WWDTM: Billy Porter, Mark Ronson, Tara Dower, and more!

0:01NPR's podcast, Trump's Terms, is your source for same-day updates on big news about the Trump administration. Short, focused episodes, one topic at a time, about five minutes or so. We carry out reporting from across all of NPR's coverage, so you are always getting the biggest, most urgent stories. Listen to Trump's terms on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:27From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm the voice so rich Forbes put it on a list Chioki Ianson and here's your host at the Studebaker Theater in downtown Chicago filling in for Peter Sagal, Tom Papa Thanks Chioki and thank you everybody this week was President's Day and we're honoring George Washington's 293rd birthday by trying to bake a cake you can safely eat with a wooden teeth Just be careful blowing out those candles, George, or your whole mouth is going to go up in flames. And since we're already celebrating, let's keep the party going with one of our favorite guests from the past few years, actor, writer, and comedian, John Leguizamo.

1:17Peter started by asking him how it felt to finally achieve the pinnacle of show business success, his own PBS special. Yes, an overnight success after 40 years. So the series American History of the Untold History of Latinos, I understand was inspired by one of your many one-man shows. In this case, your own personal examination of Latino history, right? Yes, you know, it was based on Latino Latin history from morons because I learned my son was being bullied. And I wanted to weaponize his knowledge and his history of his people. You know, I didn't know we finished building the railroads. I didn't realize we were the first fighters to create unions in the 1930s.

1:59And then, you know, we've been persecuted, but we've also contributed so much. We just reached a milestone last year. We contributed$3.2 trillion to the GDP yearly as a Latino culture. Wow. My son is a huge fan of yours. And by that, of course, I mean because of your Ice Age movies and TV shows. I'm so happy to hear that. We're about to do Ice Age 6. Wow. So you play, for those unlucky not to have seen the 4 ,000 Ice Age movies and TV shows and video games, you play Sid the Sloth, a prehistoric sloth, and we read that you actually got really deep into the research for his voice. Is that right?

2:45Yeah, because I did like 50 voices for the director, Chris Wedge, and he said, I just want you to do your voice. I go, I don't want to do my voice. I want to do a voice. I'm an actor. So I did, you know, Southern voice for the slob because he's slow. Then I went a little more ghetto. I wanted to, come on, what do you want, what do you want? And he goes, nah. So then I got Discovery Channel footage, and I saw that slob stored food in their cheek pouches, and it would ferment, and they'd get drunk. And so I started eating a sandwich, and I put it in my cheek pouches, and I walked around the house waiting for it to ferment, and it didn't.

3:18But what happened was that I got slushy, slushy in my mouth, and I called the writer, Chris, guess who this is? And he's like, I have no idea. Sid the sloth. I found myself. And that's how I did it. Wow. That's amazing. You do belong on PBS. Yeah. Next time I'm sitting watching the movies with my son, I'm going to say, you know, that's historically accurate. Among the many, many things you do, you've done these one-man shows where you play all these characters, and as you just demonstrated, you're really, really, really good at voices. Have you ever used that power for evil? Yes, of course. I mean, when I was much younger, it was great because people, you know, when the school would complain, they would call my house and I would answer my mom.

4:01And I go, oh, he what? No, he's fantastic. Oh, you want to expel him? Well, expel it for me. And I would mess with them for hours and they wouldn't be able to expel me. Really? They tried to expel me. Did your mother know you were doing that? No. But now she knows now because you blabbered. You mentioned your mother. We also read that your mother to this day sees everything you do and offers a critique afterwards. Yeah, my mom's very judgmental. I think I get it from her a little bit. We both watch PBS too much. Yeah, I know, man. I'm telling you. And she does. She comes to every show and she sits front row.

4:48And then she comes afterwards. Oh, Joan, that was fantastic. but I didn't really like the punchline. It didn't really hit the way I thought it would hit. It didn't murder. And I was like, Mom, please stop criticizing. You're just my mom. Just be unconditionally loving for once. Is she going to critique this? Is she going to listen and go, Oh, I don't think you talked about me enough. I'm not going to tell her about this. Okay, yeah. All right, that's fine. That's the only way to keep her away. Well, John Leguizamo, it is such a pleasure to talk to you again. And this time we have asked you to play a game that we're calling...

5:16Can we fix it? Yes, we can. So this year, as I'm sure you know, because everybody's been celebrating. This year marks the 25th anniversary of Bob the Builder. Oh, wow. The beloved kids' show about a British contractor whose trucks are alive. So in honor of that, we're going to ask you three questions about, I guess we'd call him Mr. Builder. Get two out of three right. You'll win our prize for one of our listeners. Bill, who is John Leguizamo playing for? Nora Wing of Ithaca, New York. All right. Here's your first question. Ready? Go for it. I'll do my best. Bob the Builder is popular around the world, but some changes needed to be made internationally to show there, including which of these?

