if you believe the house is haunted.

21:08Bill, how did Roy Wood Jr. do in our quiz? Two out of three gives you bragging rights for your panel. Congratulations, Roy. You won. Roy Wood Jr. is a comedian and the host of CNN's Have I Got News for You. His new stand-up special, Lonely Flowers, which is both funny and a little heartbreaking, is streaming on Hulu. Roy Wood Jr., what a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much for being with us. Great pleasure to talk to you, a brother in quiz. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye, Roy. Thanks, Roy.

21:48Also in March, we spoke to the actor Amanda Seyfried, famous for her roles in Mean Girls, Mama Mia, and The Dropout. Her latest project has her playing a cop, which turned out to be a childhood dream of hers. I had this weird obsession with the first 48. I would watch like two episodes before bed every night. I think that's probably why I was so anxious. in my early 20s. But, yeah, sure. I mean, I just think it's cool. And I never wanted to play detective. Don't get me wrong. Those are, they're cool, but they're everywhere. Beat cops is where it's at. Yeah, really? And I just feel so slight that, like, no one would believe me with that kind of authority.

22:28So I just wanted to prove myself and everybody else wrong. Wow. So your model for the cop you wanted to be was not like, say, Kojak, but like the little bunny in Zootopia. That's exactly who I modeled my hair character. Wow. Yeah. I can see that. Yeah. In preparation for this role, you did something, I am told again, that I know a lot of actors do, which you did a ride along with Real Philadelphia Police. Is that true? Yeah. I had no business being there, but I went and it was something. Yeah. Yeah, let's go to the Wawa. Let's break up the fight. they let me choose which place we were going to go next.

23:11Did they really? Well, there's a wellness check. You want to do that? And I'm like, that could be anything. We should go. And it turned out to be a dead person. So the wellness was pretty low. Yeah, not a lot of wellness there. I can't wait to do it again, actually. Sure. It occurs to me, though, I mean, well, the cops have you, that you could come in handy. like if a gunfight got for a bit to break out, they could shout, put down your weapons. Amanda Seyfried is here. There's like a third Mama Mia movie on the line. And if that ever happened, listen, I'm for it. I'll do anything to save a life.

23:50Right. Quote me on that. All right.

23:56Speaking of Mama Mia, we have read, this might be urban legend. It might be true. we have read that like when you were making that movie and its sequel and these beautiful places that the entire cast was drunk the entire time. Yeah. I mean, not the entire time. Not the entire time.

24:15What is it like a short day? Yeah. Yeah. No, it really was, um, debauchery. Yeah. It, it, it, it looked like, I mean, it's, It seemed like part of the appeal of the movie was just imagining being able to make it with you guys because, boy, it looked like fun. It really was. Actually, those images that came out a while back of us in our most drunken state at some party where we did karaoke in Skopalos, it just looks like the most fun anyone could ever have. Especially because Meryl Streep is at the center of every photo. and I wish I could say oh it wasn't that fun but my grandmother got drunk that night and it was a memory that I will never I hold it so close and I really look forward to a third so just so we could keep getting drunk together so you won an Emmy for playing Elizabeth Holmes in the dropout the story of her in Theranos and perhaps the single most iconic moment in the show is when you as Elizabeth kind of dances into your boyfriend's office to Lil Wayne to either seduce him or cheer him up or both.

25:34And it is somehow the most awkward thing I have ever seen. And my question is, how does someone who knows how to dance, dance badly? I'm going to be honest. I'm not a good dancer. I really am not. Peter, she thought that was really good. Really? Oh, God. That was like the best dancing she could do. I don't know. I was wearing a, who can dance well or take themselves seriously when they're wearing that puffy vest? Yeah. When that really happened, presumably it did, Lil Wayne felt a horrible twinge somewhere. He just knew something was wrong. He was more uncomfortable than you were.