5:55A, in France, they had to add clocks to the background to prove that no one goes over their 35-hour approved work week. B, in Canada, Bob always includes maple syrup as a construction material in his projects. Or C, in Japan, they had to add a fifth finger to his animated four-finger hand so that kids did not think Bob the Builder was a member of the Yakuza. Oh, shoot. I'm going to go with Canada and maple syrup because it sounds ridiculous but plausible. So you think that Bob the Builder in Canada, they just cut into things as of now to make sure this sticks. Here's some maple syrup. Can they go A?

6:33Sorry, A. Oh, wow. That was amazing. I thought I was in Toronto. No, the answer was actually C. You see, as is well known in Japan, if you're a Yakuza member and you displease your boss, they cut off one of your fingers. So a four-fingered animated character would have unpleasant connotations. That's dark. It is. It really is. I didn't want to go that dark. All right. Here's your next question, John. You have two more chances. Bob the Builder is more than just a very popular kids' TV show. Which of these is another example of Bob's cultural dominance? A, he once went to number one on the UK singles charts with a cover of Mambo No.

7:115. B, Alexander McQueen had an entire runway show of Bob the Builder-inspired designs, or C, he had a best-selling cookbook called Can You Bake It? Yes, You Can. Oh, man. I'm going to go with A. You're going with A? You're right. Yes, he did a cover of Mambo No. 5. What a relief. All right, you have one more question. If you get this right, you win. Bob the Builder popped up in a surprising place a few years ago when people browsing the on-demand menu of Britain's Channel 5 saw a picture of Bob as the image representing what show? A, the season premiere of Britain's Got Talent, B, a documentary about 9-11, or C, the movie Eyes Wide Shut.

7:56Eyes Wide Shut. Sort of the sexual, all the sexual. Yes, I know, yes. Just imagine Bob the Builder wearing one of those weird masks that Tom Cruise was having, you know? I won't picture that, so I'm going to go with A again. You're going to go with A again. Britain's Got Talent, the idea of like, oh, this guy's got talent. He can build stuff. Yeah, he can build things, right? Sadly, the answer was B, a documentary about 9-11. Wait, no, I meant B. I meant B. You meant B. Oh, he meant B. He meant B, Bill. He meant B. Let's give it to him. Okay. I'm sure. I mean, I thought I misheard you. And of course, you were right.

8:33I have an accent. I have a New York City accent. Yeah, exactly. You know, apparently if the way it worked was if Channel 5, you know, and this is how it works. You turn on your streaming service. There are these icons indicating the shows you could be watching. And with Channel 5, they didn't happen to have a picture to go with any given show. They just plugged in a picture from Bob the Builder. So Bob was the image for this 9-11 documentary and also something called Murdered by My Daughter. So, Bill, how did John Leguizamo do in our quiz? Two out of three. Yay! I don't think you did good. I'm amazing.

9:11I'm brilliant. I belong on PBS. John Leguizamo is an actor, writer, and producer whose new series Voces American Historia, the Untold History of Latinos, premieres on PBS September 27th. John Leguizamo, what a great thing to talk to you again. Thank you so much. Good luck with the show. We'll see you next time. Thank you. Thank you. It's so fun. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

9:38Before we wrap up this segment, here's a fun moment with some of our panelists. Paula, one of the most famous prehistoric animals was the saber-toothed tiger. Sure. A fierce and deadly predator. Oh, yeah. And scientists now believe they know why they went extinct. What was it? Because they weren't procreating. I mean, that has to be correct. That is, well. Yeah. More specifically, a lot of the males became unattractive. Why? The tooth. Exactly. They went extinct because of their very big teeth. Yeah. It's just not appealing to a female of any species. A saber-toothed tiger, formerly a Smilodon, informally, Bernie.

10:23A Smilodon? Yes. That's so adorable. That's like a children's story. If you talk to a paleontologist and say, oh, do you work with saber-toothed tigers? They'll go, there's no such thing as a saber-toothed tiger. They're called Smilodon. How do you know that? Because I have been reading a lot of books about old animals with my son. I'm not sure what level these books are. Because really, there's one wherein it said, don't talk to scientists who study this and mention saber-toothed tiger, because they will just lose it. Yeah. That's ridiculous. I would like... Wait, wait, don't tell me it has a website, doesn't it?

11:01I believe we do, yes. Okay. I want to see. A copy of the book.

11:09That cautions the reader. The young reader. Yeah. I'm assuming how old is your son that you're reading this book to? My son is four. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're not one of those parents who's already pushing your kid to get into college, are you? All right. I want you to go to college. But here's a tip. When you get in there, do not, for the love of God, Your mother and I love you very much, but there's one thing out with which we cannot put. Coming up, it's late. Wait a minute, coming up. What's the name of the book?

11:54When we come back, super producer Mark Ronson and ultra runner Tara Dower. One of them had their toenails surgically removed, but you're going to have to wait to find out which one. That's when we come back with more Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR.

12:20From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR news quiz. I'm Chioki Ianson, and here's your host at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building in downtown Chicago, filling in for Peter Sagal, Tom Papa. Thank you, Chioki. This week, we're celebrating President's Day by building our own team of rivals with some of our favorite guests from the past few years. I'm having so much fun. I can't wait to see what we do for Autocrats Day next year. While we prepare for that, here's our interview with Grammy-winning producer Mark Ronson. When he joined us in August of 2023, guest host Nagin Farsad asked him if he remembered the first time he heard the mega hit Uptown Funk in the Wild.

13:07I do. I remember being in an Uber and hearing it like I think I was like coming home. Maybe I was a little drunk coming home from a club at two in the morning. It was like it was the first time I ever heard it on the radio and it was the most exciting thing ever. And I remember saying to the driver, I was like, this is me.

13:29but he's listening to like Bruno Mars going like don't believe it you know and he's like it doesn't sound like you like I'm like no I mean I I produced it but anyway no it was so exciting um did you have a inkling then that it was going to be this worldwide phenomenon well not by the uber driver's reaction but I also thought that I thought I I you know what it was that song we worked on for a really long time about seven or eight months because bruno was so such a perfectionist i kind of am jeff basker the other producer we are in our work so by the time we finally stopped bickering about it and got it to a point where we all felt good we're like wow if it passed this peanut gallery at least we know you know we feel good about it but well everything that happened after that was just such a wonderful thing i mean when you put a song out, it's no longer yours.

14:21It belongs to everybody. And then they decide what happens with it. So that's kind of what happened with that song. So I want to talk to you a little bit about being a DJ. We talked before the show. And as you know, I have in fact shaken my booty as it were at a club where you were DJing and it was just an incredible night. It was so fun, but it made me think you probably see a lot of weird stuff on the dance floor. are you like basically embarrassed for everyone as you see them dancing to your music or? No, if anybody's dancing, that's good enough for me. So, I mean, I have seen some, one of my favorite things, you know, my early days of DJing in clubs in New York in the 90s, RuPaul once came into the club somewhere where I was DJing.

15:10And this was when Ru was in sort of plain clothes in a very handsome suit and came up to me and it was just like at the end of the night, you're making me dance so much, you're making my booty hurt. And I just thought that was so cool that I put that on a business card. I just made these little details. Business cards that just said, like, you're making my booty hurt, RuPaul. Available for weddings and bar-misteries.

15:40Well, let's talk about Barbie, another worldwide phenomenon. on. I want to talk to you about scoring the movie, which you also did. Now that you've scored a movie, do you find yourself scoring like dramatic moments in your own life? Or just like mundane, like you're just, you're just like chatting with the barista and then it's like... It's funny because now I'm just so hyper tuned to like, it could be the music in a Burger King commercial. I'm like, oh, I see why they did that. That song legit slaps. BK, have it your way. So I heard this weird factoid about you. Is it true that the song, I want to know what love is, was written about your mom?

16:31Yes, that is absolutely true. I would hope so, because that would have been insulting. You don't keep talking about somebody's mama like that.

16:41yeah my stepfather Mick Jones whom my mom married when I was 10 and he wrote that song for her and it's like I mean it's definitely setting the bar pretty high like as a kid like okay well you're not going to write anything as good as that for anybody but also what was more funny is that he had written a song he tried to tell that he wrote the song Waiting for a Girl IQ as well that was another big ballad that he had for her. And she was like, you wrote that song like five years before you met me. He's like, right, but I was waiting for a girl. I know.

17:18That's man math right there. Well, Mark, we've asked you here to play a game that we're calling... What about that downtown funk?

17:34So you, of course, released the smash hit Uptown Funk, so we're going to ask you about downtown funk or stinky city smells. And amazingly, in this quiz, we only use the word urine once. Now answer two out of three questions correctly, and you'll win our prize for one of our listeners. Bill, who is Mark Ronson playing for? Brad Martin of Seattle, Washington. All right. It's a 206. I have to represent. Yeah. Brad, let's go. Let's go. All right, here's your first question. Most towns come to their funks naturally, but some create their own, including Lincoln, Nebraska, which in the winter smells like what?

18:17Is it A, nutmeg, which they mix in with their road salt? Is it B, new car smell from their factory that makes artificial new car smell kicking up production? Or is it C, animal pee, which they spray on their pine trees to keep people from stealing them for Christmas trees?

18:40I'm going to go with C, because that's the funkiest. And that is correct. The answer is animal pee. The whole thing about the funk, and I know that I'm not on camera for most people, is like that kind of face, you know, and like nutmeg does not make you make. All right, here's your next question. Lots of cities have bad smells, but not every city has a song about how bad it smells. Which of these is a real recording? Is it A, the aroma of Tacoma? Is it B, my dear Eureka, how Eureka? Or is it C, Pueblo, Colorado, smells like a rotten egg made of dead skunks? good luck punching that one up ronson i'm gonna go with a yes it is the aroma of some uh some combination of a paper mill and oil refinery and tacoma's natural stank made a smell so strong it was immortalized in song not gonna lie it's a bop do you know that that mill is closing down.

19:57So the aroma of Tacoma is going away in the next few months. So sniff it while you got it, people. All right. So here is your last question. GQ magazine published a list of the best smelling cities in the world, including New Orleans, which they praised for what combination of scents? Was it A, incense and sweat? Was it B, old beer and frying fat? Or was it C, strawberry hurricanes and puked up strawberry hurricanes?

20:34This C sounds so good. I'm sorry. The answer is B, old beer and frying Fat got New Orleans on the good smelling list. Alright, Bill, how did Mark do on our quiz? Well, he's a winner. Two out of three. Mark, congratulations. We'll give you another Emmy for this. Mark Ronson is a Grammy and Oscar winning producer, writer, and DJ who composed the score and produced the soundtrack for the Barbie movie. Mark Ronson, thank you so much for joining us on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Thanks so much.

21:18In November this past year, we talked to ultra runner Tara Dower. She had just become the fastest person to ever complete the Appalachian Trail, having hiked all 2 ,200 miles in just over 40 days. The numbers were so unbelievable, Peter had to double-check them. First question, did we get the numbers right about 2 ,200 miles, end-to-end, Maine-to-Georgia, and you did it in 40 days, 18 hours, five minutes. Is that right? Six minutes. Oh, excuse me. Oh, you are scrupulous. So break that down. To travel that far in that period of time, how far did you have to travel per day and how much time did it take to travel, to run every day?

22:01The least amount of miles I did in a day was about 35 and the most I ever did was 62 in a day. And every day I was moving for about, on average, like 17 and a half hours a day. 17 and a half hours. Okay. That's kind of amazing. And how much were you able to sleep? On average, about five hours. And at what point, I mean, I guess you ran from Maine to Georgia. So were you starting to hallucinate by the time you were in New York, say? Yeah. Well, the compounding exhaustion came around, I'd say Maryland, it got pretty bad. I remember some like little hallucinations I had, like little devils sitting on logs and uh i saw a white cat and a lion and i saw my friends sitting on a log so the hallucinations were getting pretty bad around like the middle of the trail maryland is about halfway through well it's kind of must be comforting knowing like that's not real there's not a cat and a devil here like i might as well just keep running like there's no threat you know Yeah, well, you know, I've had hallucinations during 100 mile races that I've done.

23:10And some of those have been really concerning. Yeah. And I think. Oh, give us an example. I'm lucky. There was like a hunter with a huge, huge, ginormous gun. And he was like asking me where I was going and what I was doing. And I was like, oh, crap. Like, is this real? And it was in the middle of the night. It was at 2 a.m. on a trail by myself. You know, if you ask a hallucination, if they're a hallucination, they have to tell you. That's a rule. Do you eat while you run? Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's, you have to, like, be utilizing. You have to eat wherever you can. I mean, I'm eating, oh, I think it was, like, 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 calories a day.

23:51So, I mean, you just have to, like, eat and run. You have to do as much as you can when you run. And do people bring you? The only time I stopped during the day was to use the bathroom. Yeah. They have bathrooms on the trail. That's nice. And so when you say you're eating, so you're just like people are coming up. She thought it was a bathroom. You may have been hallucinating a bathroom. I thought it was someone's car. You can't guarantee that was a bathroom. So I'm trying to figure out that. You're running along and like your friends are with you. You have a lot of support, I know, in order to do this.

24:18And they run up to you and they give you, hand you a banana or whatever it is you're eating. And you just stuff it in your face and you keep running. Yep. Yep. That's about it. Just keep moving. Eat. My favorite was gummies and I like Rice Krispie treats and goldfish. I loved goldfish. Right. Wow, that's so unhealthy. Yeah. It's the calories though, right? I was expecting you to be like broccoli and then other forms of broccoli. A couple more questions. First of all, I understand that you said once that you have decided after lots of experiences, negative, positive, but you've just decided that you're done with toenails.

24:57Oh, yeah. I got my, I got four toenails permanently removed before I went out on the trail. And that was the best decision I ever made. Wow. You were done with them. You were like, you were tired of them getting bloody and coming off. How did you choose? They would fall off all the time. Were you playing this little piggy? And you were like, this little piggy goes and goes. This little piggy gets slaughtered. Yeah, that was it. We just did eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Um, no. So my big toenails are always the ones during these feats, they always like fall off. Um, and it's very painful and they get infected.